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Job Essentials: The Holy Spirit and the Power of God

Ron Ford August 2, 2022

What are we saying when we talk about the Holy Spirit or Spiritual Gifts?

Wow, this is pretty deep water we are jumping into now. To try to explain the Holy Spirit is to start talking about the Trinity. And the mysterious concept of the Trinity is that when we look at how God has revealed himself in the Bible (remember, the Bible is first and foremost God’s self-revelation to us) we meet the odd truth that God is singular, there is only one true God, and yet the one God of the Bible is known and experienced as the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Entire libraries of books have been written by bible scholars and theologians trying to explain why we are convinced that this is the case, and more importantly, what that means for those living as followers of Jesus – we can’t reproduce all of that here.

There are two things out of all this mystery that we want you to see at this point in this course: first, the Holy Spirit who comes into the life of every believer is the spirit of Jesus (e.g., Romans 8:9-11), and second, spiritual gifts are how we describe what we see, hear and experience (I Corinthians 12:7) when Jesus, who is in us, speaks or acts through us as he continues the work of His Kingdom on earth.

The Holy Spirit in your life = the Spirit of Jesus
Spiritual Gifts = the Spirit of Jesus continuing the work he was doing in the gospels

This is the foundational reality by which Power Ministry works. The power of God enabling us to serve others through prayers for healing, prophetic words, and revelations of God’s love and wisdom is all really the work of Jesus in us loving others through us. He is continuing to do what he did when he was here among us on the earth, only now he is working by filling the church, which is his body, and empowering and guiding us to join him in his mission. 

This may seem like a strange thing we are describing here (Jesus in us working through us) but really this dynamic began with the disciples in the gospels. At first, Jesus was living with the disciples and they were in his physical presence and heard his physical voice and responded to his words. Jesus (with them) authorized the disciples with his own authority (Matthew 10:1) to go and do the works that he had done, that is, he delegated work to them. They obeyed him and God’s power backed them up. At Pentecost, when the promised Holy Spirit was poured out on the church, we discover that the spirit poured out is the spirit of Jesus who now lives within all disciples. But the change of location (before he was just with them and now he is within them) doesn’t change their work or their responsibility. Jesus continues to speak to them and authorize them to go and speak and do his works in his name and the power of God continues to back them up. 

Why the Holy Spirit needed to come at Pentecost

Spiritual Gifts are NOT merely augmented natural human abilities

The Distribution of Spiritual Gifts

Bonus Selection

Here are videos produced by The Bible Project that provide excellent overviews of some of the key ideas we are addressing in this lesson. Enjoy!