CTT: God the Holy Spirit, prt4

God the Holy Spirit (His power) is Truth:

The power of the Holy Spirit is not a magic wand. We cannot just say, “I wish this particular problem would go away”, and poof, it is gone. Rather we should say, “Holy Spirit, I have this particular problem and I would like it to go away”. Then have ears to hear and eyes to see, for the Holy Spirit will bring to us the answer that we may accomplish the goal. It may be altering a social habit, or pulling in the reigns on a personal tendency, or maybe forgiveness is in line for someone, or ourselves. Whatever the case, the Holy Spirit will show us the way. But it is our responsibility to “go” the way. He is not going to do it for us. The journey is the empowerment, for both ourselves and our relationship with the Father.

Jesus, who was full of the Spirit, still had to discipline himself to obey the word of his Father. He did this mainly through prayer, which we see as a daily routine for him. He tells us that He would only speak what the Father told him to speak.

John 12:49
For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

I can imagine all the things I would say to people who would not believe me if I were right about something and they were wrong, and not just wrong, but professed to everyone else how right they were and how wrong I was. That would tick me off, and I am sure that pride would have its way at some point or another. But Jesus, full of the Spirit, never did anything like that, he always chose to be obedient to the Father. And since that is the way Jesus overcame, I can relate to it. If Jesus was able to overcome because the Holy Spirit did it all for him then I could not relate to that because the Holy Spirit does not do that for me. But he does check my spirit and give me the opportunity to do it His way first.

We have talked about this earlier, but when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, He had a discussion with his Father about going to the cross. Jesus did not want to go and was looking for a way out, another way. Even though he was full of the Holy Spirit he still had to obey the Father. The Holy Spirit was not going to make him.

So in seeing these things about the Holy Spirit, we have to decide how we are going to view him. The Bible views him as the third person of the Trinity. Some view him as more of just a “force”; the long arm of God, the power of God, not as an individual, not part of the "us" in Genesis 1:26, “And God said, Let us make man in our image...”

If we can realize that the Word of God is Jesus, an individual, then we should be able to accept that the Holy Spirit is an individual also. I say this because I have a hard time seeing him as an individual myself, but more of as a force or the “Power of God”. I do not find this to be threatening though, because I know he is real, I know what he does, I have seen him at work, so for me it is not that big of an issue. I do believe that he is an individual, one of three in the God Head.