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Let's talk about what the Holy Spirit is like as we begin to develop some serious intimacy with Him. What are the characteristics of His nature that He is likely to make real and personal to us? He has many different characteristics, but four of them really stand out as you get to know Him more personally. They are:
We will cover the first two in this lesson and the next two in our next lesson.
HOLY
The Holy Spirit did not get His name by accident. One of His defining characteristics is that He is holy. So if we want to interact with Him on a more personal basis, He will require greater levels of personal holiness from us.
God expects us to be Holy just because we belong to Him. Exodus 22:31 says, "You are to be My holy people." Again, Lev 11:44 tells us, "I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy." Again in Leviticus 11:45, God repeats this command, "I am the Lord who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy." In other words, if we belong to God and we are called by His name, He expects us to be holy. Of course, we can't be holy in our own efforts or strength -- that is something where the indwelling Holy Spirit transforms our natures and renews our minds to be more like God. God expects this of ALL of His children.
But, when you enter into a deeper and more personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, it is like the stakes go way up. The intensity of the refiner's fire seems to increase in your life. You suddenly find that you can no longer get away with things you used to be allowed to get away with. The Holy Spirit seems to give you more of His attention in the area of personal refinement and character development. He seems to make you more aware of your shortcomings and He seems to want to work on improving them with increased consistency and intensity.
He calls us to increased levels of personal holiness as we walk closer to Him.
LOVE
The Holy Spirit is the one who empowers us to love with the love of God. Love is one of His primary motivating factors. When Paul listed the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:22, the first one He listed was love. Love is very important to the Holy Spirit. In 1 Cor 13:1-3 tells us that without love, we are nothing.
There are three aspects of His love that I would like to briefly mention.
First we are to receive God's love. God has freely demonstrated His love to us by coming to die for us and redeem us while we were yet fallen and sinful. He loved us when we were incapable of loving Him. He has given us eternal life and He has adopted us into His family and He has forgiven our sins. He has given us the Holy Spirit to come and live inside of us, to transform us and to empower us to become the people who God has called us to be. He has given us spiritual gifts and He watches over us and cares for us. He as done all of this for us because of His great love for us. We are to receive and accept His love.
Unfortunately, many people have problems with this because they dislike themselves. The are not willing to receive His love an forgiveness, citing something they did in their past. Their thinking is that the blood of Jesus covers everyone else's sins, but it does not really cover theirs. Or they may be convinced that God doesn't like them and doesn't want to be with them or do good things for them. They may believe God is obligated to forgive them because of Jesus' death and resurrection, but they don't believe God has good plans for them. Or they don't believe that God will take care of them or give them good gifts. What they are really saying is, "God, I don't believe that You really love me."
The Holy Spirit will not tolerate that in a believer's life. You cannot draw close to Him if you don't believe He likes and loves you. It would be a very terrifying thing indeed to come into the presence of a Holy God without the dimension of His love and mercy. So, one of the things that the Holy Spirit will do is to begin to make God's love real to you. You may blow it and repent and expect Him to be angry with you. But He will come to you with such love and warmth and acceptance that you almost can't believe it -- How can He treat you that way after what you did? He can treat you that way because He loves unconditionally. And the Holy Spirit wants to make that very real to you by letting you experience His love over and over again.
The second type of love that the Holy Spirit wants to develop in you is your love for God. No matter where you are in that, He wants to grow and develop you in that area even more. Jesus commanded us, in Mark 12:30, to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." In other words, anything short of "all you can possibly give God" is simply not enough. We are to put Him first and love Him more than we love anything else in the universe. Along with that, we are to demonstrate our love to Him by obeying Him. Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15). He repeated that a few verses later in John 15:14 by saying, "You are My friends if you do what I command." And in John 15:9-10, He said, "As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father's commands and remain in His love."
Loving God and obeying God are very closely tied together. So the Holy Spirit begins to develop a love for God in us, along with a deep commitment to obey Him. That almost always includes some sort of test of our love and obedience. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only son Isaac, who he had waited to be born for all those many years. And Abraham choose to obey God, trusting that God would raise Isaac from the dead and fulfill His promise to Abraham. God asked Meshach and Shadrach and Abednego to obey Him by refusing to bow down to idols, even on the threat of death. He asked Daniel to obey Him by praying before Him, even when it was against the law and caused Daniel to be thrown into a lion's den. In each of these cases, and in so many other cases in the bible, God tested people's love for Him and obedience. And He will probably do that in your own life as well. God will probably put you into a situation where He tells you to do something you don't want to do, or makes you do something you are afraid of doing or forbids you to do something you want to do. He is testing your love for Him -- do you love Him enough to obey Him? Do you love Him enough to put His will above your own will and desires?
The good news is that the Holy Spirit will help you and strengthen you in your resolve to love and obey God. If you invite Him to, He will even change your desires so that you start to like the things God likes, want the things God wants and dislike the things God dislikes. The more He makes you like Him, the more your desires and goals and motivations line up with His, and the easier it becomes to obey Him. The Holy Spirit begins to work in us to move us in that direction on the day we are saved. But when we enter into that special committed friendship with Him, He seems to be able to do so much more in the area of transforming our desires and empowering us to love and obey God.
The third area of love is in regard to our relationship with other people. The apostle John made it very clear that if we love God, we must also love our brothers and sisters in Christ. 1 John 4:20 says, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."
So as we draw into deeper friendship with the Holy Spirit, He will begin to challenge us in the area of our relationships. He will strongly convict of unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, etc He will require us to get along with those who irritate us and to act charitable towards them. He will convict us when we hurt someone's feelings and send us back to apologize to them. He will really get on our cases if we say something negative about someone -- and later on He will get on our case just as much if we even think negative things about someone and keep those thoughts to ourselves. God will begin to push and stretch us in the area of interpersonal relationships. He really does expect us to love one another.
The Holy Spirit is answering Jesus' prayer when He does this, because Jesus prayed for us in John 17:20-23. This is what He prayed: "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me."
And He doesn't stop there. He will also begin to give us His compassion for the lost and unsaved. And there might be a big price tag associated with that love. He may require us to give financially to the poor. He may require that we demonstrate practical love by babysitting our neighbor's bratty kids so she can have some time to herself. He may require us to go way out of our way to do a favor for someone or to help someone in need -- and they might not even show us any appreciation. And, after that, He might ask us to do it again. Compassion is taking action on behalf of a person because your heart goes out to them.. and He will require compassion from us -- not just once but over and over again.