Do You Love the Holy Spirit?

"As Christians, we are confessing Trinitarians. This means we profess that the Bible teaches there are three distinct persons in one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But practically speaking, many of us are probably more bi-nitarian than we care to admit."

As Christians, we are confessing Trinitarians. This means we profess that the Bible teaches there are three distinct persons in one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But practically speaking, many of us are probably more bi-nitarian than we care to admit. We pray to the Father and we pray to the Son in church, before meals and bedtime. We speak of the Father’s love for the Son. We teach about the Son’s love for His sheep and so on. In our prayers we interchange between these two persons, back and forth. But do we ever pray to the Holy Spirit? I suspect that many of us do not. I bet if we were to press this a bit further, we would find that we even depersonalize the Holy Spirit and refer to Him as an “it”. But He’s not an it - He's a person. He's fully God. He is not some power that the Father and Son wield like Jehovah Witnesses believe. He is God. If we simply attend to what the scriptures say, we can observe that many of elements of agency and personhood are present before us. We've simply become conditioned to not see them, or don't attribute to them what is plainly evident- that God is not a power, but a person. The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is a helper (Romans 8:26-27); He speaks (Acts 8:29); He gives gifts (1 Corinthians 12:11) and He can even be grieved when we sin and disobey Him and what we know scripture would have us do (Ephesians 4:30). Think about those for a minute. If, upon pausing and reflecting, you find yourself to be guilty of properly confessing but not practicing what we believe about the third person of the Trinity, what should we do? Repent! We need to align our devotion with our doctrine. Here are some steps to take to usher our lives back before the Trinitarian God we worship:

1. Begin your study of God’s Word with a Spirit empowered prayer. Pray to the Holy Spirit to give light to His Word that you might understand it.
2. Pray for the Holy Spirit in times of hardship when comfort is something you need. One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is bringing comfort to the afflicted (John 14:26)
3. Pray for the Holy Spirit in times where unity is needed. Paul refers to this in Ephesians 4:1-6).
4. Tell people and yourself "I love the Father, I love the Son and I love the Holy Spirit!"

I think you will find by making these shifts you will be greatly enriched! I can tell you from personal experience that people notice the way we pray and what is being implicitly taught. I had one person ask why I pray to the Holy Spirit before we begin our Bible study. What an awesome teaching opportunity! It's because the Holy Spirit is the one who opens our eyes to the text. I believe in and love the Holy Spirit! Do you?