Today we spoke with JD Greear, who is pastor of The Summit Church. He is also the author of many books including his latest, Jesus Continued…: Why the Spirit Inside You is Better than Jesus Beside You. We spoke with JD about the views of the Spirit and how church leadership can better encourage their congregations to engage with the third member of the Trinity.
1) I think most of us who grew up in conservative denominations are a bit leery of talking about the Spirit, perhaps afraid of "getting it wrong." Have we sinned by de-emphasizing his work in us?
For some people, experiencing the guidance of the Spirit means getting a series of warm fuzzies in our heart or random coincidences throughout the day. On the other end of the spectrum many Christians have no idea how to experience the Holy Spirit, or if they should even expect such a thing. They are so afraid of going off the deep end (like they see in the first group) that they ignore the Spirit altogether. The Holy Spirit becomes a doctrine they know about, not a person they know.
The first group needs to hear that warm fuzzies do not necessarily equate to the spirit of God. He leads us by his Word. There is no genuine experience of the Holy Spirit apart from the Word. The words of the Bible, Jesus said, are spirit, and they are life. That means we won’t know the spirit of God any more than we know the Word of God.
The second group needs to hear that the Spirit does indeed want fellowship with us. As John Newton, the Puritan writer of the song Amazing Grace, wrote in a letter to a friend, “Many … who would not flatly contradict the apostle’s testimony in 1 John 1:3 [i.e., that we should have fellowship with God in the Holy Spirit] attempt to evade its force by restraining it to the primitive times … but who can believe that the very nature and design of Christianity should alter in the course of time? And that communion with God, which was essential to it in the apostle’s days, should now be unnecessary?”
If we never talk about the Spirit, we’re cutting ourselves off from something Jesus said would be indispensible to our walk of faith.
2) It's still hard for us to believe that Jesus in us through the Spirit is better than physically having Jesus on this earth. Why is this so hard for us to grasp?
Jesus told his disciples that if they understood what was being offered to them in the Holy Spirit, they would have been glad he was returning to heaven if that meant getting the Spirit. That’s a staggering promise. How many Christians today are experiencing the fulfillment of that promise?
When the disciples had Jesus beside them, he wasn’t just a force or a principle. He was a person, someone they interacted with. Someone who spoke into their lives.
The Holy Spirit is to be the same for us. He desires to have fellowship with us. He is to be our guide, as we see him guiding his church throughout the book of Acts. He powers our ministry the way he did those first Apostles. He gives us resurrection power over sin, applies the promises and warnings of Scriptures to our hearts, and shows us what parts of the Great Commission belong to us. He turns “good” ideas into “God” ideas.
The Holy Spirit desires to have fellowship with us. He is to be our guide.
3) When we talk about "walking in the Spirit" that terminology sounds like something Christians want to do, but don't know exactly what that looks like. What does it mean exactly?
In Jesus, Continued… I outline six ways that we can walk in the Holy Spirit—practical ways that we experience his leadership. One of the most surprising discoveries I had while writing this book (and a distinctive of this book) came on the first point: fullness of the Spirit and intimacy with the gospel go hand in hand. The deeper you go in the gospel, the more alive you become in the Spirit. Paul, for example, equates intimate knowledge of the largeness of the love of God in Christ as an experience of “all the fullness of God” in Ephesians 3:14–18, We grow more full of the Spirit, Paul says in Galatians, in the same manner we first received him—by hearing and believing the gospel (Galatians 3:1–3).
I once listened to a charismatic theologian explain that theme of Galatians was “fullness of the Spirit.” As a child of the Reformation, I instinctively thought, No, justification by faith is the theme. But after re-reading Galatians, I had to agree: fullness of the Spirit saturates the book. However, the Reformers were right, too: justification by faith is mentioned on every page as well. This is the beautiful mystery: we grow more full of the Spirit as we get more in touch with our justification. Just as Moses experienced the presence of God by having God hide him in the rock and proclaim his name to him as he passed by, so the Spirit manifests himself to us by hiding us in Christ and declaring God’s name to our hearts (Ex 34:6–7).
4) For pastors and church leaders—how would you counsel them in their preaching and teaching about the Spirit in ways that would encourage their people to live in his power?
Can you imagine the power of a church in which ordinary members know what it means to be filled with the Spirit of God and led by the Spirit of God? God’s plan to glorify himself in the church never consisted of platformed megapastors, cutting edge art, or expensive buildings. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things in themselves, but the real power in the church is found the Holy Spirit moving through ordinary people as they carry his presence into the streets.
In our post-Christian age, fewer and fewer people casually “make their way” into churches. The de-churched are becoming the un-churched, who view Christianity the way you or I might view Islam. I wouldn’t meander my way into a mosque, even if their music was awesome or if their Imam was an engaging speaker doing a helpful series on “relationships.” People in our day will increasingly have to be reached outside the walls of the church, and that means individual believers living filled with the Spirit is more important than ever.
Tim Keller says that revival is doing the “ordinary things” of Christian ministry with extraordinary Spirit power. We need God to pour out his power again on our pulpits and our members as they carry his message into the community. We need another conversation about the Holy Spirit because it’s time for another outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I think both the charismatic and conservative communities have something to bring to the conversation. God has placed part of the truth in each camp, so it’s time to bring the two together.
We need God to pour out his power again on our pulpits and our members as they carry his message into the community.
5) Was there a time in your life that you really grasped the truth and reality of the Holy Spirit's power?
The Holy Spirit appears 59 times in the book of Acts, in 36 of those he is speaking. I see no reason to think he has ceased moving and speaking to his people today. Scripture is complete, and contains all we need to be complete (2 Tim 3:16-17) but just as we see in the book of Acts, we need the Spirit to move dynamically in our lives to show us how to pursue and execute his mission.
As I explain in the book, we always need to weigh our experience of God’s spirit speaking to our spirit with other factors, like the testimony of Scripture and the wisdom of our Christian community. But the spirit of God can and does speak to us individually. One particular way I’ve experienced that is through what I call “holy ambitions.”
When the Spirit of God wants to work in his people, he often starts by stoking the fires of a particular, holy ambition for a particular ministry or need. The fire of passion for God to do something in your generation, or on your campus, or in your family, grows to a fever temperature inside of you. It’s less of a “word” from God that it is a holy discontent with a situation, a broken heart over injustice and pain, or a burning passion to see God glorified. I’ve had a few moments like that in my life. I spent two years living as a missionary in Southeast Asia. Shortly after I left, the worst tsunami on record swept onto the island, killing more than 100,000 people. When I returned and stood at the very spot where the tsunami had come ashore, I sensed God telling me that he would send a wave of salvation through that same area, and that our church was to continually place people there on the ground believing it, waiting for it to happen.
Not every ambition in our heart comes from God, but God certainly uses holy, burning desires as a compass to point true north for your life, to show you where he wants you to go and how he wants you to be involved in his mission. You likely will experience it as a holy discontent—a conviction that God wants something different than what the situation currently is. You sense him inviting you to lay hold of his willingness and release his power.
Daniel Darling is vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith.
