The Holy Spirit And Healing Anointing

I recently had one of those "tired" days -- I had been up all night the night before working on something urgent and time critical and I did not get to bed until 3:30 AM. I had to be up early, to do some chores before I spent time with my husband who will soon be leaving for a week on a business trip. We spent most of the day doing things together. It was 8 PM before I finally had time to myself -- and 8 PM felt very late to someone who'd only had a couple of hours sleep the night before. I knew I was supposed to spend my half hour with the Holy Spirit, but this TV show started that I was interested in, and I was very tired. So I decided I'd go ahead and watch the show, a 2 hour movie, and then do my time with the Holy Spirit. (That was a dumb decision -- I should have turned off the TV and given a priority to the Holy Spirit.) You guessed it, half way through the show, I fell asleep. I woke up and turned off the TV and crawled to bed.

The next morning I realized what I had done, that I had stood up the Holy Spirit (e.g., I did not show up at our regular scheduled daily meeting). I began to apologize to Him, to tell Him that I was sorry and that I hoped He wasn't mad at me. That was the first day I'd missed our time together since I had started doing it. He was very gracious and forgave me for missing our time together and told me that He was not angry with me. Then, a bit later, He spoke to me some more -- He asked me to mentally review when I was most likely to let our time together slip. It wasn't when I felt sick -- because a few times I had felt sick going into our time and the pain and symptoms disappeared during our time together. It wasn't when I felt pressured and busy, because I had intentionally set aside time for Him during those days. It was when I was really tired and exhausted. That was when I was more likely to let our time together slip.

I thought "Wow, that is good to know. Thank You for calling it to my attention." And I decided I will need to be extra careful to guard my time with the Holy Spirit when I was really tired.

Then He told me that I had hurt His feelings when I stood Him up to watch TV. He was not mad. He was not indignant. But He was hurt. I had hurt His feelings.

I felt so bad -- you know the feeling when you realize that your carelessness hurt a friend's feelings? It felt just like that. He was not going to get back at me for hurting Him, He was not going to stop being friends. He was not going to push me away or reject me. But I had hurt His feelings, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be someone who makes Him feel good, not someone who makes Him feel bad.

The Holy Spirit does have feelings and emotions, just like we do. Well, there is a slight difference -- we are fallen creatures and therefore we are subject to fallen and sinful emotions, such as envy, pride, bitterness, unforgiveness, hostility, suspicion, etc. God is perfect and unfallen, so He does not struggle with sinful emotions. But He does have a lot of emotions and feelings. Let's look at a few of God's feelings and emotions from the bible.

Did you know that God gets annoyed or mad? I am not talking about the fury of the Lord to wipe out those in intentional rebellion against Him. At times He gets annoyed and angry at His faithful servants, just like we might get temporarily mad at a close friend.

We see an example of this with Moses in Exodus 4:14. God had met Moses in the burning bush and had commissioned Moses to be the one to set His people free. Moses did not want the commission and kept offering excuses to God to try and get out of it. Then God told Moses He would send him to Pharaoh to speak on behalf of the Jews. Moses offered the excuse that he stuttered. God told him not to worry about it because He made the tongue and He would empower Moses to speak to Pharaoh. Then Moses said, in verse 13, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it." Verse 14 shows God's response. It says, "Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses."

God got annoyed with Moses; He got mad at him for resisting His will. God did not punish Moses, He humored him. He sent Aaron, Moses' brother, as the spokesperson. However God would not speak directly to Aaron -- instead God spoke to Moses and Moses gave directions to Aaron. But the point of this story is that it shows God having emotions -- it shows Him getting peeved at Moses.

Let's look a bit more at His anger in working with the Jews during this period of history. He led them out of Israel with signs and wonders. You think they would have been grateful to Him for that. If they were, they certainly had an odd way of showing it. They began to complain about God, mutter and grumble and accuse God of wanting to destroy them. Numbers 11:1 gives an example of when they pushed God too far, "Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when He heard them His anger was aroused. Then fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp."

You think they would have learned their lesson from that. But no, they did not. They complained that they did not have any meat to eat. So God sent them so much quail it was coming out of their noses. Numbers 11:33 tells us, "But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, And He struck them with a severe plague."

Have you ever been around someone who is so difficult and annoying that they drive you nuts? That is the effect the children of Israel had on God. It got worse and worse, until even Aaron and Miriam (who served as leaders under Moses) began displaying a bad attitude. They started badmouthing and criticizing Moses for marrying a Cushite woman. They suggested that they were every bit as good of leaders as Moses was. Then God came and appeared to the three of them and defended Moses. God bawled Aaron and Miriam out for their behavior. Numbers 12:9 tells us, "The anger of the Lord burned against them, and He left them." In other words, God got so mad that He had to leave before He lost His temper and killed them off.

God does get mad or angry when we push Him too far. In fact, He described this about Himself when He appeared to Moses in His glory in Numbers 14. Numbers 14:18 is God talking about Himself, describing Himself. He said, "The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." Loosely paraphrased, God said, "I am not a hothead, I am pretty even tempered. But I do get angry when My people push Me too far."

It is clear from this that God does have feelings and emotions, and that anger is one of them. But, anger is NOT God's only emotion. In fact the one He is most known for is His great love.

The bible is filled with verse after verse that talks about the love of God. John 3:16 is the ultimate expression of God's love for us, where He was willing to suffer and die in our place, so that we don't have to. And the compassion of God is an emotion that is closely tied to love. God is also full of compassion for His creation. In fact, God described Himself as compassionate in Exodus 22:27, "because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate." God's compassion is an expression of love that moves Him to action on behalf of the one He feels compassion for. We see God's compassion in many verses in the bible, including: Ex 33:19, Ex 34:6, Deut 13:17, Deut 30:3, Deut 32:36, Judges 2:18, 2 Kings 13:23, 2 Chron 30:9, Neh 8:17,19,27-28, Ps 51:1, Ps 77:9, Ps 86:15, Ps 90:13, Ps 102:13, Ps 103:4, Ps 103:8, Ps 103:13, Ps 111:4, Ps 116:5, Ps 119:77,156, Ps 135:14, Ps 145:8-9, Is 14:1, Is 30:18, Is 49:10,13,15, Is 51:3, Is 54:7-10, Is 60:10, Is 63:7, Je 12:15, Jer 30:18, Jer 31:20, Jer 33:26, Jer 42:12, Lam 3:22, Lam 3:32, Ez 39:25, Ho 2:19, Ho 11:8, Ho 13:14, Joel 2:13, Jonah 3:10, Jonah 4:2, Micah 7:19, Zech 10:6, Mal 3:17, Matt 9:36, Matt 14:14, Matt 15:32, Matt 20:34, Mark 1:41, Mark 6:34, Mark 8:2, Ro 9:15, 1 Co 1:3, Eph 4:32, James 5:11.

God feels sorrow, like we do. Let me give you two examples of this from the life of Jesus. When Lazarus got sick and died, Jesus knew that He was going to raise him from the dead. That is why He delayed in coming to heal Lazarus when he was sick. But when Jesus finally arrived at the household and saw the grief of the people there, He was moved at their sorrow until He felt it himself, and (according to John 11:35), "Jesus wept." We also see the grief of Jesus as He lamented Jerusalem. Luke 13:34-35 records Him saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

The bible also speaks of God feeling joy and delight. One example is in Zephaniah 3:17, "The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." This shows God having joy and rejoicing. And Deut 10:15 talks about God's delight in His people.

Jealousy is another of God's emotions that the bible mentions multiple times. We are not to worship false gods because God is a jealous God. This offends Him. We are not to give our time and resources and attention and affections to things other than God and what He provides for us in His love. We see this in many places in the bible, but it is very clear in Exodus 20:5, which says, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." In fact, God says that one of His names is "Jealous" in Ex 34:14. And Deut 4:24 tells us, "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." That is why we want to be sure to put God first and not put other things before Him.

The Holy Spirit is God. He is a personality, He has feelings and emotions. That is why we can make Him happy and also why we have the power to grieve Him (Eph 4:30), or to make Him sad.

If we want to develop a friendship with the Holy Spirit, we need to be mindful of His feelings. And we need to behave in a way that will please Him instead of grieving Him. We want to try to make Him happy, to cooperate with Him and allow Him to enjoy living in us and working in our lives.