Welcome back to my blog. Thank you for visiting today.
Teleios recently surveyed the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives in 475 young participants in visitors to the Instagram account, InstaPray. Wow, we received some amazing answers! All the findings, as well as other research, are on our website.
The Holy Spirit is a very important, yet controversial and often emotional, topic. However, often people generally lack knowledge of what scripture teaches about the Spirit. We are covering some pertinent topics over the Spirit, examining what scripture alone says.
I generally breakdown scriptures handling of the Spirit for the New Testament Church into three basic realms:
- The Spirit’s work in Salvation
- The Spirit's role in our Christian walk
- The Christian’s duties to the Spirit.
Today let's examine the most common responses from our InstaPray participants regarding how the Spirit helps in our Christian walk (please see table).
What the Bible says
The scripture states that the Spirit plays a vital and active role in believers’ lives, and can divided into two basic types:
- Constant roles - The Spirit has several constant roles not dependent on us:
- Points to Christ – The Spirit glorifies Christ, and gives and teaches us the information our Savior has given to him (John 16:13-14; 1 John 2:20,27)
- Indwells us – Remember, we learned last week that the Spirit indwells us completely until the day of our redemption so we have full access to His power and help.
- Prays for us (Romans 8:26) - This great truth indicates the Spirit prays on our behalf to God. What better source of prayer could we have?
- Believer dependent roles - However, importantly there are roles for which the Spirit assists us that are variable and depend upon our obedience. Two passages are critical to understand the Spirit’s help for us:
- Romans 8:13-16,26
- Stops sin (V.13) - As we are obedient the Spirit helps us put to death the deeds of the flesh.
- Leads us (V.14) - Christians commonly believe this biblical concept but we should understand how He leads. In short, the Spirit use God’s word (please see below passage in Ephesians 6). Indeed, the Bible often tells us to be people of knowledge and understanding, for example in Paul’s prayers for us (Ephesians 1:17; Colossians 1:9).
- We are God's children (V.16) - The Spirit comforts us that we belong to God and not to be anxious over our eternal security
- Ephesians 6:10-17 - The magnificent armor of God passage is critical to understanding our Christian walk because it instructs us how to access God’s power by describing a Greek hoplite soldier and his armament. Often Christians wonder how they can know the power of God. These great verses describe it! However, it is also important in showing the role of the Spirit because His mighty actions are linked to each of the pieces of armor in other scripture.
- Truth (our belt to prepare us V.14) - Living in truth is a fruit of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:9) and prepares our mind to making proper decisions and actions.
- Righteousness (our breastplate V.14) - A fruit of the Spirit is a holy heart that is set apart to serve God and perceives and rejects sin (Ephesians 5:9)
- Share the gospel (the shoes to carry us to battle V.15) - By telling others the message of salvation we see the power of God to change others and positively affect our society, which is assisted by the Spirit (Romans 1:16-17; 2 Timothy 1:7; John 16:8-11).
- Faith (our shield V.16) - A fruit of the Spirit also is faith in which we make all decisions and God desires from us (Galatians 5:22,23; Romans 14:23).
- Eternal security (our helmet V.17) - The sound knowledge of our security of salvation protects our heads as we face troubles in this world and its function is from the Spirit (Romans 15:13).
- The Bible (our sword V.17) - The power of God we experience in our Christian walk is through the action of the Spirit in accordance to the Bible.
Wow what great truths! These passages tell us how the Spirit acts in our lives to cause us to please God and to experience His power.
Join us again next week as we describe what are our responsibilities are to the Spirit so He's free to act in our lives as described above. Join us again then. Thank you for visiting this week.
For questions or to view more of our research…
Website http://teleiosresearch.com/
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