The Work of the Holy Spirit

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"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8) As a church we recognize that we serve the Triune God, and we stress the importance of developing our relationship with God and with Jesus, yet it seems to me that there is a lack of talk about our relationship with the Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? I believe many of us regard the Spirit as something of an essence or wind-like force that surrounds us and leads us to be like God. The Holy Spirit is not a wind. Like God and Jesus, the Holy Spirit has all the qualities of a person. This is invaluable as we consider our relationship to the Spirit, for if the Spirit is not a personified being – if he is only a surrounding essence – how can we have a true relationship with him. And this true relationship is one of the main advantages of being human – that we are “a little lower than God and crowned with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:5) This is proven in John 14 because as Jesus, whose relationship with the Spirit is incomparable, talks of the Spirit, he uses the pronouns he and him – not it. The reason for us to develop our relationship with the Spirit is that he may be with us even more so than God or Jesus. I say this because we know that Jesus ascended into heaven to be with the Father, but the Spirit has been sent to us on earth by Jesus to be our comforter and our guide (John 14:16). He has three main jobs with the church: to teach us the truth, build the church, and help us spread God's love. The Spirit's job in regard to truth is to teach us unknown things about God, for just as no one knows are deep secrets of a person but that person's spirit, so can no one know God's secrets except his Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:11). Jesus says the same in thing in John 16:13: "But when

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