New Series

I just started a new series this last week titled "Hello My Name is Holy Spirit". Without a doubt your relationship with the Holy Spirit is the most underrated in your life. We don't get it.

This is a very intimidating series though. This is one of those topics that everyone has an opinion on. So many people have stopped me and made comments on what they believe about the Holy Spirit. I have never taught on my relationship with the Holy Spirit before. I have sat under some really great teaching on it but have never personally taught on it before. Why? It intimidates me. It such a charged "issue". It's not even an issue though...it's a relationship. But in all of the confusion of who the Holy Spirit is we have minimized him to an "issue" that everyone is supposed to have an opinion on.

Truthfully, because the relationship with the Holy Spirit has been so poorly modeled by so many throughout so many lifetimes, I have been cautious about taking my "stance". I don't want people to think that I am crazy, a cook, a quack, a freak. But I can't not talk about it. When I read just how much Jesus stressed my relationship with the Holy Spirit in Scripture I am faced with the reality of my desperate need for the Holy Spirit. I can't hide it. It's just life. I am so grateful for the intimacy I experience with the Lord, but who is dwelling in me? I have no reason to not be intimate with the Holy Spirit other than other people have scared me away from him. That's crazy...and sad to say...about me.

The one thing I hate about how people have turned this from a relationship into an issue is that the person of the Holy Spirit has been minimized to the gift of speaking in tongues. How silly! That's like minimizing Preston Morrison down to just a pastor. There are so many more important facets to my life than what I do for a living. I am much more than a pastor just as the Holy Spirit is much more than the tongue speaker.

For so much of my life I have been surrounded by a conversation that asks the question "Do you speak in tongues?" I hate that question. Basing whether or not someone is saved or how spiritual they are solely on if they speak in tongues is as crazy as assuming someone is saved simply because they go to church. The better question is "Are you walking more intimately with God's Holy Spirit today than you were yesterday?" Now that is an important question.

So, are you?