Welcome! I'm so glad you came to this new study. I am so excited, humbled, and feeling somewhat out of my league to be teaching on this topic. However, God is way bigger than I am and he will be the one doing the teaching anyway!The Indwelling
The Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of Christ.
The Holy Ghost.
The Third Person of the Triad.
This is Who we will be (for lack of a better word) studying over the next few weeks.
Who is He?What does He do? How do we live by Him? In Him? Is He a partner, partaker, or is He power?
Why do we feel like we don't feel Him all the time?
Questions. Answers. Mysteries. Revelations.
These are what I hope to uncover for us. As usual, I have a mentor, a guide that will help us in our study, and I so encourage you to get this book as soon as you can.
It's The Indwelling Spirit by Andrew Murray. Yes, yes, it's good ol' Andrew again, but I can't help it, he's my favorite.
Let's begin.
Do you ever feel like you know Jesus, but wish you knew Him better? Do you ever wonder why you don't feel Christ all the time? Are you ever frustrated with yourself because you feel like you'll never understand Him or never know all that Bible stuff?
Do you ever wonder if the Spirit is really in you? Maybe that doesn't bother you as much as wondering if He's really doing all that people say He does.
Do you have a sense of powerlessness? A lack of knowledge? Weakness?
Or, do you know the Spirit, but sense there is more? More to know, more to uncover, more to understand?
I can answer yes to every one of those questions. I've wrestled with each one and rejoiced in the moments I feel like I "got" it. But is that the goal? "Getting it"?
I must break it to us, the only "getting" we should be after is getting more of Him so that He is glorified!
There it is. The word we will have weaving all through this study. We'll come back to it over and over---glory. That word is the red thread of truth found from Genesis to Revelation and is God's primary goal for Himself: His glory.
I fear that for most of my life, and even now, I do not fully live in a place where I allow Him to have the most glory all the time. I dare say I don't even know how to do it. I fail so miserably at it. Even Romans 3:23 backs me up, "...for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
I can't do it. You can't do it. It is only Himself who can bring Him the most glory and He has given us Himself to see it come to pass. And so what does that mean for us? Do we stop trying to glorify Christ? Do we see our attempts at worship and adoration as merely false attempts, unable to really do Him justice?
Maybe. Possibly. Most likely.
What! Stop glorifying Christ! Have you lost your mind, Natalie! You crazy!
Hmm, that's not what I said. I asked if we stop trying, attempting, striving. If we fall short of it then how are we ever to do it?
By His Spirit.
And thus, the can of worms is open.
Oh, I am heavy with this. Heavy with what I will learn, what we will learn and be changed by.
Here, just to give you a peek, here are some of the topics:
The Deposit Given
The Priority
Christ Filled
Single mindedness
No Confidence in the Flesh
The Spirit and The Word
Yielding to the Spirit
Praying in the Spirit
Freedom from Sin
Just to name a few. I'm not exactly sure how long this study will be. Possible 3 weeks (3 days a week--M, W, F)) maybe four. Please leave a comment with some of your questions. Hopefully, we'll get to them in our study.
For now, I leave you with this:
But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. John 14:25
7 comments:
God is so funny to me. I've been feeling His nudging to seek more about the Holy Spirit in my life - and then I saw this : )
very excited to go through this study with you guys.
How do we know He is truly dwelling in our hearts or does he get lost in the cobwebs of chaoticness at times...just a thought that went through my mind.
I look forward to reading more.
Thanks for being a blessings
Tammy, first of all, if you believe that Jesus is the son of God and have confessed it, repented, and made Him your Lord, then you have the Holy Spirit. See Ephesians 1 and Acts 2:38.
He is promised. Now, we may not "feel" him all the time, but that should not be how we measure His work. He is always at work revealing Christ to us, regardless of how we feel. We don't have that kind of control, to turn Him on and off. We only have the ability to yeild to him. We'll cover more of this later, I promise!
Thanks for the question!
So how do we get out of the Spirits way so that there is more of Him and less of me. I live the Peter syndrome most of the time. Both feet in my mouth and looking for others to stuff in there too. So how does He speak, act, and work around that?
Sallye
Sallye, it's most certainly a condition of the heart. I'm sure that the Holy Spirit is delighted by your personality... he MADE you that way.
However, getting 'out of the way' is not only a mental thought, but a training of the will. It's surrendering your will to his. In the Old Testament, there is a beatuiful depiction of this where the priests left the holy of holies and only THEN did the glory of God fall down.
Again, you're question is great and one that we'll be covering in the 'yeiling" chapter! :)
Yo girl. Love your passion! May God use you and use you in a mighty harvest! love,sheri
Wow...this seems like such a timely topic for all of us! I've been reading for a while, but don't think that I've ever commented. I have tired myself out from trying harder, wanting to be better. I'm so ready to just get out of the way and let Him do it for me!
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