The Holy Spirit - Part 1

The word of God is like a piece of soap. The purpose of the soap is to wash away all dirts from your body. But it does not serve its function if it is not used or applied. Similarly, the word of God is useless if you do not apply it into your life. In this article, we will talk about the Holy Spirit and I hope in so doing, it will educate your mind, move your heart, and motivate your will to inspire you to represent Jesus in the marketplace in a new way with a renewed mind.

Acts 9 & Luke 4

In Acts 9, it provides a background to the conversion of the Apostle Paul. Paul, before he was converted, he has a passion of killing Christians. His mission was to source out the Christians and gets rid of them. On the road to Damascus with a mission to kill Christians, Jesus got hold of him. He had a personal encounter with Jesus and this turned his life around. In Acts 9:31, it stated that as a result of Paul's conversion, he started to preach about Jesus being the Christ. The churches throughout all Judea, Galilee and Samaria were greatly edified by Paul's teaching. The churches became united and multiplied. They became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Notice that there were two things at work here in the churches to give them strengths and increase. It was:

- Fear of the Lord

- Comfort or Encouragement of the Holy Spirit

What do you mean by the fear of the Lord? This fear is not talking about being frightened. It is about reverence, a reverential fear and respect of God. The believers were living in that mindset of reverential fear, honor and respect for God. It was this reverential fear, honor and respect for God that guided their daily lives, their choices, their relationships, their speech, and their thoughts. It means that their daily lives were lived in constant awareness of honor and respect for God. They lived in an awareness and consciousness of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Because of these two things, the church multiplied and grew in the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, Peter said quoted the words of the Prophet Joel that in the last days, God would pour out His spirit upon all flesh. Through that very event, it introduced us to a new season in which the Holy Spirit will be the Administrator of the presence of God. Jesus called the Holy Spirit, the Lord of the Harvest - the saving of souls, the redemptive works of God, and the transformation of individual hearts. Without compromising your values and your conviction, the Holy Spirit is the one who seizes and arrests the hearts of individual. He is the One who cause the transformation of the hearts of the individuals.

Is this any different in the ministry works of Jesus? No. In Luke 4:18, Jesus announced that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him and He has anointed Jesus to preach the gospel to the poor, to set the captives free, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord and the season of God's grace. Before Jesus began His ministry, God announced him as His beloved Son and He was led by the Holy Spirit to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus was brought under specific tests that are critical to every leadership. The success and effectiveness of Jesus' ministry in the next three years was because of the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

What is true for the success of Jesus' ministry is true of the success of any ministry today. The Holy Spirit comes to anoint the leadership and the ministry. God began to move us in the power and comfort of the Holy Spirit in order to give it the strength and the increase. You cannot do any ministry and be successful without the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is important that we give Him as many tools as possible to use us. Hence, education and training are important. Those these tools, the Holy Spirit show us the opportunity to move up in our career so we are in places of influence to cause change.

How does the Holy Spirit use these tools in us to cause change? We will look at this in the part 2.

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