The Importance of the Holy Spirit

I used to be the "moral Christian." I said the sinner's prayer, believed in God, believed that Jesus died and rose again, believed in the Bible (even though I never read it for myself), and believed everything ever taught to me by other believers. All I had to say to another Christian was that I was a "Christian," and I was liked, welcomed, and befriended...And then I decided to take it a step further and activate the Holy Spirit, the person I had in me upon Salvation, but never activated, because I didn't think I needed Him. Within a few months, I started seeing the world differently. Spirituality, whether it be God or Satan lies in LITERALLY EVERYTHING. I stopped listening to secular music as it became unappealing and even uncomfortable. I stopped following trends. I stopped watching and started avoiding most of today's media, movies, TV shows, etc. I avoid everything God discerns in me to be dangerous if I see, hear, or read it. I avoid every form of witchcraft I can possibly recognize no matter how crazy. And most importantly, I started warning fellow "Christians" about everything the Holy Spirit was helping me see now that I had turned on my spiritual flashlight. Now, all of a sudden, I'm the weird, extreme, boring, religious, judgmental, over-zealous, legalistic, narcissistic Christian. By OTHER CHRISTIANS. Talk about being blindsided. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know my total surrender offended you.

Guys? Satan and his demons don't care that you said the sinner’s prayer and believe in Jesus, God, or even the mere existence of the Holy Spirit. He doesn't care if you read your Bible, believe what it says, and become a master theologian. You know why? Cause, he does all of that and IS a master theologian having lived with the Father Himself. And he still got kicked out of Heaven.

It's the moment you activate the Holy Spirit that he becomes afraid, because so long as you live religiously without fellowship with God and keep His very breath inside of you dormant, you remain blind to all of his evil. You are still spiritually blind with salvation. His evil is only exposed when you activate the Holy Spirit. It doesn't matter if you've accepted God and His Son Jesus. You don't have access to either of them without the third. you have not truly accepted God if you don't accept all 3 parts of Him. You can't protect your own spirit without the Holy One who created it giving you directions. God the Father doesn't give directions. Jesus the Son doesn't give you directions. Only God, the Holy Spirit will do this. It's the whole reason He exists, and also the reason Jesus needed to die in order to permit Him to! Believing that Jesus died and rose again means nothing if you deny the Holy Spirit. Accepting Jesus into your heart means nothing if you deny the part of Him who put Him there! It’s the same as saying you believe in God, but you don’t believe He created you.

The Holy Spirit is what separates religion from relationship. The only real and true Christianity has the Holy Spirit in it. If you are saved and believe, but you don't activate the Holy Spirit, you are still subject to the god of the world. You still have one of your feet in the world and you are not totally surrendered to God. God is three persons, Father (mind), Son (body), and Holy Spirit (spirit) as we are made in His Image. To accept Jesus is to surrender your body. To accept God is to surrender your mind. To accept the Holy Spirit is to surrender your spirit. And guess which one is eternal? Guess which one really matters at the end of life, what Jesus means when He says God wants your HEART? Your heart isn't your physical heart, but your SPIRIT. You can't give Him your body and your soul, but hold onto your spirit, because it's not yours. It's His. Your job is to give the heart He made for you back to Him so He can fix it the way He designed it to be. If you don't let Him fix it, you are trying to run a "holy" body and mind with the rotten rusted out, sin-stained core you were born with on account of the curse. The Bible even says that the heart is deceitful and will in turn, affect your body and mind. Know what that means? It's impossible to live a holy life without giving God your spirit, no matter how much you believe in Him, no matter how much you believe in Jesus, and no matter how much you believe in God. And God has a name for people like you: Lukewarm. And written in His own Words in His own Book, He will spit you out of His mouth.

You cannot understand correctly or apply anything you learn from His Word without the Holy Spirit. You cannot have perfect unity with the church without Him. You cannot have a proper marriage without Him. ANY benefit that comes with being a Christian written in Scripture, you cannot access without the Holy Spirit! Why? Because our flesh will always try to override our spirit through our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). That’s right. Logic and theology are useless without the Holy Spirit, and relying on them alone will guarantee that you will misinterpret the Scripture you’re reading!

I saw a post recently:

"Warning, rebuke, and correction are not judging" (@pastorpatrickk). God does this, so why do you get angry when a man/woman OF God does this? How do you know they weren't sent BY God to do just that, because you ignored HIM HIMSELF???"It's only judging to those who want to remain in their sins [for those who are unbelievers]." I want to second that: It's also judging to Christians who still have one foot in the world.The reason Christians get mad at Spirit-filled Christians is because their demons get angry. And these aren't spirits of possession, or witchcraft, or oppression, or all those other "extreme" spirits (although they very well could be). These are spirits of pride and religiosity, the demons which Christians are not exempt from, especially if they are not shielded by the Holy Spirit. And today, this is no surprise, because Biblical Christianity is unpopular, while popular Christianity is un-Biblical. Biblical Christianity involves the Holy Spirit PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS.

We need to rebrand that phrase "Ya'll need Jesus," to "Ya'll need the Holy Spirit!" Because today, people want all of Jesus’ love culture without the Holy Spirit’s Truth culture. They only want the part of God that will tell them what they want to hear, when in reality, if Jesus were to appear to them and tell them the truth, it would offend them. Jesus said it Himself, “I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life. You can only get to the Father through Me!” (John 14:6).

You can only get to the Father through TRUTH. Not relative truth. Not personal truth. Not even scientific truth. Holy Spirit Truth! Whether you are offended by the statement is up to you. Do you want to live a religious life relying on simply faith and a Bible, or do you want an actual relationship with God?