February 28, 2016
Dr. Thomas J. Pace
Start Here: What Does the Holy Spirit Do?
John 14:15-17, 25-27

Our Scripture today is from the Gospel of John. Jesus is on his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, and he’s already joined the disciples in the Last Supper. He’s explaining to them that he’s going to be leaving but that he won’t leave them orphaned. Then he gives them a way that he will be with them and tells them about the Holy Spirit. So listen as our Scripture is read this morning from the Gospel of John.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides in you, and he will be in you.
I have said these things to you while I am still with you.But the Advocate,the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Every seminary student has to do a master’s degree project at Perkins Seminary, at Southern Methodist University where I attended. Mine was called a Credo which was “I Believe,” and you were asked to reflect on all thirteen major doctrines of the Christian faith, what you believed about them, comparing and contrasting it with other major theologians, and supporting it with Scripture. It was not a small task and was intimidating in every way. And I did pretty well in my head knowing what other theologians had said, finding the Scripture to support it. But I really had trouble figuring out what I believed. It had all these different views from different theologians, and I thought, “What do I believe? And why?”
So I went to see one of the professors, Dr. John Deshner. He was one of the systematics professors. We were team taught, and he was the nice one, so I went to the nice one. I said, “Help me; I don’t know what to do.” And what he said was so great. He said, “Tell me one thing you believe with all your heart of all the stuff we’ve heard. We’ve studied for over a semester.” It was kind the end of the first year. “Tell me what you believe.” And I said, “I believe that God does not will small children to suffer. When I see children suffering and people say, ‘It’s God’s will,’ that just makes me angry. And I don’t believe God ever wills children to suffer.” And he said, “Great! Let’s start there. If that’s the case what does that mean about God?”
And sort of from that stake in the ground I was able to build my own understanding of the Christian faith. And, yes, I compared it to other theologians, compared it to things like the Apostles Creed, which we’re using as our skeleton for talking about what we believe. But this series is designed to ask you, “What do you believe? What is your understanding of the Christian faith?” It’s not just saying, “I believe what everyone else believes.” We have to make this our own.
So today we’re going to talk about the Holy Spirit. Two weeks ago we talked about God, God creator, that I have to say is for most of us an easy step. Last week we talked about Jesus as Lord and Savior. And this week I want to talk about the Holy Spirit. This is a little more difficult for some people.
I have someone in my life whom I love very much. He’s a real seeker, and he studied all sorts of different religions. And he wants to believe. He says, “I don’t have trouble with creation. I think Jesus and the pattern of life he taught is amazing. But I just don’t know that I believe that God still is doing stuff.” His view is that God is like that divine watchmaker, and there are some of our founding fathers who took this view - that God created the earth like it was an incredible amazing watch, and then he set it into motion and said, “I’m just going to watch.”
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this sense, this statement that God still is active in our lives and in history today. I don’t want to spend a long time defining the Holy Spirit, because I want to talk about what the Holy Spirit does. But the essence of it is that the Holy Spirit is God’s active and activating presence in our lives today.
In our Scripture today, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he says, “I’m going to be going away. But I will not leave you orphaned.” That’s the phrase he uses. “I will not leave you orphaned. I will ask the Father and he will send you another….” And then the word there in Greek is paraclete, another paraclete. Now this gets translated a thousand different ways, and I don’t know what Bible translation you read. The New Revised Standard Version says it’s an “advocate.” Others call it a “counselor” or a “comforter.” The Greek word literally means “to call one alongside you.” It is God alongside us active in our lives, right now, exactly with what we’re doing.
A little reminder for you who are regulars here at St. Luke’s a couple of years ago we did a whole series on the Holy Spirit. I reminded you then that the word for “spirit” in Hebrew and Greek is the word for “wind” or “breath” in both languages. “Wind” or “breath.” It is the movement of God. God wants to move in your lives. God wants to move in you and through you. And that’s what the Holy Spirit does.
The Holy Spirit is a person, one of the three persons of the trinity, so we refer to the Holy Spirit as “who” and not “what,” although that’s hard for me sometimes and I slip, I must confess. But sometimes we think of God as far off who says, “Here’s what I want you to do. Here are your marching orders.” Then we, by our own power and strength, go do it.
No, this is God who says, “I’m going to be with you. I’m going to move in your life. And we’re going to glorify God.”
So what is it that the Holy Spirit does? There are many, many things, and I want to focus on three today. First, the Holy Spirit guides us. If you’re doing our small group study on this we talk about five ways in which the Holy Spirit guides us through Scripture, through interpretation of Scripture, through the church and the traditions of the church, through our consciences, through a sense of convictions, that I call a “spur” to kind of move us on, through a sense of assurance.
I want to take a little different approach today. I want to give you two scenarios – possibilities. In one you have a difficult decision to make, and you pray. You say, “God, I need to know what to do here. I’m stuck. I’m really struggling, and I need to know what to do.” And you ask God for direction. You go to Holy Scripture and you read not just the passages that are directly connected, but you try to remember and think about the entire spirit of the Scripture, and the whole story of God and what God is doing and what’s most important about Scripture. And you begin to try to apply that to that situation. Then you pray some more. Then you go talk to other Christians who you trust, who seem to be trying to live their lives in alignment with God’s will. And you talk to them and listen to their thoughts about this difficult decision you have to make. Then you come back, and you pray some more. Then you consider what the consequences will be, “If I do this, this is the impact it will make on other people. And this is where I’ll be in my life in my own spiritual journey if I do this. And this is what will be if I take this other direction.”
And at the end of all that time you say, “I’m just going to take a step.” And you step out in faith to make that decision and you know, believe, you do it with humility knowing that you may be misreading. But you know that God will be with you no matter what.
So that’s one scenario. Now the other scenario is similar. It has many of the same elements, but it’s really very different. It goes this way. You have a difficult decision to make, and in your gut you feel like you know what you want to do. So you pray, then you go to the Scripture and say, “God reveal to me the Scriptures that validate the decision that I think I want to make.” Then you pray and ask God to validate the decision that you’re making. Then you go talk to other Christians, but you choose ones who you think are going to agree with you. And you continue in this process until you think, “I’ve listened to the Holy Spirit. I’m going to move forward.”
You see, since the Enlightenment many Christian scholars have struggled with the Holy Spirit because it’s so subjective. We can say, “God told me.” And when people stand up and say, “God told me to do X,” you think to yourself, “Yeah, right,” because it raises suspicions. We don’t necessarily trust that they’re really listening to God. How do they know what voice they’re listening to?
Being decisive is not my strong suit. When I said this in an earlier service, our staff laughed loudly over here. That was problematic for me I must admit. We’ll deal with that later, another day. But they know that’s true. I’m not always that decisive. And I’ll wrestle with decisions, and they’re like, “Will you just make a decision? We can all move on when you make a decision.”
The New York Times business book list had a book called Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Your Life and Work. And I thought about whether I should order it or not. I thought I might order it, and then I thought it was pretty expensive, and it was a hard back. And I didn’t know if I’d read it anyway. I went back and forth for about a year, and then I ordered it.
Here’s what I expected it to say. I expected it to say, “Look, just make a decision. Consider the facts, make a decision, and move forward. Be clear about your decision, be a decisive person.” That’s what we think of when we think of being decisive. It didn’t say that at all. In fact it said exactly the opposite. I was dumbfounded.
It said that the worst decisions are made when we follow our gut. That in fact what we need to do is find people who speak the opposing voice and make sure to bring their voice into the conversation, that we listen to people who disagree with us, that we don’t just put people around us who are willing to drink our bathwater and tell us what we want to hear. And that we as leaders should make sure and consider real data that you can look at and has objectivity to it, and at the end of a process by which you go through, that you can make a clear decision.
Now it’s not exactly the same thing, but here’s why I want to say that. It’s that we as Christians have to do two things. One is that you just can’t come to the Scripture and pray to God, “Show me how to make this decision” and then just sort of start fresh from there. What we do is we stay in conversation with God. We practice on small things, and medium things and all sorts of things, making decisions based on the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel of John in Chapter 10 says, “My sheep know my voice.” How are you going to know God’s voice if you’re not in conversation? For us to be able to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit leading us forward, we have to be in practiced constant conversation. Otherwise, we’re likely to mishear.
The second thing is that we have to come before God and really try to open our minds and our hearts to what God is leading us to do. In Scripture the opposite of being a follower of Jesus or a follower is “being stiff-necked.” Maybe that’s some of us. What we want to do is have God validate what we think is already right.
When the Scripture says that the Holy Spirit guides us, Jesus is talking to his disciples, encouraging them to stay tuned to the movement of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Because it may move them in dramatically unexpected directions. And I would say the same thing to you. The Holy Spirit guides us.
Here’s the second thing. The Holy Spirit equips us. Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 both have lists of gifts. You know, it drives me crazy when I see in schools the term Gifted and Talented classes. Some of our kids were in GT classes. I don’t mind those classes, but I don’t like the name. The implication is that if you’re not in that, you’re in the “ungifted and not talented” class. That’s just not right. All of us are gifted. All of us are talented. What the Scripture teaches us is that at the moment you were born, at your creation, God imbued you with gifts, spiritual gifts. You remember I said that the word for the Holy Spirit is the same word for “breath?” When God breathed into your nostrils the breath of life you were imbued with spiritual gifts.
First Corinthians 12 has the best single sentence explanation of that. It says, “To each is given a manifestation of the Holy Spirit for the common good.” To each of us is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. You have been given spiritual gifts. And what happens is when we respond to God’s nudging in our life, God’s prompting, God’s call on our lives, when we step forward and we respond to that call, those spiritual gifts are like activated in us. We are equipped to do the things God’s called for us to do.
So when I see someone that is hurting, really sad, we think to ourselves, “I wish I could do something about their pain.” So you get that little nudging in your heart, and you say, “There’s really nothing I can do.” That spiritual gift won’t be activated. You think to yourself, “I’m not equipped for this.”
But I’ll tell you that I cannot tell you how many times I’ve stood outside a hospital door thinking to myself, “I am not equipped for this. I’ve got nothing to say.” Then I step inside that situation and find myself equipped, the spiritual gifts activated. In a way it’s not a weird feeling, it’s just this realization that God will give you what you need to do that for which God calls you.
Now how you determine it is that sometimes you have to try. You have to take that step and see if God equips you. Then you kind of know what your spiritual gifts are. If you’re not a teacher, please don’t teach. We don’t want you. The kids will never come back if you’re a terrible teacher. But sometimes you don’t really know till you try, till you step into that – respond to that little nudging, that call - and you’ll discover that God equips you. Those spiritual gifts are activated in your life.
Seth Godin the marketing guy has written a billion books, and I like them because they’re really short. He wrote a book called The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (And When to Stick), and it’s about how a business will try something new, and as soon as you try something new the first experience you get when trying this new thing is a dip. Things go worse before they get better. And if you stick with it and continue to persevere on the course, it will turn up and you’ll begin to excel. He says, “Of course the problem is that you’re never really sure if you’re in a dip or in a plummet.”
When we try things what happens is that we try them, and at first they may not be easy, they may not be simple or seem natural to us. But as we keep at it, we find that we become more and more equipped. And if we don’t, then that’s a pretty good indication we’re not in the right spot. We’re not doing the right thing. We need to try something different. And that’s the way life works. You can keep doing the same thing you’ve always done if you want to. But I would suggest to you that God has placed the spiritual gifts within you, so that when you respond to God’s prompting in your life, you’ll find yourself equipped to do that to which God calls you.
God guides us, God equips us, and finally, God grows us, sanctifies us. I believe that probably the most important passage of Scripture about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament other than the passage in John is Galatians 5. There Paul compares life in the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, with life in the flesh, walking in the flesh. What he is saying is that, “The works of the flesh are these…” And then there’s a list of not so good stuff. Then he says, “But the fruit of the Spirit [Gal. 5:22, 23] is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,gentleness, and self-control.” Fruit. God grows us, matures us, sanctifies us – that means forms us so that we become more like Christ – and we produce more fruit of the Spirit.
Sometimes people will say to me, “My life took a dramatic turn. I was reading Gideons’ Bible in a motel room, and all of a sudden I am different.” Now I shouldn’t make light of that, I think that actually does happen, and it’s an awesome thing when it does. But it’s uncommon. For most of us the growth that God works in us is just that – it’s growth. It happens over time. It’s gradual. That’s how fruit comes to pass. You don’t walk by one day and there’s no fruit then the next day there’s fruit. It takes time. It happens within us as we’re shaped and formed by the Holy Spirit, as we respond to events in our lives. We become more like Christ and we bear fruit.
Some of you may have heard this poem before, but one of the things that’s interesting is that I went to look for it online earlier in the week and discovered there are like a hundred different versions of it. So I chose this one. It’s anonymous. “I asked God for all things, that I might enjoy life. And God said, ‘Rather I will give you life so that you might enjoy all things.’ I asked God to tell me what to do and God said, ‘Rather I will give you wisdom so you will know.’ I asked God to give me strength. God said, ‘Rather will I use your difficulties to make you strong.’ I asked God to take away my pain. God said, ‘Rather it is not for me to take it away but for you to give it up.’ I asked God to grant me patience, God said, ‘Patience isn’t granted. It’s learned through tribulation.’ I asked God to give me happiness. And God said, ‘Rather I give you blessings, happiness is up to you.’ I asked God to give me love. God said, ‘Rather I will send to you those in need to whom you might give your love.’”
God takes all of those components of our lives. I don’t believe God sends bad things our way. But God takes all the components of our lives and uses those things to grow us. The question that I hope you’ll always be asking is, “What is God trying to do in me right now? What is the Holy Spirit trying to do in my life, in my heart, through this event or this experience? What is God trying to grow in me that I might produce more fruit?”
Let me close with a story I’ve shared with you before I think it was in our Holy Spirit series, but it’s so powerful for me I like to keep it in my head and maybe you will, too. Many years ago I had a friend here at St. Luke’s, Kent Kilbourne. Some of you know Kent. He was the Singles Minister here when I was the Youth Pastor. We had a great time – got in a lot of trouble. Which is what made it fun.
Some years ago Kent asked me to go sailing with him. I lived in League City at the time, and he lived in the Fort Worth area. He brought his catamaran and asked if I’d sail with him. I was busy on a Saturday afternoon, so I said that I could do it very early on Saturday morning. He said, “We’re going to go out on Clear Lake, and we’re going to sail.”
I met him early that morning. We went over to Clear Lake, and it was like glass, not even a shred of wind anywhere. He started to put the boat in the water, and I said, “Kent, why don’t we just go to breakfast? It’s not going to be much fun to paddle around out on Clear Lake with you this morning in your catamaran.” He said, “Come on! We’re going to do this.” So we put the catamaran in the water off the ramp, and he pushes it out and puts his car and trailer away. Then he came out and got on the catamaran. He pushed it a bit, and we sat out there. Just sat there. I look at him as if to say, “Come on, Kent, really?”
He said something that has always stuck with me, and this is something I hope you’ll take away. He said, “Pace, you’ll never know if the wind’s blowing until you put up the sail.” And he put up the sail and Kent’s a master sailor, and he was able to catch just a little wind. It doesn’t take a lot of wind to move a catamaran, and especially on a flat lake. And we just glided across Clear Lake. It was gorgeous. It was an awesome time, quiet, and he was just that good at it.
I’ve always thought that we say, “The Holy Spirit isn’t doing anything in my life.” Put up the sail. We’ll never know what God is doing, till we put up the sail.
Let’s pray. Lord God, we do believe you want to work in our lives, to move in our lives like the wind. To guide us, to equip us and empower us, to grow us, to transform us, to change us, that we might produce fruit. God, tune us into your Holy Spirit, that we might follow it. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.