For
those of you that do not know, I have been writing books of encouragement for a
while now. My goal is to lift people’s spirits and let them know that there is
a God in Heaven that loves them, cares for them and desires to show them a
better more wonderful way of life. In my book entitled “The Holy Spirit of God: Who is He and what does He do? 13 Messages”
I give an example of How God uses His Holy Spirit to guide our lives daily. In
this book you will find on the first few pages about 120 attributes of the Holy
Spirit and the Scripture references where they can be found. In itself this is
an awesome study and by the end of it you will have an understanding of just
some of the work the Holy Spirit does on our behalf. It took a lot of research
to find these attributes and I did not want to waste them so I put them in the
book. Following that there are 13 messages that go more into depth of some of
those attributes. I know it will move your heart when you get into it. If you
have ever wondered about or questioned the who what where when and why of the
Holy Spirit, then please take the time to read this book. You will be enriched. It is only $6.50 0n Amazon at this site,
https://www.amazon.com/author/robertcoutts and worth every penny because you will read it over and over. I have enclosed below, a portion of chapter one for you to read for free and get an idea of what to expect. I trust you will enjoy it and please feel free to leave a comment either on Face book or at the end of this article on my Blog. Thanks for checking it out and be blessed today.
Here is the excerpt from the book...
CHAPTER 1
We Are One In The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Holy Trinity and He has been commissioned to be our helper. In this study we will look at many aspects of His work in and for us. We will look at what He is capable of and what He does for our everyday lives. Each one of us who have called upon the Lord to save our souls needs the touch of the Holy Spirit in their lives. He unites us, frees us, empowers us teaches loves and does so many things that change our lives. We will try to cover a host of works He does.
To start we must first recognize that He unites each one of us. Many have a different view of the person of the Holy Spirit. They have their own ideas of who He is and what He does and they are too comfortable in their thinking but are totally uneducated or unaware of the true Holy Spirit.
If we have a comfortable and domesticated view of the Holy Spirit, we may end up forgetting that God can and does break into our human lives. He does it in powerful and unexpected ways.
In this study we will see that this was the experience of the prophet Ezekiel. Sometimes he saw the Holy Spirit in almost physical terms. I wonder if Christians today take the Holy Spirit’s powerful and unexpected ministry seriously. We need to take a look at what exactly the Holy Spirit’s work is and there are three we will look at.
The first one is The Holy Spirit’s work is regeneration God’s relationship with Israel was a covenant or a promise He made with them. This included the requirements about their behavior toward Him and towards each other. God’s people received this lesson and were obligated to obey. Yet they still drifted apart from their responsibilities and profaned God’s name. What could God do? He could lower His standards so they could be within reach of His wayward people or He could change their hearts.
Both prophets, Ezekiel and Jeremiah prophesied that now God would not only be faithful to His covenant agreement but that He would also equip and empower them to keep their side of the bargain. God said,
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees. Ezekiel 11:19 and Ezekiel 36:26
The word Heart here means the entire personality. God was promising them a radical psychological implant, a complete change of heart so that by God’s Spirit people would be empowered to live. This hope is a reality through Christ’s work.
So the question is, what stops us from living up to God’s standards or for that matter, even our own moral standards? It’s not our environment. It’s not our economic circumstances. It’s not even our family backgrounds. Even though these things may aggravate the situation. What stops us is internal. We need a radical change of heart. That happens in the beginning of the Christian’s life and experience. It is the Spirit’s ministry of changing hearts.
The heart of stone talked about in Ezekiel. 36:26; is that human will which is hostile toward God, that will that is incapable of being changed for the better, it is this will that is not beyond the transforming work of God’s Holy Spirit.
People frequently miss this essential point. Many people think that the Christian faith is all external. But the Apostle Paul wrote,
“God our Savior. . .saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” Titus 3:4-5;
These are the same things which Ezekiel mentioned. The Holy Spirit will touch hard hearts, He will open them, He will transform them, and He will turn them to God and empower them to live as God intended.
So as we believe for the salvation of our friends, loved ones and acquaintances, we can count on God’s Holy Spirit to work in them and transform them into His image. The surprising unexpected powerful invasion of the Spirit, His regenerating work, it gives hope to all of us who are engaged in the difficult task of bringing the Gospel to the lost. We argue, persuade, explain, appeal, all good categories for evangelism but somehow we think, I cannot see him coming to Christ and becoming a Christian.
Yet know this, the hardest heart is not beyond the reach of the life giving Spirit! If the Holy Spirit has carried out the work of regeneration in our lives by making us new, then the same Spirit will strengthen us to live according to God’s law and standards:
Romans 8:13; for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
That is the end of the sample. I trust you received something from it and that you will go to the site mentioned above and get your copy. Thanks for reading.
