Who is the Holy Spirit?

What does the Holy Spirit do in our lives?

books to read

books to read

Without the Holy Spirit, Billy Graham's ministry wouldn’t have been possible. In this 1983 message from Sacramento, California, hear how the Spirit can help you live for Christ.

VIDEO RESOURCES

In this video, we explore the original meaning of the biblical concept of “spirit” and what it means that God’s Spirit is personally present in all of creation. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit was revealed through Jesus and sent out into the lives of his followers to bring about the new creation.

Want a fresh start? Learn how the Holy Spirit can transform your life in Billy Graham’s 1978 message from Kansas City, Missouri.

The ground and the center and the goal of all the truth the Spirit brings is the glory of Jesus Christ — the greatness, the excellency, the beauties of Jesus. The essence of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to magnify the beauty of Christ in the human mind and heart. Jesus said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

QUOTES

“The Lord challenges us to suffer persecutions and to confess him. He wants those who belong to him to be brave and fearless. He himself shows us how weakness of the flesh is overcome by courage of the Spirit. This is the testimony of the apostles and in particular of the representative, administrating Spirit. A Christian is fearless.”
— Tertullian
“What does the Spirit do? His works are ineffable in majesty, and innumerable in quantity. How can we even ponder what extends beyond the ages? What did He do before creation began? How great are the graces He showered on creation? What power will He wield in the age to come? He existed; He pre-existed; He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages. Even if you can imagine anything before the ages, you will discover that the Spirit is even further beyond.”
— St. Basil the Great
“The Christians’ life in all its aspects – intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness – is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it. So apart from him, not only will there be no lively believers and no lively congregations, there will be no believers and no congregations at all.”
— J.I. Packer
“When we are at our wits’ end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?”
— Karl Barth
“And to expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the Holy Spirit into silence.”
— A.W. Tozer
“What the soul is in our body, the Holy Spirit is in the body of Christ, which is the church.”
— Augustine
“The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the “spirit” of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about its “spirit” because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God. This third Person is called [. . .] the Holy Ghost or the ‘spirit’ of God.”
— C.S. Lewis