Dear Reader,
The past few weeks, I have been learning a lot about the Holy Spirit. It has been so thrilling and awe inspiring to see His work in my life, and the lives of those around me. The past 6 months haven't been easy for me, but in just one week, I have been able to see incredible results in my life because of the lessons I learned during those hard months, and through following the Holy Spirit's convictions. I went to a Bible study, and here are some of the things we learned about the Holy Spirit;
1.) John 16:8 "And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged."
My first thought was....ok...I can see how the Holy Spirit convicts us not to do wrong, but how does He convict us of righteousness? In my mind I was thinking...the Holy Spirit only convicts us when we are doing something wrong. But no. Here it is very plain, He convicts us of righteousness. He convicts us to do right as well. He doesn't just leave us with, "Kalyse, stealing is wrong don't do it." But He also convicts us with "Kalyse, stealing is wrong, go return the stolen item." I just thought that was encouraging, and something for us to remember. So often we pray, "Lord, please convict me of what I'm doing that is wrong and needs to change." which is a very good prayer that we should pray, but we can also pray, "Lord, convict me of what is right, and what I should do." One more interesting thing real quick....the Holy Spirit convicts us to righteousness why? Because Jesus is no longer visible to us. We cannot know Him without the Holy Spirit convicting us about His character through His Word.
2.) If you read Ephesians 4, pretty much the whole chapter is about how we as Christians should act. Not grudgingly, but if we have Christ in us, then we are going to act as a Christian. Why? Well look at verse 30. "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption" When we have Christ in us, we have the Holy Spirit in us right? And when we have the Holy Spirit in us, He isn't going to just sit there....no....He is going to work. He is going to convict us of sin, but also of righteousness. He is going to convict us that we need to be the person that Ephesians 4 tells us to be. Many people have a hard time with religions, because to them, it is just a bunch of rules. It is very easy to see the church as such. But if you have the Holy Spirit in you convicting you to keep these "rules", you will not have peace until you do. Unless you push the Holy Spirit away too many times. But even then, you will only have the peace that the world offers, not the lasting peace that Christ offers. It is through the work of the Holy Spirit that we are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let us not grieve (cause great distress to) Him, by pushing Him away. But by following Him, we will have peace, and will naturally be following the "rules" of the church. But they won't seem like rules, because we will want to follow them so we can have that peace that Christ's offers those who follow Him.
(P.S. I would really encourage each of you to read Ephesians chapter 4....it is really good!)
(to be continued)
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