The Role of the Spirit - Part 1

 A friend of mine had the thought that she, that is to say we, need to focus on knowing the Holy Spirit in order to be more like God. I shared with her my “We need to know Yeshua more” thoughts, but then began to think about what she said.  My thoughts took me around a circle. Yeshua came to show us the Father, the Spirit was sent to remind us of what Yeshua had said, and then we see that it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that the gifts of the Spirit are manifested in our lives to be more like Yeshua who is like God. The more I began to study the more opened up to me and took me where I had not expected.  And then I began to feel the Lord would have me share it with you folks. So I’m inviting you to come along with me on today’s wander through the Kingdom as I set myself in a place to hear from the Lord.

“I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart,
And watch to see what He will say to me,
And what I will answer when I am corrected (informed).

Then the Lord answered me and said:

Write the vision and make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come, It will not tarry” (Habbakuk 2:1,2). 

I’m surely no Habbakuk, and this is not a vision, but if we are thinking we are nearing “the end” that he mentions, perhaps we are actually living in the “appointed time” He speaks of.  Should we not stand our watch to see what God might say to us? I had not intended to write this for others (you!), but wrote as I attempted to think it through for myself. As you will see, I ask God, and myself, a lot of questions. I expect some of what follows the questions are answers as I come to grasp more.  This is how I often process things so it doesn’t read as a polished article might. It may seem a bit disjointed but by the end I hope you'll find it edifying.  I am breaking it into two posts because it turned out to be a bit long. The second one is below. May I suggest you write down your own thoughts as you read through this so you can remember what the Holy Spirit may show you.  These are the verses as they came to me or as I looked them up in www.Biblegateway.com and my thoughts as I process them.   

 “Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin” (Micah 3:8). Wow, Micah knew he was full of the power of the Spirit of the Lord. I wish I knew what his experience was. Full of the Spirit of justice and of might. Was he indignant of the injustice he now saw by the Spirit, or did he see it before and took it to God.  Was the might he felt God’s hatred for injustice? Did he feel that emotionally? Or just witness it? What was his experience with God in all that power?  Was it to inform him /to prepare him/to make him one with the heart of God for the task God set before him?  I so often want to know what is between the lines in so much of Scripture. 

“Then the angel who talked with me …and said to me…“This is the word of the Lord: … ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:5-7).  If I could see from above where God is, and I could see all the ways of mankind, would I see a world-full of useless attempts of might and power throughout the affairs and intentions of well meaning people? How much competition and building is there of so much in our lives that ultimately amounts to nothing if God’s not in it. So few people, and even nations (as in Psalm 2 for instance) are aware He even should be.  It reminds me of,  “They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1).  What do we guard? What do I guard, that in reality only God can guard or care for or see to its fulfillment?  What have I worried about, all in vain? It’s a choice: believe and trust God or not. My thoughts go to Miriam (Mary). Surely she had some significant things to be concerned about, but it could be that God chose her because she really knew how to trust and believe God in light of all she would have to go through in her life - or His, as Yeshua's mother? 

Announcing John the Baptist’s birth to his father, part of what the Angel Gabriel said to Zechariah was:  “…he will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.” (Luke 1:15).   Months later, Miriam (Mary) goes to visit Elisheva (Elizabeth), not to see if it is true because she believed the angel that  Elisheva was indeed with child at her age, just as Gabriel had told her but undoubtedly to share this miraculous expectation they both were a part of.  Elisheva, is overjoyed at Miriam’s arrival, knowing what Gabriel had told her husband of the coming Messiah, that her son would precede Him to make Him known. So when Miriam arrived, part of what Elisheva exclaimed was, “For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy” (1:44).  This was God providing a fulfillment of part of what Gabriel had said to Zechariah and Miriam to confirm the promises to both mothers.   (This should end any discussion of when a baby becomes a living soul –  from conception –  and put an end to the vicious slaughter of infants we call abortion.)

Many years later…“…Yeshua being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan (River) and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness….. Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee (Luke 4:1, 14).  Yeshua was filled with the Spirit at His baptism, but then the Spirit came upon Him in power later. Contrary to what we might expect as we tend to think of good things coming from the Spirit, it was the Spirit who led Him into the wilderness where He had to overcome the temptations of the evil one and through that process, came out in the power of the Spirit. By the power of the Spirit our trials and troubles should make us stronger if we will use the experience to learn to overcome the devil, and become more like Yeshua when we see the troubles as having that purpose.  When we intentionally enter into looking into His sufferings we enter into sharing what His suffering might have been like for Him, getting to know Him there. Then we can bring Him by the Spirit into our suffering as we seek to be more like Him in them.   It was after His ordeal of various temptations including  of hunger that He returned in the power of the spirit. 

It would appear that being filled and being empowered by the Spirit are not equal.  They do not always manifest at the same time but both are necessary to follow the Lord.  The power enables us to overcome difficulties and trials by a ‘lock’ on God and His ways and His words so that, by the Spirit, we do not allow ourselves to be pulled into the accusations, rejections and temptations of the enemy that are always there, tempting us, lying to us, berating us.  Those can be overcome by the Power of the Spirit, when we stay in agreement with Him like this.  There is so much more to look at on overcoming the attacks of the enemy but learning to become one with Yeshua in His trials and the power of His merciful, "Forgive them, Abba, for they don't know what they're doing," goes a long way toward the freedom of being one with Him.     

“…God anointed Yeshua of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him” (Acts 10:38). He said this out of His own experience. If we are to do all things as He did, then we need God to anoint us with the Holy Spirit and power.  The power comes from the Holy Spirit as a result of God being with us!  So where is the power? Even the “doing good?” Do we not believe the Spirit could/would anoint us as He did Yeshua?  We certainly don’t have either as the early church did. Why, Lord?

“…But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  Witnesses prove the testimony of the one we are being a witness for. Evidently our first century brothers and sisters testified of Yeshua wherever they went, as they were “praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:47).  How wonderful is that?  In short, they began to change the world with their witness of Him.  Most believers I know are frightened to even go beyond mentioning that they are believers and have never led another person to the Lord. Why is that? This leads me to something Yeshua expected of His disciples:  “Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17). My question is, if we are not fishers of men, if the spiritual wellbeing of others is not a part of our lives, then are we really being His disciples?!

So being filled with the Spirit isn’t just about speaking in tongues, it is being filled with Yeshua’s care for the spiritual condition of humankind. Why else did He come? Why else did He die? The point of being a witness to Him is being fishers of men. So then, if we are to be conformed to the likeness of Yeshua – that is Abba’s goal – then shouldn’t His highest goal be ours? I’m not talking about notches on our salvation belts. I’m talking about a deep caring and love for all people, including the lost. Do I have any friends who are not my saved buddies so that they are in my life as friends?  A few. I need to work on this.

The term “witness to Him” is correct. We are not to be witnesses of Him, though it may appear to be the same thing.  To be a witness on a stand in a courtroom, is to say, “I saw that person do this, or I heard this person say that.”  It is to personally attest to your knowledge of the actions or words being true and valid through your own witnessing it.  We can read the bible over and over, but how real is any particular part of it so that I can say, I have seen that reality in my own life; I have witnessed it as being true? I have heard these words and have seen them manifest in my own life experience?  In other words, how deeply do I really have knowledge of Yeshua?! 

The original question about knowing the Holy Spirit which led to this study brings me to this thought: The Holy Spirit witnesses to all Yeshua said and did, but Yeshua came to be a witness to His Father, that we would know Him. 

·         “Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things” (John 8:28).

·         “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him” (10:37,38).

·         “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26).

So the Spirit enables us to know Yeshua, Yeshua came so that we would know the Father. We cannot have the Spirit unless the Father sends Him.  While the Father anointed Old Testament prophets, priests and kings with the power of the Spirit to fulfill their callings, it was only available to the people at large, to those who believed Yeshua is Messiah and our kipporah (atonement) as the One who died in our place because we, having sinned against God’s holiness, would be eternally separated from God if it were not for Yeshua’s intercession on our behalf.

So this goes in a circle: Father sent Yeshua to witness of Himself; The Spirit empowered Yeshua to do the  work of the Father;  Yeshua asked the Father to send the Spirit, which He did. The Spirit empowers us to live in the fruit of the Spirit and holiness, and teaches us to know Yeshua by recalling all He did and said to us, and then empowers us to do great exploits, as Yeshua did and more because Yeshua said, “Greater things will you do,” all to the glory of the Father.  [See Part 2 following.]