Friendship with The Holy Spirit Pt-1

Friendship with The Holy Spirit Pt-1

I want to share with you a side to the Holy Spirit that few Christians ever experience.

• Befriending the Holy Spirit 

• Now, when I mention what this is, your first reaction may be to say, “Well, I’ve heard that before.” 

  • But consider this: while we often hear things in principle, we very rarely do things in practice.

When you have a friendship with someone, you listen to them, you walk with them, you are conscious of their presence, you are always looking for them, and where they are in a room. You won’t leave without them.

• With friends on a trip, the offer is “go with?”

  • Then it’s every weekend 

  • Most days together 

  • Then one of you gets a girlfriend 

• In high school they they call it “going together” 

• In marriage, it’s a “partnership” for a lifetime

• Everything you do, including when to eat, get up, leave, and come home, every decision, fun things, and work, is done together. 

2 Corinthians 13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship or (communion)  of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.”

• The word ‘communion’ is translated from the Greek ‘koinonia’, which also means friendship. 

  • So, in this prayer, Paul prayed, among other things, that believers would experience a continual friendship with the Holy Spirit.

  •  

• How does friendship with the Holy Spirit begin? 

  • We receive and believe the grace of the “Lord” Jesus Christ. 

    • It is an act of humility to receive grace and to recognize Lordship. 

      • Pride: “I am, or can be, on my own good enough, why do I need grace?”  

        • This is a big hurdle! There is a human tendency to focus on worthiness and performance, leading to a belief that grace is earned rather than a free gift. 

      • Faith and humility are required! 

        • Romans 10:17 – Faith comes by hearing the word…

        • Romans 12:3 “For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.”.

      • Unbelief/ trust issues are the enemy: The “too good to be true” mindset, questioning whether God’s offer of undeserved favor is genuinely limitless. Metaphor of 70×7 every day?

        • Matthew 18:21 Jesus gives a metaphor for limitless forgiveness.

        • You cannot have friendship with the Holy Spirit without humbling yourself and recognizing that you need the grace of God every day!

        • Lordship and grace go together since humility and trust unlock the heart to receiving grace. 

  • We receive and believe the love of God, this is the Father 

    • Love is not easy to receive either 

      • A major reason we have trouble receiving is that we don’t feel worthy. 

    • We feel too flawed, undeserving, or unlovable. 

    • Acceptance is required: God is love, God has decided to love you, and there is nothing you can do to make Him love you any more or any less. 

      • We are tempted to believe love requires us to earn, to give, or to do something.

      • Love requires an equal exchange. 

        • We think, “Why would God do that for me or say those nice things in His word about me?”

        • We must accept that it is true because it is without our acceptance. We must receive it by faith because it confounds our ability to understand, 

        • Therefore, we attempt to work or earn it. 

  • Conclusion: The friendship with the Holy Spirit can be ours to grow and experience!

    • How does this work? James 4:8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. 
      

II. He is the closest friend you will ever have. 

1 Corinthians 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

Most Christians do not know who they are in their spirit man. 

• We have thousands of pictures, videos, and selfies of our flesh 

• We speak to others about our backgrounds, reputations, and accomplishments of our minds

• We have never even thought to see ourselves other than carnal and flesh and full of feelings and preferences 

• You are not your feelings, temperament, likes, dislikes, your body, your career, your education, what you wear, what you have…..

• You are your spirit. 

Since God is a Spirit and He deals with me on the basis of who I am in the Spirit (John 4:24), this has changed everything. 

• God is a Spirit, and He is looking for those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. 

• I now worship God based on who I am in the spirit and not on who I am in my flesh; i.e., how I act or feel. 

  • That means that 24/7 in the spiritual realm, you are already fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit. 

• Are we consistently conscious of that? 

  • Absolutely not, and that is the issue, not whether or not we are close to God or far.

• Much of what you pray for and need to receive in your life is already in your life because the Holy Spirit is inside of you! 

  • In your spirit, you already know peace; in your spirit, you already know love; in your spirit, you already know the fullness of spiritual maturity. 

  • Now, it’s just a matter of allowing what is happening in your spiritman as it is in fellowship with the Holy Spirit to overflow! 

  • You are not full of the Holy Ghost until you OVERFLOW in the Holy Ghost. 

    • Wells of living water! 

Example: When I was first born again, there was this initial burst of spiritual energy, if you will, where I began to pursue the Lord, read the word, and devote myself to prayer. But within just a few months, I began to sense this spiritual momentum weakening.

• I began to feel a distance between myself and the Lord. Did the Holy Spirit move? 

• I had to learn how to walk in the Spirit and not in my flesh and feelings. 

• I had to learn how to walk (living and moving) in the Spirit, not my carnal imagination of my mind. 

  • I daily had to renew my mind with the Word, or the Holy Spirit felt far away

  • I had to commune with my friend with prayer and praise throughout the day

  • When I moved from walking in my flesh to walking in the Spirit, I could easily hear the Holy Spirit and know His presence was as close as living in me. 

People often ask, “How do I get closer to the Holy Spirit?” 

• The good news: If you are a believer, He is no farther than your own heart. 

• You can’t get any closer to the Holy Spirit because He dwells in you. 

  • How can anyone get any closer than dwelling within you? 

  • The Holy Spirit dwells in your physical being. 

  • The Holy Spirit dwells in your spirit. 

• He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him, and He abides.

The Scripture says we are close to God through the Cross, not through what we’re doing. 

• We’re also close to God because of the Resurrection—we are raised up with Christ and seated with Him (Ephesians 2:6, 13). 

• Scripture tells us in Romans 6 that we are “united with Him in his death, burial, and resurrection.” 

• You just can’t get any closer than God has already made you. 

I’ve got some great news for you—Jesus Christ made you perfectly close forever.

• Then why do we feel the distance? 

Because we seldom operate from our Spirit man 

• We mostly operate from our carnal nature – Flesh and senses 

• Our soulical nature – Our unrenewed mind 

Galatians 5 says, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts or the desires of the flesh.”

• This does not mean that sometimes we have the spirit and other times we don’t 

  • Your flesh cannot sense the Spirit, not by sight or senses

  • Your carnal nature does not recognize the Spirit – desires things other than the Spirit 

  • Your unrenewed mind cannot conceive the Spirit

The idea of abiding in Christ is also important to understand. 

• Jesus commanded, “Abide in me and I in you.” 

• Of course, that was an invitation to live in Him. 

That is what it means to abide. I abide in Ohio. 

• I don’t have to wake up every day and try to abide in Ohio. 

• I don’t worry about abiding in Ohio. 

  • I don’t worry about whether I live there. I simply do! 

  • Neither should you worry about abiding in Christ and in the Spirit. 

Abiding isn’t some sort of work that you need to maintain. 

• Does a branch tell itself that it has to be a branch

• Does a tree branch have trouble connecting to the rest of the tree? 

So then what happens when a believer sins?

• Many have wrongly taught that when a believer sins, the holy spirit is temporarily taken away from us until we repent of our sins.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a man can commit is outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body. ~ 1 Corinthians 6:18-20

Notice Paul still declares that they have the Holy Spirit even when the Corinthian Christians committed sexual immorality. 

• God does not remove His Spirit from you because you sin. 

• How else would you repent and turn back to God except by His Spirit? 

John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,

Where did the Holy Spirit go when Jesus was on the cross while carrying the sins of the world for all time? 

• The Spirit was with Jesus until He said, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit,” and died. So the Spirit was with Jesus until death, even though He had ALL the sins of the world on Him at once! 

What about David’s prayer, “ Take not thy Holy Spirit from me?” 

• Prior to Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit had a “come and go” relationship with people. 

• This is because Jesus had yet to offer a perfect atoning sacrifice, allowing the presence of God to remain.

  • John 1:32 “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 

  • Echos back to the flood – Genesis 8. (1 Raven, 3 Doves) v8Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark,

• The Holy Spirit indwelt King Saul, but then departed from him (1 Samuel 16:14).

  • Instead, the Spirit came upon David (1 Samuel 16:13). 

  • After his adultery with Bathsheba, David feared that the Holy Spirit would be taken from him (Psalm 51:11).

1. This friend speaks to you: In Acts 8:29, we read, “The Holy Spirit said to Philip, go over and walk along beside the carriage.” 

• So, there we see Him speaking. 

• If He has a voice, then it is possible that He can be ignored. 

• The Holy Spirit gives the best advice. Here’s what Proverbs tells us about friendship. Proverbs 12:26: “The godly give good advice to their friends; the wicked lead them astray.” 

  • You know that friend who constantly gives good advice?

  • Well, that’s the Holy Spirit. You can take the difficult things to Him, and He’s going to give you the best advice. 

  • John 14:26 says this:“But when the Father sends the advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.” 

    • How do you get this benefit of friendship? 

      • You have to live at the pace of grace. 

      • Far too many of us are too rushed to ever slow down and listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit.

2. This friend has a will for you: 1 Corinthians 12:1 says, “But all these worketh that one and the selfsame spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.” 

• So, there we see that the Holy Spirit has a will. 

• He has a will, so it is possible that He can be disobeyed. 

While the Holy Spirit will never leave a believer, 

• It is possible for our sins to “quench the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19) 

• Or “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30). 

  • Sin always has consequences in our relationship with God.

  • Disobedience to the Spirit and refusing to walk in the Spirit for walking in the Flesh can make the Spirit of God seem far.

    • Faith, not Feelings, is the way to draw near through your spirit man.  

    • We draw close through communion ( talking, walking, sharing, caring, enjoying eachtoher

• Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you in your time with Him, and He will guide you in talking and singing, sharing and listening to Him! 

3. The Holy Spirit has feelings about you:  Ephesians 4:30 says, “And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.” 

• Consider the fact that your disobedience breaks the Holy Spirit’s heart.

• He has feelings, so it is possible that He can be hurt.

Proverbs 17:17: “A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.” 

• In Proverbs 18:4, we read this about friends: “There are friends who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.” 

• Proverbs 20:6 “Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is truly reliable?” 

  • They say that if you can say to yourself that you have one true friend in life, you’re doing really well.

    • Well, the Holy Spirit is that true friend. 

Conclusion: The world says, “Friends come and go,” but biblically speaking, you invest in friendships intentionally.