Why the Holy Spirit matters more than we think - part one
I recently taught a nine-week series on the Holy Spirit in our local church. This new article series is a summation of my notes. I pray they bless your faith, and give you a deeper appreciation for the person and vital role of the Holy Spirit.
The class was comprehensive and informative. It was also transformative. In fact, I warned my church – if you really desire a more robust understanding of the Holy Spirit, brace yourselves. Why? Because the Spirit of God does not leave things the same as He finds them.
When we become Christians, we step into a story of radical missionary zeal – one we didn’t create. The God of the universe is totally interested in changing lives, shaping communities, and forming churches that are a bright light. We can accomplish exactly none of this by ourselves.
His work has been producing fruit long before we showed up, and will continue long after we’re gone.
Be careful, though. When we embrace a Spirit-filled life, our lives and mission will be disrupted. I happen to think that’s a very good thing.
The religious movement that shaped my faith experience since my college days has always possessed an extraordinary capacity for action. We were taught to take the Great Commission seriously, study the Bible diligently, share our faith courageously, and make disciples intentionally. We believed the gospel was meant to be proclaimed—and we were willing to rearrange our lives to proclaim it.
This ethos is inspiring and compelling, especially in a world with too much religious talk, so little action.
That zeal also produced a great deal of good. People heard the gospel. Lives were changed. Churches were planted. Mission teams crossed borders and oceans. Christians learned to sacrifice their time, money, comfort, and ambitions for the sake of God’s kingdom.
We should thank God for all of that, but we also should be very open to places God is trying to grow and mature us.
Our greatest strengths can sometimes reveal our biggest weaknesses
A movement that emphasizes commitment and action can gradually begin to speak as though the mission of God depends primarily upon our commitment and action. Without intending to, we can place the spotlight on our effort, our courage, our plans, our goals, and our ability to make things happen.
Church members can feel the burden of that theology even when no one states it explicitly.
They may come to believe that the Christian life depends upon trying harder, doing more, remaining disciplined, and producing measurable results. Faithfulness becomes exhausting because so much seems to depend upon us.
The answer is not to lose our zeal. It is to rediscover its source.
Many churches don’t need less commitment to God’s mission. We need a deeper understanding of the One who empowers that mission. We need to recover the truth that the Christian life begins, continues, and reaches maturity through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
Most people I talk to are eager to understand and grasp this more fully, that realization should cause us to brace ourselves, because recovering a biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit may change more than we expect.
Did We Begin with the Spirit?
Paul asked the Galatian Christians a piercing question:
“Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”
Galatians 3:3 (NIV)
Paul had preached the gospel to the Galatians, and they had responded in faith. There was a ton of fruit. However, after he left, other teachers arrived and insisted that faith in Jesus was not enough. They taught that Gentile believers also needed to adopt certain requirements of the Jewish law, including circumcision. What started as a Gospel-centered faith was now becoming more humanistic and man-focused.
Paul was not happy, but recognized that something much larger was at stake.
The Galatians were not simply adding another religious practice. By allowing humanistic false teaching into the fellowship, they were moving away from dependence upon God’s grace and toward confidence in human performance. They had begun their new lives through the Spirit, but they were now trying to sustain those lives through “the flesh.”
That temptation did not disappear in the first century. It is far too easy a trap for us today.
Most Christians today are not being pressured to receive circumcision, but we can still begin with the Spirit and then attempt to continue the mission through human strength.
We can believe the gospel of grace while functioning according to a gospel of effort.
We can pray for God to work and then behave as though everything depends upon our planning, organization, talent, and intensity.
This can happen to individual Christians, but it can also happen to entire churches and movements. We may acknowledge the Holy Spirit doctrinally while relying upon him very little practically. He remains in our statements of faith, but he is largely absent from our understanding of how Christians are transformed, leaders are formed, decisions are made, and the church participates in God’s mission.
Paul’s question invites us to examine ourselves honestly: Have we begun with the Spirit but attempted to finish through our own strength?
The Acts of the Holy Spirit
One of the best places to recover a fuller vision of the Spirit is the book of Acts.
We usually call it The Acts of the Apostles, but many Christians throughout history have described it as The Acts of the Holy Spirit. That description may be closer to the heart of Luke’s story.
The apostles certainly acted. They preached, traveled, sacrificed, led, suffered, and planted churches. But the foundation of their activity was the directing and empowering presence of God.
The Holy Spirit is mentioned throughout Acts because he is central to everything that happens. The Spirit is poured out as God’s promised gift (Acts 2:17–18, 38). He empowers believers to speak the word of God boldly (Acts 4:31). He forms wise and godly leaders (Acts 6:3). He directs Philip toward the Ethiopian official’s chariot (Acts 8:29). He sets apart Barnabas and Saul for missionary work (Acts 13:2). He redirects Paul’s travel plans and guides the church into new places (Acts 16:6–10).
In other words, the Spirit is the director of missions.
The Spirit is also personal and divine. Ananias and Sapphira can lie to him, which Peter describes as lying to God (Acts 5:3–4). People can receive him, listen to him, and be led by him—but they can also resist him (Acts 7:51).
Acts does not portray the Holy Spirit as a religious accessory added to an otherwise human enterprise. The Spirit is the driving force behind the church’s life and mission. The church exists because the Spirit has been poured out. Its direction, courage, unity, growth, and witness all depend upon his presence.
This does not make human participation unimportant.
The believers in Acts were remarkably active. I can’t remember how many times I’ve read it, but each time I do, I still find the early church so inspiring!
But their activity was responsive rather than self-generated. Man, what a huge difference. They prayed, listened, discerned, and then acted. They made plans, but they remained willing for God to interrupt those plans. I can tell you, as a minister who likes to get things done, allowing the Spirit to interrupt my plans is not easy, but necessary.
He directs the mission, I follow. I partner with Him, He does not mobilize around my plans.
That may be one of the lessons the contemporary church most needs to recover.
When the Church Became a Powerful Institution
During its earliest centuries, the church existed as a vulnerable and frequently persecuted minority. Christians possessed little institutional power and no official protection. They had to depend upon God, one another, and the Spirit’s direction. Evangelistic plans had to be made lightly, strategy was almost an afterthought.
It was a lot like the wandering Israelites in the Desert, guided by a cloud during the day, fire by night. I’m positive it produced an acute awareness of where God was trying lead them, and careful listening to the Spirit for direction. In short, it was unpredictable.
The result? Incredible growth.
When Christianity was legalized and eventually became closely aligned with the Roman Empire, the church’s social position changed dramatically. The persecuted minority gradually became a powerful institution.
As the church adopted increasingly complex structures, its identity became more closely associated with offices, buildings, political influence, and institutional authority.
This transition didn’t mean that the Holy Spirit stopped working, nor did every development associated with institutional Christianity represent a departure from God. The history is far more complicated than that. Nevertheless, it became increasingly possible for the church to function through established systems and human power without an immediate, conscious dependence upon the Spirit.
That remains possible today.
Churches can have polished services, capable leaders, detailed strategies, healthy budgets, impressive programs, and ambitious plans while giving surprisingly little attention to the Holy Spirit.
None of those things is inherently wrong. Good planning is a form of stewardship. Organization can help us serve people faithfully.
The danger comes when our plans replace prayer, our abilities replace dependence, and our systems leave little room for God to redirect us. We may ask God to bless what we have already decided rather than listening for what he is calling us to do.
The Spirit Is Not an Excuse for Chaos
Some Christians hesitate to emphasize the Holy Spirit because they have witnessed unhealthy or manipulative expressions associated with him. As a person who grew up in a Pentecostal church, I have seen some things that made me seriously question doctrinal accuracy. Many people have seen emotional excess, questionable claims of divine revelation, pressure to produce supernatural experiences (especially tongues speaking), or behavior that seemed disconnected from Scripture.
Those concerns should not be dismissed. Not everything described as “Spirit-led” comes from the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is not an abstract spiritual force, an emotional atmosphere, or permission to believe whatever enters our minds. He is the Holy Spirit—the divine, personal presence of the triune God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and through Scripture.
Biblical openness to the Spirit is therefore not a spiritual free-for-all. The Spirit who leads us is the same Spirit who inspired the Word, produces Christlike fruit, glorifies Jesus, and draws God’s people into holiness, truth, unity, and mission.
Having said that, our response to spiritual excess should not be practical neglect of the Spirit. The alternative to misuse is not neglect; it is faithful, Biblical discernment.
What Changes When We Take the Spirit Seriously?
Taking the Holy Spirit seriously does not merely alter one section of our theology. It transforms the way we understand the entire Christian life.
The Spirit dwells within us, making us temples of God’s presence (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Therefore, we are not owners of our lives but stewards. Our bodies, abilities, relationships, resources, and ambitions all belong to God.
The Spirit is our Advocate and Helper (John 14:16–17). We are not abandoned to navigate suffering, confusion, temptation, or grief alone. God is not merely watching our lives from a distance; he is present with and within his people.
The Spirit convicts us of sin and guides us into truth (John 16:8, 13). In a culture filled with competing definitions of truth, the Spirit does not simply affirm our preferred perspectives. He leads us toward the truth God has revealed and continually brings our lives under the lordship of Jesus.
The Spirit distributes gifts to every believer for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:4–7). Our abilities are not talents intended to elevate our personal importance. They are gifts entrusted to us so that we can strengthen others and participate in God’s work.
The Spirit sanctifies us, gradually forming the character of Christ within us (2 Thessalonians 2:13; Galatians 5:22–23). Christian transformation is more than behavior modification or determined self-improvement. We actively participate in our growth, but the deepest transforming work belongs to God.
The Spirit also assures us that we belong to God. He is the seal and guarantee of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14). Our security is not grounded in our ability to perform perfectly, justify ourselves, or prove our worth. God has claimed us as his own.
When we are weak and do not know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us (Romans 8:26–27). When we are called to bear witness, the Spirit empowers us (Acts 1:8). When we suffer, he sustains hope within us. When we serve, he supplies what cannot be generated by personality, training, or determination alone.
None of this produces passive Christianity. Dependence upon the Spirit does not make us less active; it changes the source, character, and direction of our activity.
We still work, but we work in response to grace.
We still plan, but we remain open to interruption, no matter how inconvenient.
We still sacrifice, but we do not believe that the Kingdom of God rests upon our shoulders.
We still pursue the mission, but we remember that it is God’s mission before it is ours.
Brace Yourself
Inviting the Holy Spirit to lead us sounds comforting—and it is. But it can also be disruptive.
The Spirit may challenge the ways we have understood ourselves. He may confront our need for control, our confidence in familiar methods, or our tendency to measure spiritual health primarily through visible activity. He may call us to slow down and listen when we would rather rush ahead. He may redirect plans in which we have invested deeply. He may expose the difference between working for God and walking with God.
This is why we should brace ourselves.
Not because the Holy Spirit is dangerous or unpredictable in some reckless way, but because the living God will not always leave us where we are. He comforts us, but he also convicts us. He assures us, but he also transforms us. He strengthens us, but he also teaches us to acknowledge our weakness.
Our history of action, youthful faith, missionary courage, and sacrificial zeal is not something we need to reject. It is something for which we can be deeply grateful. But imagine that same zeal increasingly rooted in prayer, discernment, humility, and conscious dependence upon the Spirit.
That is not a retreat from mission. It may be the very renewal our mission needs.
Daren
This article is part one of a nine-part series on the Holy Spirit. Some of its historical and theological framing has been informed by Leonard Allen’s helpful book called Poured Out: The Spirit of God Empowering the Mission of God.
Daren is a Senior Leader at Anchor Point Church in Tampa, Florida. He has been in ministry for nearly 30 years, and holds a Master’s Degree in Missional Theology.
You can contact him at
