Why Did God Have To Send His Spirit

As I start writing this message, I am really looking forward to sharing about this part of God’s plan. The Holy Spirit is the final puzzle piece needed to activate God’s plan. The Holy Spirit’s power in our lives is the only way to Jesus and the only way to stay in Jesus. Ever since the fall of man, God wanted to be reunited with His beloved creation, but He had to wait for His perfect timing to enable this reunion. With Adam and Eve, God was in close fellowship with man before the fall, but after the fall, sin entered man and sin had put a barrier between God and man. God refuses to be near sin; so in essence, the sin is the barrier, not His creation. Now with the work that Christ has done on the cross, we have the ability to become even closer to God than Adam and Eve were. We have the ability to have God live inside us and become part of us. Even Adam and Eve didn’t enjoy this close of a relationship with God. The Lord not only reunited us to Himself, but He also now becomes part of us. But again, this is our choice. God does not force this loving relationship with anyone that wants to stay separated from Him. Looking over this whole process, it makes me wonder if all this was God’s plan all along. We can only look back with amazement and see these wonderful happenings of God. People say hindsight is always 20/20. But God has the ability to see to the end of time with His whole plan worked out from the beginning of time.

We need the Holy Spirit! When Jesus was crucified on the cross, the heavy curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the outer portions of the temple was torn from top to bottom. This represented that God’s old covenant with man was done and the new covenant had started. This represented that now His Spirit was no longer restricted from His creation by any walls or boundaries. His Spirit was now open and available to all people. He would no longer have intercession be made through one human person – the Jewish high priest. He now intercedes for and communicates directly to each believer’s heart through Jesus’ Spirit which is in us and part of us. This is why we call Jesus our high priest forever. Jesus, through the Spirit now intercedes for us to the Father. Under the old covenant, the high priest was trying to commune and intercede with God through physical fleshly means. Now in the new covenant, it is not our sinful fleshly body trying to communicate with God; it is Jesus’ Spirit in us communicating with the Fathers’ Spirit.

Under the new covenant, the cross would have had no value without the sending of the Holy Spirit. The only way the cross works is with the Holy Spirit as part of the plan. We know through God’s word, that He requires full payment for sins, but He also requires for us to be made holy as He is holy. When we are made holy, we become right with Him, we are set apart for God, His work, and His Glory. It is only through God’s Holy Spirit’s power that He glorifies Himself by making us holy and right with Himself. Ever since the creation of the heavens and this world, it has been God’s Spirit that does all the work when anything good happens. When God spoke something into existence, it was through the Spirit that the work was done. Everything good in God’s eyes can only be done through His Spirit. If anything is done through the works of man or any other spirit, it is not considered good, but self serving to the one doing that work. Adam and Eve received the knowledge of good and evil. Even though they had the knowledge of good, Adam and Eve and all their descendants could not do the good without the power of God’s Holy Spirit in them. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel understood that God’s commandments were good, but they had no power to do the good. The self serving spirit inside them only had the power to do the knowledge of evil. To remedy this, God had to send His Spirit into man’s heart before any good could come out of man. So, God sent His Son to the cross to enable the Spirit to come and replace the self serving spirit in each true believer’s heart with His Spirit. God’s word commands all believers to live by the Spirit. Then shouldn’t we concentrate a lot of our energy on understanding the Spirit? Some churches might be unwilling or afraid to try to understand God’s Spirit. Since God’s ways are not man’s ways, some people might think it impossible to understand His Spirit. Other churches might be afraid of getting the understanding of the Holy Spirit wrong, and in turn, commit the one and only unforgivable sin, which is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. This hesitation or the limiting of the teaching of the Holy Spirit can be very dangerous to all of the flock of those churches doing this. By limiting the understanding and teaching on the Holy Spirit, this might be doing the very thing these churches are afraid of, and that is rejecting or blaspheming of the Holy Spirit.

What is blaspheming the Holy Spirit? What it mainly comes down to is the putting down of the Holy Spirit by putting yourself or anything else above the Holy Spirit. When we put ourselves above the Holy Spirit and reject His truth and leading, we are rejecting the Holy Spirit and the Spirit being able to work in us, which is really rejecting God. So, in essence, if we reject the Spirit being able to work in us, there is no way we can have eternal life with God, because if we reject being sanctified and made holy by the Spirit, we cannot enter the eternal kingdom of God. In the Bible there are many examples of blasphemy. In most or all of these examples, the person being accused of blasphemy is putting and promoting their own ways, rules, or values above the understood ways, rules, and values of God. This was looked upon as the accused putting themselves above or equal with God. Jesus was accused many times of blasphemy, and if he really wouldn’t have been God, the accusers would have been right about Jesus.

We must strive to know and understand God’s Spirit on an intimate basis. We can understand the Spirit by understanding Jesus and understanding how the Spirit worked in people throughout the New Testament that had faith and trusted in Jesus. Jesus said “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. Jesus also said that He could only do the Father’s will. This is because they are of one Spirit. So if we want to understand the Spirit and what God wants the Spirit to do through us, we must try to understand God’s character by looking and understanding the life of Jesus. The best way to do this is by reading God’s word. We must let God speak to us through His word. God’s word says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God”. When we are a believer and read God’s word, we are communicating directly with God through His Spirit inside us. The only way we can understand God’s word is through His Spirit interpreting it for us. God’s word says “Seek and you shall find”. If we are to be a true believer, this is not an option, but a commandment. We seek, by looking for God’s character and will by praying and searching His word. We find, by His Spirit giving us all the answers by the way of a changed heart and a deeper understanding of Him by the renewing of our minds. God talks to His loved ones by the gentle whispers and thoughts He implants in our minds. As I finished writing this message, I realized it was way too long of a letter. So I had to remove about half of what I wanted to tell you about this glorious gift from God – the Holy Spirit. But the one main thought I want to emphasize is: God is using Jesus’ kingdom on earth to build His eternal kingdom. The people willing to let the Holy Spirit take total control of their lives and be made holy and righteous will inherit eternal life.

With God's love and Spirit, I bring you this message. - Michael Reid

Some scripture verses concerning this message: Matt 25:31-46, John 12:25, Rom 2:7 & 13, Rom 6:22, Gal 6:8, 2 Pet 1:5-11, 1 John 2:24-25, 1 Pet 4:17-19, Gen 3:22, 1 Sam 10:5-6, Neh 9:20, Ps 104:30, Ezek 11:19-21, Ezek 36:27, Joel 2:28:30, Acts 2:14-19, Mic 3:8, Matt 1:18, Matt 4:1, Matt 12:18 & 28, Matt 12:31-32, Matt 26:62-65, Matt 27:51-53, Luke 5:21, Mark 1:8 & 12, Mark 3:28-29, Luke 1:15-17, Luke 2:27, Luke 4:1 & 14, Luke 11:13, Luke 12:12, John 3:5-8 & 34, John 4:23-24, John 6:63-65, John 14:17-21 & 25-26, John 20:22-23, Acts 1:8, Acts 2:4 & 38-39, Acts 7:51, Acts 8:29, Acts 9:17-18 & 31, Acts 10:38, Acts 13:4, Acts 16:6-8, Acts 19:1-7, Acts 20:22-23 & 28-30, Heb 4:14-15, Heb 6:20, Rom 5:5, Rom 7:6, Rom 8:4-17, Rom 8:26-27, Rom 14:17-18, Rom 15:13-16, 1 Cor 1:2, Eph 1:4, Eph 5:3, Col 1:21-23, 1 Thes 4:7-8, Gal 3:14

Love Has To Be A Choice

Most of us have asked ourselves - why are we here, what is our purpose? This basic question is a question that has to be answered to have a full understanding of who we are and how God relates to us. We must know why we were created to be able to fulfill our full potential that God intended for us.

The only reason for every man or woman's existence since the beginning of time is for each one of us to choose who/what will be the lord of our life and then glorify that lord we have chosen to follow and worship. The only reason God created man is to have a loving relationship with Him and for God to glorify Himself thru us. We are God's creation and with the Holy Spirits unrestricted working in our life, we have the full potential of glorifying God as He intended. But, we can also choose to have ourselves, things, or money be our lord. What ever we decide to be our lord, that lord is what we will worship. If we trust in anything other than the true God, we will not be able to have a joy filled life as God intended. All true love and joy can only come from God. We have to consider ourselves dead anytime we are separated from the Lord, since life is only in the Lord. If we don't have Christ in us, we don't have life. This is why a loving God can let people go to hell, since they are only empty shells with no life in them. The only value in us is Christ's life, which is from God alone. The good news is that He wants all to come and trust in His son Jesus to receive this life.

Love has to be a choice, otherwise it is worthless. What makes love so valuable? It’s what makes the world go around. It is what makes a life worth living. God's word says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love , I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love , I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love , I gain nothing." (NIV 1 Cor 13:1-3). What makes the love of our spouse so special? It is the spouses choice to love us as we are and the sacrificing of his/her life for us. Why is it so special when our kids listen and do what we say? It is the love they are showing us by making the choice of respecting and being obedient to our wishes. Why is it so important to be obedient to God's word, His will, and the Holy Spirits leading? Our choice to be obedient shows our love for our Lord, no matter how much a sacrifice that obedience requires. The more sacrifice required, the more love is shown back to our Lord thru our obedience. What makes the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our redemption so valuable? It is that He (God), made the choice to sacrifice Himself out of love for us, so we could once again have the choice to love God and others.

From the very beginning of time, love had to be a choice. In the beginning, God had a loving and close relationship with His creation, Adam and Eve. The only instruction He commanded Adam that he could not do, was to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We all know what happened with the fall of man when Adam did eat of that tree. But why did God have that tree in the garden at all? Since God is in control of everything, it must of been serving a purpose for God. The requirement of love having to be a choice has everything to do with it. God wanted to feel true love coming from Adam, not some kind of forced love. If we could create a robot and program it to only love us, what value would that love from that robot have in our hearts. If we could make our children love us by placing a pre-programmed chip in them to make them love us, what value would that love have to us. It would have no value at all. God created us to have free will so we could make the choice to love Him and willingly be obedient to His commandments out of that love.

Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. (NIV Jos 24:15)

With God's love and Spirit, I bring you this message.
Michael W. Reid