Your Encounters With The Holy Spirit
Name and Share Them—Seek More
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All Christians have encountered the Spirit. The Apostle Paul ex-plains, “No one can say ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ except by the Holy Spir-it” (1 Corinthians 12:3 NIV). All who confess the Apostles’ Creed declare their belief in third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
Yet most Christians expect little of the Spirit today, especially those of us in mainline traditional church bodies. We tend to leave the Spirit back in those days when Jesus and Paul said so much about him. We are too easily satisfied to keep Holy Spirit confined to the creeds. While we confess trinitarian beliefs about Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we practice binitarian ministry emphasizing the Father and the Son, but for the most part forgetting the Spirit.
That is too bad. Our lives will be spiritually richer when we learn how to recognize encounters with the Spirit in our lives today, when we share these Spirit-encounters with others, and then when we deliberately seek more of the Spirit’s influence for the days ahead.
We are used to thinking about objective truth—the kind we confess in creeds and catechisms. These doctrines are very important. But the truth that counts is the life-changing relationship of trust in the Christ who has acted on our behalf. In that relationship truth becomes subjective for us personally. Truth happens and we are in the truth. Such encounters restore to us our true being. They happen when the Holy Spirit comes to each personally as God’s grace in action.
“Having a personal relationship with Christ” is a good phrase heard among some Christians. It is implied in the theology of the Reformers but not much highlighted in my experience.
Name an encounter when it happens. Share these encounters with others. Seek more encounters by preparing yourself and inviting the Spirit. These pursuits will provide an improved rhythm for living the abundant life Jesus came to provide for his followers (John 10:10). Such emphasis can amount to developing a new church culture.
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About the Book
From the author:
• I think of the Holy Spirit as the dove from Jesus’ baptism whispering godly thoughts into my ear.
• The Holy Spirit is God’s wind in our lives today. He can bring excitement to believers on their journey to becoming more like Christ.
• I will try to make the best case for how we Word-oriented believers can learn to thrive in the Spirit and then share these ways with others. What I offer, in my view, does not contradict anything in classical Reformation theology
Your Encounters with the Holy Spirit: Name and Share Them—Seek More explores
• how to recognize the Holy Spirit at work today;
• what the Bible teaches us on the Spirit’s work now;
• how to share encounters with the Spirit; and
• how to shape a more Spirit-oriented church culture.
Copy and use chapter discussion guides in order to involve those who have not yet read the book. Study on your own key New Testament passages set aside in a separate section. Consider “A Coherent Theology for the Work of the Holy Spirit Today,” presented in a final essay on the eighteenth-century Continental Pietists and the nineteenth-century Awakening movements.
Share your stories and reflections through the forums available on www.ThrivingintheSpirit.net. The resources section includes outlines for preaching series and ways to share your own resources.
About the Author
Pastor and psychologist David S. Luecke, PhD, is the missions pastor of a large church in the Cleveland area, where he has been for twenty-four years. He had an earlier career teaching organizational behavior in business schools and church management at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is increasingly intrigued by practical questions of how the Holy Spirit motivates and changes believers and congregations today.