J.S. Park

Don’t you mean the Holy Ghost?

I kid.  Good old King James, you know.

Let’s see:

- The Holy Spirit is God.

- The Holy Spirit is not a part of God or from God or inside God.

- The Holy Spirit is in a loving Trinity-Community with Jesus the Son and God the Father. One God, three persons.

- If you ask me how God can be one God but three persons, my head might explode.  Since I’m guessing you don’t want that, we’ll leave that a mystery.

- You might try to explain the Trinity with ice-water-vapor, or egg-yolk-embryo, or book-paper-binding, or three-in-one-shampoo, but nothing can sufficiently explain the Trinity. It’s the Trinity.

- “Unity and diversity is found in the community of the Trinity.” — Ravi Zacharias.  Part of my head melted.

- The Holy Spirit is not it, but He.

- The Holy Spirit is not Jesus and not the Father, though He did conceive Jesus in Mary’s womb (this might be blasphemous but I’d like to see them work that out on Jerry Springer).

- The Holy Spirit indwells, or lives inside, all believers of the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are houses for God, which is not the same as pantheism or panentheism.

- The Holy Spirit actively works in us as we submit to Him to harvest fruits of the Spirit, found in Galatians 5.

- Either the Holy Spirit controls us or something else does. 

- Anything else that controls us is slavery to sin. That’s why Paul in Ephesians 5 contrasts the Holy Spirit with drinking wine: when you drink wine, it controls you. When you’re filled by the Spirit, he controls you.

- Being filled by the Spirit means to submit to God. You can pray for that filling, but primarily it’s done by a believer’s obedience to God’s commands. I’m careful to word that correctly because legalism doesn’t fill you with anything but contempt.

- It’s possible to quench or refuse the Spirit.  Doing so is sin, and sin always kills. Not in a good way, either.

- The Holy Spirit’s ministry also draws people to the Father, actively moves history, convicts us of sin and guides us into truth, protects us from Satan and demons, illuminates the Bible, washes us of our sin at the moment of salvation, and continues to sanctify us of sin as we submit to Him. 

- The Holy Spirit has uniquely gifted each of us for ministry, whether in the church or for the world. Some gifts include preaching, teaching, evangelizing, and hospitality. The Holy Spirit empowers these gifts; we do not.

- The Holy Spirit is what binds us as one common brotherhood, eliminating all boundaries.

- The Holy Spirit started and sustains the church.

- We love Jesus.  We love the Father.  So yes, we love the Holy Spirit.

- I highly recommend Forgotten God by Francis Chan.

If I missed anything, please feel free to add.