Day 32: Presenting the Holy Spirit

Today I revealed to the worship leader at the church I pastor that in July I will be doing a three week series on the Holy Spirit. This is a tough topic to cover as there are a lot of different factors that come in to play. My biggest concern in talking about the Holy Spirit is that too many times when you hear teachings on this in certain denominations it is done in a fake, cheesy, kind of way. Just “Youtube” Robert Tilton and see what I am talking about.

I recall being a youth pastor and attending a mass youth event where the speaker presented the Holy Spirit in a less than biblical way. There were youth pastors and youth groups walking out. This issue can be forced in ways that if the pastor can just get a person to speak in tongues (even if it is made up) they feel happy and accomplished. I recall people telling me once that they just did what evangelist wanted them to do to shut them up so they can go. That is not the way I want to present the Holy Spirit…perhaps it will be more of a presenting and teaching and let it grow in the people that hear. In other words…a teaching on the Holy Spirit without the hype of emotionalism/manipulation and let the people hearing mull it over in days and weeks to come.

There are many issues in Christianity that are just way to powerful to find resolve by the end of one service or series for that matter. I do believe the Holy Spirit is at work in a person and compels a person to come to Christ. This could however be one of those topics where you don’t always find resolve right away. Things that I have issue with or struggle with is the fanaticism that can sometimes come with this topic. Different issues like being slain in the spirit….this raises an eyebrow for me. I have seen it before and can’t help but think this happened only a couple of times in the bible. Yet you see people get caught up in a “revival” and mass amounts of people fall. I recall having a conversation with some staff pastors at Brownsville church where the revival happened in Florida, they would get so disgruntled with people that did fanatical things. We have to watch out how we present such a powerful thing in churches. This will be a subject I will wrestle with for some time in order to present this topic in a real way.