What Happens When I Actually Start Using the Holy Spirit?
By Angela D. Thomas, DrPH, MPH, MBA
You start doing what you were never able to do on your own. When you stop leaving the Holy Spirit in the box and start walking with Him daily, you get the everyday stuff right and the hard stuff right, and your life becomes the kind of proof that points other people straight to God.
We have spent all week on one gift. We found out the Holy Spirit is God living in you. We pulled Him out of the special-occasion cabinet. We took Him out of the box we kept Him boxed up in. And we claimed the full VIP access Jesus already bought. So let's land the plane. What actually happens when you stop admiring this gift and start using it?
What Did Jesus Promise About the Ones Who Use the Spirit?
Something almost too big to believe. Jesus, the same One who bought you this gift, said this about the people who would carry the Helper after Him. John 14:12 (NKJV) says, "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father." Greater works. Read it again. We sit in awe of the things Jesus did, and He turns around and says the ones who believe in Him will do the works He did, and greater. That is not hype. That is a promise, straight from His mouth, tied directly to the Helper He was about to send.
That means the ceiling on your life is not your own talent, your own energy, or your own willpower. The ceiling is what God can do through a woman who actually uses what He put inside her. Most of us have been living so far under that ceiling, because the gift has been sitting in the box.
So imagine what your life looks like when the box finally comes open. Imagine getting the easy stuff and the hard stuff right, not by gritting your teeth harder, but by leaning on the One God already placed inside you. That is not a fantasy. That is the normal Christian life He designed, and it is available to you the very moment you decide to use what you already have.
And This Gift Doesn't Expire
Here is the beauty of this particular VIP status. It is forever. When my husband and I get our VIP seats at an event, we get an hour, maybe two, and then it is over. We go home, and if there is another event, we pay all over again. The Holy Spirit is not like that. Jesus said the Helper would abide with you forever. John 14:16 (NKJV) says the Father "will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever." You never lose your seat. You never get walked out. You never have to buy your access again. He moved in for good.
So the only real question left is not whether you have the gift. You do. It is whether you will use it.
What Does a Spirit-Filled Life Actually Produce?
Two things, and you need both. First, you finally start getting the everyday stuff right. The patience, the peace, the joy that does not rise and fall with your circumstances. Second, and this is the one that changes everything, you start getting the hard stuff right too. You forgive the person you swore you never would. You show grace where you used to keep score. You love people with an agape love that is honestly not natural for a single one of us. That does not come from trying harder. It comes from a Helper you finally decided to lean on.
And do not miss how ordinary the greater works can start out. It does not have to be raising the dead on day one. Sometimes the greater work is that you stayed calm in a moment that used to wreck you. Sometimes it is that you forgave the person your flesh wanted to hold hostage forever. Sometimes it is peace in a season that logically should have taken you all the way out. Those quiet miracles are the Spirit at work, and they build into the bigger ones.
And here is where it all points. When you get the daily stuff right and you start walking in the greater works God has for you, your life becomes a testimony. The world is watching to see if this faith is real, and nothing preaches louder than a woman visibly carrying a peace, a power, and a love she could not have manufactured on her own. That is how the gift meant for you ends up reaching somebody who has never met Him.
So do not leave this awesome gift on the shelf one more day. Pick it up. Use it. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you, today, in the small things and in the hard things. He has been in you the whole time, just waiting to be used.
Take this to the Word yourself. John 14:12-18, Acts 1:8.
What This Means for You
If you fully used the Holy Spirit in you starting today, what is the first hard thing He would help you finally get right?
This is the final post in the An Awesome Gift series. Here's the whole week if you want to walk back through it:
Friday: What Happens When I Actually Start Using the Holy Spirit?
I teach God's Word weekly inside the SheShed Community, and this is exactly the kind of teaching that hits different when you're in the room for it. The replay of this teaching, “An Awesome Gift,” is available inside the community as well. Come sit with us.
Comments