Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit

Guidance Available
Along our highways, well placed at appropriate locations, are official signs which give us direction and warn us of danger. Most of these are the reflector type; that is, they are designed to reflect the light of auto headlamps. In darkness, they are invisible to anyone who travels without a light. But when our auto headlights are flashed upon these signs, they reflect back to us their message of guidance or caution. Their night-time aid to us depends upon the light we bring to them. They have no meaning for unlighted lamps.
God would like to guide us through the days and through the years of this life. His signs are out there-in all the appropriate places. But whether we see them will depend upon the light with which we approach them. The Ungoofer
In The Reader's Digest sometime ago a lady reported a rather interesting experience. She telephoned her bank in an attempt to correct an error which the bank had made. Her call was transferred from one person to another, from office to office, and there was much talk, but no help.
At last, the eighth person proved to be calmly and sympathetically helpful. He was genuinely pleasant thoroughly efficient, even friendly. The business finished, the lady said, "You're great! What is your position in the bank?" He answered, "I'm the ungoofer."
The ungoofer! Most of us need one now and again. And we have one. That lady had a lot of trouble getting through to the bank's ungoofer; but, my friend, you and I have no difficulty at all in getting through to ours, if we really try. Keep in touch with the One who forgives, untangles, heals-ungoofs. If there are tangles and snarls, messes and mix-ups, tell Him about them-and trust Him. The Strange Providences of God
The following incident is taken from an experience of Charles H. Spurgeon with an atheist.
There was an atheist in the vicinity of Mr. Spurgeon's home and he was very ugly to anyone who believed the Bible.
Mr. Spurgeon asked the Lord to direct him in what he should read for morning devotions. Then he seemed strongly impressed to read the book of Joel in its entirety. When he came to Joel 3, he read the third verse: "And sold the girl for wine." Whereupon, Mr. Spurgeon checked his concordance to see how many times the word "girl" occurred in the Bible. To his great surprise, he found the word only occurred once.
A little later he thought he would take a walk. About a block and a half away he looked up and there was the atheist's house. He went up and knocked.
The atheist growled, "Well, what do you want?"
"I would like to read the Bible to you," Spurgeon replied.
"The atheist began his usual abuse, then suddenly stopped and said, "Will you tell me how often the word 'girl' is in the Bible?"
Mr. Spurgeon answered, "Once."
The atheist then said, "Tell me where it is found and I will let you in."
Spurgeon replied, "Joel 3:3."
The atheist then said, "Tell me before I let you in, how did you know it?"
Mr. Spurgeon answered, "I haven't known it two hours. In my morning devotions I read the book of Joel."
Then Mr. Spurgeon stepped in, and in half an hour the atheist was on his knees asking God to forgive his sins. The Hand or the Glove?
I have a glove here in my hand. The glove cannot do anything by itself, but when my hand is in it, the glove can do many things. True, it is not the glove, but my hand in the glove that acts. The Christian is a glove. It is the Holy Spirit in us, the hand, who does the work. We have to make room for the hand so that every finger in the glove is filled.

Energized by the Holy Spirit
Seneca, the Roman historian and philosopher, said, "No one is free who is a slave to the body." In 1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul specifically refers to the body of the believer as the temple of the Holy Spirit. "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Yet in 1 Corinthians 3:16 he says, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" Is there a contradiction here between the body as the temple, and the whole person as the temple? No, both are correct. Our spirit pervades our body, and it is through the works of the body that the spirit, the real person, is shown. This is why the stress is on the body, because that is what people can readily discern, while the spirit is invisible. Paul knew that the body is the last area of man to be brought entirely under the Spirit's influence and power, just as the twigs and leaves are the last parts of a plant to be energized by the sap. Thus the bodily temple presents to us the complete picture of the fully consecrated man.

Enthusiasm-the Unquenchable Fire
John Henry Jowett has beautifully expressed what characterizes the life of power. "Another element in a forceful character is heat, the fire of an unquenchable enthusiasm.... The Acts of the Apostles is a burning book. There is no cold or lukewarm patch from end to end. The disciples had been baptized with fire, with the holy, glowing enthusiasm caught from the altar of God. They had this central fire from which every other purpose and faculty in the life gets its strength. This fire in the apostles' souls was like a furnace-fire in a great liner, which drives her through the tempests and through the envious and engulfing deep. Nothing could stop these men. Nothing could hinder their going. 'We cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard. We must obey God rather than men.' This strong imperative rings throughout all their doings and all their speech. They have heat, and they have light, because they were baptized by the power of the Holy Ghost." The Spirit as the Receiver
There must be a correspondence between the receiver and the transmitter. When we listen to a radio broadcast, there are many sound waves all around us, but the only way for us to become aware of them is to have an appropriate receiver able to catch them and make them audible. We would never know that anyone was talking to us from a distance if we expected our watch to pick up the sound waves. There is only one way in which man can know God, and that is through man's own spirit. God is a Spirit and can be known only by a spirit. We must not expect to feel Him with our fingers, or see Him with our physical eyes. It cannot be done. Yet that which can be perceived only by the spirit of man is just as real as that which can be perceived by his physical senses.

Christ in You
Benjamin West, the great painter, speaking of Gilbert Stuart, a brother artist famed for his beautiful coloring, used to say to his pupils, "It's no use to steal Stuart's colors; if you want to paint as he does, you must steal his eyes." When we are baffled in our efforts to live as Christ lived, the record of His life, however wonderful it is, will not enable us to be like Him. What we need is His heart, His nature. Only divinity within us can recognize divinity without. Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot know Him as God. The Work of the Holy Spirit
Mr. Spurgeon once preached what in his judgment was one of his poorest sermons. He stammered and floundered and felt that his message was a complete failure. He was greatly humiliated and when he got home, he fell on his knees and said, "Lord God, Thou canst do something with nothing. Bless that poor sermon." All through the week he uttered that prayer. He woke up in the night and prayed about it. He determined the next Sunday he would redeem himself by preaching a great sermon. Sure enough, his sermon the next Sunday went off beautifully. At the close, the people crowded him and covered him with praise. Spurgeon went home pleased with himself and that night he slept like a baby, but he said to himself, "I'll watch the results of those two sermons." What were they? From the one that had seemed a failure he was able to trace forty-one conversions. From the magnificent sermon he was unable to discover even a single soul that had been saved. Spurgeon's explanation was that the Spirit of God used the one and did not use the other.

Give the Lord Control
In his observations on 1 Corinthians 2:1, J. Stuart Holden gives a beautiful illustration. He says, "I have around my home a garden. In that garden and its possibilities I have the mind of nature. For instance, I know what soil and what seed should produce this, that, and all the other kinds of flowers and fruit; I see set forth in the seedsmen's catalogues the wonderful things that the garden should bring forth.... But mark you, the flowers and the fruit are only produced by labor, by obedience to the laws of nature. When the garden has been made beautiful and fruitful, it has been made so only by intelligent cooperation with nature. Similarly, we Christians have the mind of Christ. We know full well what a Christian life should be." The fruits of the Spirit are only made evident in our lives as we wholeheartedly cooperate with the Lord in full submission and obedience to Him by letting His Spirit have full control of us-body, soul and spirit.