I’ve Got a Word for You

By the time we get through John 14 (a year from now?), the role of the Holy Spirit will be made more clear — but thankfully his work doesn’t wait until it’s clear to us.

As we’ll see in Chapter 3, the hearts we need to believe in Jesus is what the Spirit creates. Every single thing in our lives of gospel impact should be credited back to the Holy Spirit, the executive of all of God’s grace to us in Jesus. Oftentimes we credit God’s grace for his work in our lives, and that’s not wrong, but the Holy Spirit is the person working in what we consider “grace.”

For example, often when I begin to pray, I’ll thank God for his grace in my life that leads me to pray. Grace as in God’s undeserved favor in my life, as opposed to self-righteous willing, is why I pray. You too. But that grace comes how? Does the Father sprinkle it down from heaven? Is it an invisible chemical infused in my will? 

It’s the work of the Spirit who indwells me, who makes me comprehend spiritual things (see 1 Corinthians 1:8–13). 

And we can experience more of this kind of the Spirit’s work. That’s why Paul tells us to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), and to be led by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:14), to manifest the Spirit’s fruit (Galatians 5:22–23), and to keep in step with the Spirt (Galatians 5:25). The language that I’ve found most helpful is to say that we can honor the Holy Spirit more in our daily lives. 

J. I. Packer explains, 

Believers honor the Holy Spirit when they give him his way in their lives and when his ministry of exalting Christ and convincing of sin, sinking them ever lower and raising Christ ever higher in their estimate, goes on unhindered and unquenched. (Keep in Step with the Spirit, 263)

I pray for more of that. More of that in my life and in yours. To honor the Spirit more … in his ministry of exalting Jesus. 

And Low and Behold

Just this morning I was leaving Starbucks and a young man stopped me. He had been sitting down with his Bible. He told me he was a Christian and that he was trying to walk more obedient to the Spirit’s promptings. I’ve never seen him before, and I have no reason to expect that he knew me, but he gathered that I was a Christian too, and he said that he felt the Spirit had given him a word to speak over me. 

— Pause — 

I don’t know where you stand on this stuff, but I figure only a cynical jerk, a beast of a person, would shut down this sort of thing. The young man was being courageous, and visibly a little nervous. I cheered him on and told him I was eager to test the spirits (1 John 4:1). 

So he told me what he “saw” for me, and I won’t tell you because it was for me, but let’s just say it was rooted in Scripture and it encouraged my socks off. 

And because it was an edifying word that gave grace to me, you could say the whole thing was grace (Ephesians 4:29). Or, like he put it, you could say it was from the Holy Spirit.

Again, I’ll take more of him, please.