Longing for the Holy Spirit’s Power

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Nancy Guthrie: It is my joy to get to welcome you to the gospel coalition Women’s Conference. 2024 How about that? You? I welcome to all of you who are in the room, and welcome to those of you who are joining us online for this session. I am so grateful to crossway for sponsoring this breakout session. Crossway publishes gospel centered, Bible based, content that aims to honor our Savior and serve the church. You can visit their booth right outside this room in the exhibit hall to learn more. I’m so grateful that crossway is a publisher for me, and I just went through the booth, and they have this beautiful little brochure about my book. I just newest book, which I just got to put my hands on today. Out there called saved and in their booth, they’ll give you a little sample booklet of the Bible study that goes with it. So go see them. So you are here for wind and fire. How about that yes, Wind and Fire, how the whole Bible helps us to long for the Holy Spirit. And before I get started, I just want to show you the books that I read that really helped me in preparing this talk, because after I gave the title, I figured out I had a whole lot to learn to be able to present this to you today. So I want to show you some books that really helped me with this, and three of them are out here in the bookstore. Perspectives on Pentecost. That first one, it’s the one that’s not here.

However, the people at PNR, they’re all set to give you a code to get it 40% off and send it to you. So perspectives on Pentecost, by Richard Gaffin, the Holy Spirit, by Sinclair Ferguson, a beautiful, solid book, and it’s it’s on a table out there that says, like, best of the best, or something like that. The Holy Spirit, an introduction by Fred Sanders, you’ll find at the crossway booth, and then the coming of the Holy Spirit, you’ll find that at the Matthias media booth. And there would be no talk today without these resources. So I hope you’ll take a look at them if you want to learn more. So I want to ask you this, what comes to mind when you think about wind and fire. Wind, I mean, there’s nothing like a gentle breeze on a warm day. But have you ever experienced wind so strong that it’s blowing over 18 wheelers on the interstate or lifting off roofs from houses, that’s like a whole different kind of wind, isn’t it? And how about fire? I mean, we love the crackle and glow of a fire in the fireplace on a cold night, but flames that are taking over the home of loved ones, where they might be sleeping, that’s a whole other thing. Or flames beginning to take over the forest you’re camping in that’s very different. And so we recognize Wind and Fire carries with it all of these various aspects. And what’s interesting is that throughout the Bible, the presence of God in the world is experienced in the lives of his people, and it’s often connected to wind and fire. Think back with me through some instances in the Scriptures, the Lord spoke through a whirlwind to job and then from the burning bush to Moses. Fire came down from heaven when the glory of the Lord filled the temple in Jerusalem, fire fell from heaven on Elijah’s sacrifices, the glory of God appeared to Ezekiel as fire and brightness that interestingly, interestingly, arrived on a stormy wind, and the Holy Spirit in particular, is identified with wind and fire throughout the scriptures. And as we work our way through the story that the Bible tells to us, what we find is we find ourselves longing for that wind and fire to do its unique work in our lives and its work in the world.

And while there are many more longings. And six that are uniquely fulfilled by the work of Holy Spirit. My time demands that I limit myself, so I’m going to present to you six longings that I think we all have, and we’re going to look at the way the Bible points us toward the Holy Spirit as being the person of the Godhead who fulfills those longings. Now we only have to get to the second verse in the Bible to see the Spirit at work in the world we read at the beginning of the Bible, you can probably say it with me. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So get that the spirit is hovering, there’s a sense of almost like fluttering over this formlessness, over the emptiness, over the darkness, kind of like a bird hovers over its nest where new life is being brought forth. And this brings us to the first way that the whole Bible helps us to long for the Holy Spirit, and that is number one. We long for life and newness. We need the Holy Spirit to bring us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. But we also need ongoing life and newness, don’t we? We want to be women who can say with Paul so we do not lose heart. Though, our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day and from the first page of the Bible, we are shown that it is the Spirit who generates this life and newness that we long for. We read in Genesis that God created the heavens and the earth through his word. That’s why we see over and over again.

And God said, and by His Spirit, the Spirit brings life to creation, we read that God breathed the breath of life into Adam, and it’s that very same breath that breathes life into God’s people throughout the Bible story. So we see that breath of life there in Genesis one and two, and then we get to Genesis three, which always ruins the story, doesn’t it? We read in Genesis chapter three about sin and death coming into the world, and the reality is ever since then, everything gets old, everything breaks down. And it’s because of that reality that we find ourselves longing for the life and newness that the spirit generates in this world and in our lives. Now, as we work our way through the Scriptures, when we get to the writings of the prophet Ezekiel, verse chapters 36 and 37 he shows us, first he speaks a promise of newness through the Spirit, and then he shows us a picture of the work of the Spirit generating newness. So at this point in Israel’s history, when Ezekiel writes his prophecy, the people of God, they’ve been scattered into exile because of their idolatry and their impurity. Their idolatry has defiled their bodies. It’s defiled the promised land, and they are in need of cleansing and newness. And so God speaks to his people through the prophet Ezekiel, with this promise, a promise of cleansing and newness. Here’s what he said and says in Ezekiel 36 God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all of your uncleannesses and from all your idols. I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I’m going to remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Can you see that. God is promising a future intensification of the Spirit’s work that was going to be far greater than God’s people had ever experienced under the Old Covenant, and rather than his law remaining an external set of rules written on tablets made of stone.

He says that God’s desires would be written on their hearts by the Spirit. In other words, get this promise God’s desires were going to become the desires of his people. Doesn’t that sound good, so that what they would want most would be to conform to God’s own beauty and joy and goodness. So there’s the promise of newness. Then we go to the next chapter on Ezekiel, Ezekiel 37 and this newness is pictured. How is it pictured? It’s pictured in a vision Ezekiel has of a huge valley that is filled with dry, lifeless bones. And Ezekiel is told to prophesy over the lifeless bones. And here’s what he says. He says, As I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. And then he said to me, Thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds o breath and breathe on these slain that they may live. So I prophesied, as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. So in this vision, Ezekiel four sees a day when this wind, the very breath of God, was going to blow, the same breath that breathed life into Adam is going to blow, bringing life to the deadness of God’s people. So we read this in the prophet Ezekiel, and we can’t help but wonder, when is this going to happen? How is this going to happen. And then we turn the page to the New Testament, and we hear John the Baptist speaking, and he says, I baptize you with water for repentance, but there is one coming after me, and He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. And so we begin watching for him. And there’s this Pharisee named Nicodemus. He’s been watching, and he comes to Jesus in the middle of the night, and Jesus tells him what he really needs.

Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And so that brings up the question, I mean, how does that happen? How does how does someone experience this kind of life and newness that could only be described as a like going into the womb and being born a second time? Well, it’s only by the wind of the Spirit blowing in their lives. Jesus continues. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. So Jesus himself is talking about this new birth that happens by the Spirit. But then that raises the question, how is the good news about this second birth going to spread well by the work of the Spirit in the form of wind and fire, we get to Acts chapter two. It’s after the ascension of Jesus, and we read that the disciples are gathered in the upper room and they’re praying when it says, suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as of fire. Her appeared to them and rested on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So you see what happened there on that day of Pentecost was that both the promise of Ezekiel, and that picture Ezekiel presented, both were fulfilled. The spirit is now indwelling those who put their faith in Christ. And on that day, a great army was raised up, not the kind of army that brings death into the world. But the kind of army that brings life into the world through the declaration of the gospel at Pentecost, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire that John the Baptist said Jesus would accomplish took place the wind that Nicodemus, and in fact, every one of us in this room needs, was blowing through, bringing the newness we crave. You know, my friends, there’s something we want.

We need a kind and quality of life that we actually have no power to generate for ourselves. We want to be done with all of the thoughts and desires and habits that have shaped our lives, that have only led to misery. And so we long for the Holy Spirit, for that wind to blow, and when it does, we find ourselves thinking new thoughts about what is worthwhile. We find we have new desires to please Him, a new hunger for his word. We have these new habits of preferring God over anything and everything that the world has to offer. This is what the Holy Spirit does. It’s a miracle of newness, and we long for it, don’t we? All right, we long for newness and life. Number two, we long for guidance. When God brought his people out of Egypt, he led them through the wilderness. We read in Exodus, 13 by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, his guidance toward the blessed life in the Promised Land was in the visible form of fire. And when I read it, I think I kind of wish God would lead me that way, don’t you? Then they get to the Red Sea, and God drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and he makes the sea bed dry land so they could walk across it. And when I read that, I kind of think, kind of wish God would open up a way for me through difficulties in life like that, they came to Mount Sinai, which was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire to give his people his law, which would tell them how to live under his blessing in his land. But once they were in the land, rather than love God alone, they began to worship many false gods, and they were led by many false shepherds, guided by false shepherds. And so the Prophet, as Isaiah, spoke to the people of Judah, and here’s what he said.

He said, Those who guide this people have been leading them astray, and those who are guided by them are swallowed up so clearly at this point in the Bible story, in the history of God’s people, they needed a wiser guide for life in this World, and Isaiah gave them hope. He told them about One who would come, who would be just the wise guide they would need. He said, There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit and the spirit. It of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Can you hear it? God was promising to, one day, send a descendant of David upon whom the Spirit would rest and enable him to provide his people the wisdom and guidance they need to walk in his ways. And that descendant came in the person of Jesus, who we read in in the Gospel of Luke, grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. You see, the spirit by whom he was conceived was at work in his life as he matured, making him wise. And then at His baptism, the Spirit descended on him like a dove. This was like Jesus’s own personal Pentecost. You see the Spirit anointed Jesus in His humanity, empowering him to guide us into wisdom. Jesus stood on a mountain, and he began to point people. He said there’s two paths, and he pointed people toward the path that would lead to life, instead of the path that would lead to destruction. He pointed them toward true blessedness. He taught them how to pray and how to give and how to build a life on a solid foundation rather than on sand, and how to lay up treasures in heaven. Later, as Jesus was preparing to go to the cross, He told His disciples that He was going away, and he said, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you, to you so get this. He’s he’s telling the disciples, The Holy Spirit is going to help you to remember everything that I’ve said, so that you can record it in the Gospels and expound on it and explain it in in the epistles. You see when we read this statement in John 14, he’s going to bring to your our remembrancies thing, he’s actually not speaking directly to us, and yet what he says to the disciples does matter to us, you see, because in our longing for guidance, we find ourselves so grateful for The work of the Spirit as we find the understanding we long for and the guidance we long for, not through mystical experience, but in the pages of Scripture written under the Spirit’s inspiration, we so long for the Spirit to guide us, don’t we, but when I when, when we say that, sometimes I think we mean and that we expect that guidance, if it’s really spiritual, is going to somehow be extra biblical. But what we must know is that the spirit has sovereignly bound himself to the word He has authored All scripture is, you know, breathed out by God, and when you hear breathed out by God, you should think the Holy Spirit is at work.

He’s telling me what I most need to know. I must listen. You see, the Spirit did not only inspire the written word, he illumines it. He gives us understanding of His word. He is guiding you and me, even now, pointing us toward Christ through the word that He has authored. Number three, we long for power, power, and the Bible story shows us that from the very beginning, it is the Spirit who empowers people to accomplish God’s work in the world. In the very beginning, it was the spirit hovering, fluttering in power that brought grief. Nation into being, and later, it was the spirit that was poured out on Moses and then on Joshua, that enabled them to lead God’s people in out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, and then into the promised land. In the book of Judges, we read about the spirit rushing upon people like oath nail and Gideon and Samson, enabling them to save God’s people out of crisis after crisis. Then we turn the page to First Samuel, and we see him take that horn of oil and anoint David in the presence of his brothers, and it says that the Spirit of the Lord came down on David that day forward, empowering him for his role as king. And then much later in the Old Testament, we read about a group of exiles who’ve returned from Babylon with Ezra to Jerusalem to do the work of rebuilding the temple there, and they’re facing significant opposition and obstacles to the work. And the Lord has a word for them through the prophet, Zechariah, and it is this not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord, this is how they’re going to accomplish the work that God has called them to do, not through human effort, merely and not by human power, but by the power of the Spirit. When I read about them becoming discouraged in the work, I think how easy it can be to become weary in our well doing. I’m not the only 1am. I? And some of us are such doers. So much we want to do. We take on the responsibility for ministry, and sometimes we take it all upon ourselves, like it’s all up to us. But it isn’t. It is not by our might or by our power, or at least what we want to accomplish in the world. We really we don’t want to accomplish what can be accomplished through only through human effort, using human strategy, human ingenuity, human charisma or cleverness. No, we want to give ourselves to the work that is not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit. And so we find ourselves desperate for the Holy Spirit’s power, for ministry clarity, ministry integrity, ministry longevity, ministry effectiveness. And what’s amazing and interesting is that even Jesus needed the power of the Spirit to accomplish the work he came to do. You know, Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully human, and in that humanity needed the Holy Spirit to accomplish the work, the ministry He came to do. In fact, John the Baptist attributed the power and authority with which Jesus spoke to the unlimited measure of the Spirit that was given to him. John said, he whom God has sent, utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. So the Spirit gave his teaching a sense of authority. The Spirit also filled Jesus with the power he needed to do battle against the powers of darkness. That’s one of the main reasons Jesus came into the world. He came into the world to destroy the works of the devil, and in his humanity, he needed power for his personal battle against temptation. There in the wilderness, power to demand or command demons to depart from a man inhabited by a legion of them.

Power to rule over the chaos of the sea. Power to overcome that temptation, to avoid the cross, and if Jesus needed the Spirit’s power to do battle against temptation in this world, how much more do you and I? I desperately need the Spirit’s power to say no to all the things that the world seeks to use to distract and even to destroy us. When we get to the book of Acts, we see that same power of the Spirit is at that was at work in Jesus is now at work in and through the apostles. And what is it that the spirit is empowering the apostles to do? Yes, they’re doing signs and wonders, but the focus of the Spirit’s power in the book of Acts is in equipping them and emboldening their presentation of the gospel, even though they are threatened and beaten and imprisoned and even stoned. You see, nobody continues to speak of Christ in the face of opposition and persecution with clarity and boldness and compassion and conviction, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. So let me ask you, Do you long for whatever way in which you are serving God. Do you? Do you long to serve God with genuine spiritual power? Anybody then you long for the Holy Spirit to work in you and through you? But I’ve got to tell you, this kind of power we’re talking about, it’s not necessarily showy, faithful Christian ministry that has genuine spiritual Power. It’s usually not very glamorous. It might not translate into a post on Instagram that gets a whole lot of likes. It may appear mundane and ordinary rather than spectacular or even supernatural. You see a spiritually powerful ministry. Is about faithfully pointing people to Christ over the long haul, often in unseen and perhaps in unappreciated ways. And you see that requires the power of the Spirit, that is what the Bible sets before us to long for even cry out for number four, we long for more of Christ. Now perhaps this is confusing to say that we long for the Holy Spirit because we long for Christ, but I think the Holy Spirit would hardly approve this message, because, you see, the Holy Spirit is all about pointing toward and glorifying Jesus Christ. Do you think you hear the Spirit speaking to you.

Well, here’s the test. If it’s the spirit, you can be sure that he is speaking of Christ. You see, if it’s all about you, if it’s about your destiny, it probably isn’t the Spirit who is speaking. Now, we might think that if we’re to really want to study and focus on the Holy Spirit, we should maybe talk about the Holy Spirit as much as we talk about Jesus. But in fact, that’s not the case. The truth is, the more we sync up with the work of the Holy Spirit, the more we find ourselves focusing on the person and work of Jesus, Christ, indeed, to become a more spiritual person is to be a person who’s falling more and more in love with Jesus Christ. And one significant way our longing for more of Christ causes us to long for more of the Holy Spirit is that while we are securely joined to Christ by faith, we have not yet received all of the benefits of being joined to Christ in their consummate, ultimate form. You see, there is so much more of Christ for us to experience when He comes again. The Bible tells us that when we’ve been joined to Christ, we have the spirit. Get these terms as a down payment, a pledge, a foretaste as the first fruits of the full inheritance. We will receive when Christ returns, every aspect of our salvation has a yet to be consummated aspect to it, and it is the Spirit that will bring these things in into conservation in our lives.

If you’re in Christ, it’s because of the Spirit’s work of regeneration. You were dead in trespasses and sins, but God has made you alive in Christ. But my friends, there is yet waiting for you a greater, far more pervasive, more permanent newness that is coming in the future. If you’re in Christ, the Holy Spirit has been and is at work in your life, sanctifying you. He’s transforming you more and more into the image of Christ. But that work of sanctification isn’t yet finished. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that one day we will be holy and blameless before him, and one day when the Spirit’s work of sanctification is complete, that’s what we’re going to be holy and blameless before him. The Spirit will do it. It’s the same with glorification and justification and adoption, all of these things we look we long for full possession of all we stand to inherit, because we belong to Christ, and one day, the spirit is going to bring us into possession, full possession of these things, all that Christ has prepared for us and purchased for us. Number five, we long for spiritual fruit to be manifested in our lives. Back in the old testament, Isaiah, he looked on the people of God, and he said, the soil of my people is growing up in thorns and briars. In other words, there was a spiritual barrenness to their lives. But once again, Isaiah was not finished speaking, because he said, there’s a day out in the future when the Spirit is going to be poured out from on high.

And when that happens, the wilderness is going to become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field of forest. And so how would the barrenness of God’s people become like a fruitful field, you guessed it, through the work of this Holy Spirit, through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, it is the Spirit who makes us fruitful in our lives. And don’t we love it that that Galatians tells us exactly what that fruit should look like. And don’t we long for that, but we long to love people, and not just the people we enjoy, but the people who annoy, the needy, people who don’t have anything to offer us in return. Well, the spirit generates that kind of love in our hearts. We long to have consistent joy in our lives that isn’t dependent on our circumstances, our or our emotional balance, and the spirit generates that kind of joy even in the midst of great sorrow. We long for peace, a settled sense of being right with God and each other, and the spirit is the source for that peace. We long to be patient when people are getting on our last nerve and ability to overlook offenses, and it is the Spirit who makes us slow to anger, even when we are repeatedly provoked. We long to be able to respond with to insults and slights with kindness. We long to be a beacon of goodness in a world of evil. We long to be gentle with our kids and with our aging parents, rather than being harsh or demeaning.

We long to be faithful in our marriages, in our work and supremely to our Savior. This is why we long for the Holy Spirit. We long for him to generate the fruit that only the spirit can generate in our lives, don’t we? Finally, number six, we long for glory. God created us for glory. He made us to share in His glory. Day. Could put it this way in Psalm eight, that humanity was made a little lower than the heavenly beings and was crowned with glory and honor. There were Adam and Eve in the Garden made in God’s glorious image, and they were supposed to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth so that the Earth would one day, be filled with men and women bearing God’s glorious image. But we know what happened when Adam and Eve sinned, the glory of the image of God in them became marred. Now they were faithful and multiplied, but the reality is that all of their offspring have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all of their offspring except one, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And Paul writes in to the Corinthians, None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory, but the grave could not contain the glory. And so right now, Jesus reigns in heaven as the only resurrected, fully glorified human being. He is the first, but he will not be the last, because you and I were created for glory. The mark that we were created to reach, but have fallen short of, was glory, and let me just be honest with you, we are never going to be able to bridge that gap on our own, through our own effort, we need someone who will bring us to glory, someone who will create glory within us, someone who will glorify us together with Christ.

That is why we long for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, my friends, is at work right now, transforming us from glory to glory, and the day is coming when He is going to transform the constitution of our very being, so that we will become glorious, like Jesus, Paul wrote to the Philippians, When Christ, who is your life, appears, Then you also will appear with Him in glory, there are many things in this life that you can’t be sure about. You can’t be sure how long your life is going to last, or what path it’s going to take, or what shape it’s going to take, but there are some things about which you can be certain if you are in Christ, and one of them is this, you will not only see His glory, you will share His glory. His glory is not only going to be revealed to you. It’s going to be revealed in you. And this is why we long for and love the Holy Spirit. He will do it. And so we long for the wind of the Spirit to blow in our lives, for the breath of the Spirit to fill our lungs and for the fire of the spirit to burn away any impurity in our lives that keeps us from being holy as He is holy.