It was an accident. The book I chose for us to study for Ladies Sunday School is titled “Experiencing Spiritual Intimacy”. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I know I was NOT expecting almost every lesson to be about the Holy Spirit!
When I first realized this, I was a little disappointed and worried: talking about the Holy Spirit for 10 weeks straight?!?!? But then I realized that this is a person of the trinity that I have not spent much thinking about at all. As we’ve been reading the different verses, it’s surprising how many times the Holy Spirit kind of sneaks in there without you even realizing it!
For example, I had not noticed that the Holy Spirit show up in the major moments of Jesus earthly life:
I’ve also been surprised to see how often the Bible lists the Holy Spirit as also responsible for things that I usually think of as Jesus’ work. For example:
Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11 NLT (Italics added)
I’m not really sure how to work that all out in my head yet.
One thing I do know, and the study has confirmed, is that the Holy Spirit points to Jesus. That’s His thing. I read an illustration about this this week. It’s like at a concert where the lights go down and there is a lone musician in the middle of the stage with a spotlight centered on him. This is a time to be amazed by how intense and awesome the musician is; no one is thinking about how clear or bright or amazing the spotlight is! The Holy Spirit doesn’t point to Himself; He points to Jesus.
Since I had already planned to speak about “Who is the Holy Spirit?” next month at SafeHouse I’m going to keep enjoying thinking and reading about this ‘forgotten’ person of the Trinity!
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