Honoring the Holy Spirit
J.I. Packer provides a list of questions in Knowing God around properly responding to the Holy Spirit in our faith, life, and witness. These are piercing and profound questions for all Christians to consider.
"Do we honor the Holy Spirit by recognizing and relying on his work? Or do we slight him by ignoring it, and thereby dishonor not merely the Spirit but the Lord who sent him?
In our faith:
Do we acknowledge the authority of the Bible, the prophetic Old Testament and the apostolic New Testament which he inspired?
Do we read and hear it with the reverence and receptiveness that are due to the Word of God?
If not, we dishonor the Holy Spirit.
In our life:
Do we apply the authority of the Bible and live by the Bible, whatever anyone may say against it, recognizing that God’s Word cannot but be true, and that what God has said he certainly means, and he will stand behind it?
If not, we dishonor the Holy Spirit, who gave us the Bible.
In our witness:
Do we remember that the Holy Spirit alone, by his witness, can authenticate our witness, and look to him to do so, and trust him to do so, and show the reality of our trust, as Paul did, by eschewing the gimmicks of human cleverness?...
Can we doubt that the present barrenness of the church’s life is God’s judgment on us for the way in which we have dishonored the Holy Spirit?
And, in that case, what hope have we of its removal till we learn in our thinking and our praying and our practice to honor the Holy Spirit?"
