The Holy Spirit

Yesterday I was talking with a friend about Charismatic churches. First of all, on the subject of the Holy Spirit, I believe He works today among us, that when can hear from Him and He is alive in our lives. I believe to disregard the work of the Holy Spirit is to disregard any life on earth with God! I believe you can feel spiritually dead if the Holy Spirit is not alive and active in your life. That doesn't mean you don't read scripture and benefit from it, it means that you don't pray on the Spirit and begin to see the work of God active and alive in your life. Jesus went into heaven for the very fact that the Spirit would come and work in our lives.

In this way,

JOHN 16:12-14 (NIV)

²"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.¹³But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. ¹⁴He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

Are you ever curious about the Holy Spirit? I know personally in the past two years or less, I have forgotten about the Holy Spirit. Sure, I will pray here and there, but I have blatantly ignored the Holy Spirit. I have done this by ignoring the times God tells me to speak to people, to write a card to someone, to do things that take faith!

And so I was reading through the book of Acts this morning and I was inspired by Philip. Check this out,

ACTS 9:29-30

The Holy Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and walk along beside the carriage." Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?"

This is just amazing to me! Philip didn't reason out the Holy Spirit, Philip RAN to the man! And Philip ACTED on what the Holy Spirit told him when asking the man a question.

So, my question from here was, how can we hear the Holy Spirit today? Because, well the scripture doesn't say, but in comparison to when God spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus it was verbal! And today we don't hear clearly a written out question, it can become more like a feeling and who wants to be lead by feeling? (right? ...)

I want to read Francis Chan's book Forgotten God. Because I want to understand how the Holy Spirit works among us today, because I believe He does! There is no where in scripture that says the Holy Spirit will stop after the disciples. It actually says that signs will be done, but even GREATER signs will be done. Doesn't that imply a gradual succession of signs on earth? I believe the Holy Spirit will stop when Jesus Christ comes back, and He hasn't come back yet! Just look around you!

Click here for a Youtube clip on the book Forgotten God by Francis Chan.

To end this subject, I must say I do believe that the Charismatic church takes things way out of context at times, but every church has their problems. I am not trying to point fingers at anyone, I am merely trying to point out that we don't really take notice of the Holy Spirit. We become more focused on theology than the Spirit working in and through us, that is a problem!