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+--- Thread: Will the real Holy Spirit step forward please? (/Thread-Will-the-real-Holy-Spirit-step-forward-please)
Will the real Holy Spirit step forward please? - itgwfdisciple - 21-09-2012
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Spirit of selfishness
When you look into how the christian church functions you will find that the Holy Spirit is mentioned a lot because it was sent by Jesus to effectively look after the church once he had departed. One of the problems that you will find, though, is that people will tell you different things about how the Holy Spirit operates and one common thing you will notice about most of them is that they will always tell you that it makes them feel a certain way or causes them to do certain things, but if you listen carefully you should find that the things that they say that the Holy Spirit makes them do are not for the edification of other people, but only seem to bring about the fulfillment of their own selfish desires. In I Corinthians 12:7 it says "But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal." and we see here that the main purpose of the Holy Spirit is to benefit everyone, so if someone says that the Holy Spirit is acting on them and what they are doing is not to the benefit of others then you know that their actions are false.
New age Holy Spirit?
You might have heard of, watched a video on the internet of or been to a church where you will see people dancing to some loud music and saying that they are filled with the Holy Spirit, you might then have some people shouting and screaming and generally doing things that make you wonder if they have read their Bible enough. Well it turns out that they have not because in I Corinthians 12:8-12 it says "For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ." and you do not see anything written there about dancing, shouting or screaming which just goes to show that there is something strange going on in these churches. A defender of this "new age Holy Spirit" might try to say to you that these are extra attributes that have been added on in the latter days, but you don't have to worry because God has preempted them by saying to Moses in Deuteronomy 4:1-2 "Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you." and this shows that they are going against God's word if they try to add anything to whatever has been written in the Bible. If you go into a church and you find what is going on a bit confusing then you can be assured that it is not a church that follows God's word properly because in I Corinthians 14:33 it says "For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints." and you notice that it says "all churches" so there are no exceptions to this rule.
The real Holy Spirit steps forward
Now after reading this far you might think that the real Holy Spirit has left the church, but if my experience is anything to go by it is still waiting around for people to use it, if they are willing to give up on their selfish worldly desires and to go all the way when it comes to seeking the kingdom of God. I decided to take Jesus' advice and give up on the frivolous things of this world so that I could have more time for learning and spreading God's word. Once I had made this decision I found that I always seemed to be in a good mood and it has never left me since that day, even though I have had to go through some bad experiences and this seems to be the first change that has come about. The next thing that happened was an interesting one because it was directly related to the Bible. I was listening to someone reading Daniel 3 and as they were reading it I decided to imagine myself as King Nebuchadnezzar sitting on his throne as head of the Babylonian Empire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego about to be cast into the fiery furnace. When they were cast in and four people could be seen alive walking in it, I imagined I was him walking over to the furnace to speak to them and just as I approached it closely I had this strange feeling come over me that was the same as if I had been laughing until I was about to cry, but without having to do the laughing part. I decided to put this down to a slight malfunction of my brain and decided to try to avoid trying too hard next time. I then had a similar experience when I was reading 2 Kings 9 where the antics of one of the children of the prophets and the actions of Jehu were causing me to laugh and I have to admit that up until I have had these two experiences I had not realised that humor was linked to the Bible in any way. Some weeks had gone by since the first 2 incidents and some one was describing the scene where Gideon was sneaking into the camp of the Midianites, interestingly enough they were not reading the account directly from the Bible, and because of this I decided it should be safe to imagine myself as Gideon going into the camp. When I had reached the camp I moved up close to where two of the soldiers could be heard talking and just as I heard them mention Gideons name the same feeling from before came over me again. I have to admit that the idea of getting a real pleasurable feeling from acting out the experiences of people from the Bible is a new and surprising thing for me and the reason why I have mentioned them is because most people seem to think that the pleasures of this world are the only game in town, but it looks as if God has some things prepared, even now while we are still alive in this world, for people who have decided to give up their love for the things of this life and to dedicate themselves to His word in the Bible. Another benefit that I have received from the changes I have made is that the glamour of the things in this world has been reduced, it almost feels as if some changes have happened in my brain to boost up my love of the word of God and to reduce the effects of the things in this world that are supposed to be attractive. This shows that it is possible for the word of God to overcome the so called pleasures of this world and I am sure that even the most addicted person can be eventually changed if they have the determination to follow God's word properly. To get this far I have had to throw away all the copyright infringing CDs and DVDs that I had accumulated before I was baptised, deleted all the copyright infringing mp3s and movies that I had stored on my hard drive, I have lost any real interest in television and I only download some programs from BBC iPlayer, but I would hardly class them as entertaining when compared to the solidity of the characters in the Bible. I don't go to the cinema anymore and I haven't played my games consoles for a few years now and I have to say that doing all these things has been worth it because of what I have gained.
The Holy Spirit on the job
The main thing that I seem to have gained from the Holy Spirit is related to something that seems to happen when I end up in a position where I have to defend the word of God. The first time that I remember experiencing it was when I was having a discussion relating to a controversial subject in the modern church. As the conversation went on I was asked a question and for some unknown reason a feeling of fear came over me and my legs felt as if they wanted to shake, now the strange part about this experience is that I realised that I was already replying to the question even while the feeling of fear was wearing off and it seemed as if I had not skipped a beat and carried on with the conversation without hesitating. The next time it happened I was speaking with someone in relation to the authenticity of the Bible and when they said that the Bible had been tampered with I had that feeling again and this time it seemed to me as if I was not sure what my reply should be, to my surprise though a reply did come out of my mouth and the conversation continued again as if the feeling of fear had never happened. It was only when the same thing had happened for the fourth time that I finally realised that the feeling of fear must be caused by the spirit that is inside me when it does something to my brain to help me in the conversation that I am having, the changes that it makes must work because some new things did seem to come to light while I was speaking and I seemed to be able to successfully answer any challenges that were put forward. The main thing that I have to say about these experiences is that at no time did I feel as if there was a spirit moving in me and when the music is playing at my church I do not have the inclination to dance, shout or scream but I know that it is there inside me because it is ready to jump into the fight when I have to defend the word of God against people who are in the world or against people from the church.
The gifts are still available
The spirit that I have been given seems to be related to "the word of knowledge" as mentioned above, this goes to show that the Holy Spirit is still willing and available to give out spiritual gifts, but it seems as if you have to be prepared to give up your ambitions for and the pleasures of this life in order to gain them. The main problem that we have now is that we would need a few dedicated people in order to get one of the more sought after gifts and finding these people is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack because of how the modern church has done such a good job of putting out the wrong description of how the Holy spirit works and addressing this is an uphill struggle. The only thing we can do is to keep on trying to get the correct description out there so that some people will eventually realise what they are missing out on and we also have to realise that the Holy Spirit is the life blood of the church and the church cannot function properly without it.