Spirit Burn

Acts 4:24-31 New International Version (NIV)
24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25 You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.
27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. 29 Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

For some reason or another, the Holy Spirit has been on my heart. The idea of the Holy Spirit, that is. It's really interesting how little thought we give to the Holy Spirit in the Christian idea of the Trinity. Francis Chan has this awesome book out which everyone should check out to learn about our negligence of the Spirit called Forgotten God.

The Holy Spirit is an important person in the Trinity. I want to be gender inclusive when talking about the Holy Spirit, but it is almost impossible without being too repetitive. From here on out, I will call the Holy Spirit a He because the Holy Spirit is not an it, and He should be treated like He is actually divine. When people call the Holy Spirit an it, they don't do so out of negligence or to slander the name of God. Rather, it probably has more to do with our conception of who the Holy Spirit is. 

If we think about the Holy Spirit as an it rather than a He, we make ourselves better than than Him because an it is a thing, and humans are automatically better than things. Well, I don't know about automatically, but we normally value human life over things and entities. 

But if we think of the Holy Spirit as a person as living and active in our lives empowering us to do the things which God has prepared in advance for us to do, then living in this world becomes a little easier. Even though we live in this material world, we do not fight against flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12). Having the Holy Spirit with us enables us to do godly things. Traditionally, the church mothers and fathers thought of the Holy Spirit as the sustainer of our faith. The Holy Spirit is who binds us to God. He's the Paraclete, the one who helps and counsels us. 

Maybe it's just my Pentecostal side speaking, but I'm praying that the Holy Spirit empowers us to do big things. When we fail to recognize the Holy Spirit's power in our lives, in this very moment, we lose an integral part of the idea of who God is. God is not distant. God is not far away. God's Spirit resides in us as believers.

Even though it's Holy Week, I still want to recognize how important the Holy Spirit is to our relationship and understanding of Jesus and God. My prayer, following the prayer of Peter and John is that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon us today. That we would feel the Holy Spirit's presence in our days of sadness, trials, and tribulations. That we would know that the Holy Spirit comforts and heals us. That we would see that the Holy Spirit is actively interceding on our behalf. And most importantly, that we as children of the light would be receive the Holy Spirit, recognize His power, recognize that the Holy Spirit has given us power of the principalities of this world, and that we would go out boldly into the world. The Holy Spirit is not timid, and we as believers should not be either. 

So, I ask, "Come Holy Spirit."