Checking Your Spirit Gauge Series

Two good old boys bought a couple of horses during the summer. But when winter came, they found it cost too much to board them. So they turned the horses loose in a pasture where there was plenty to eat.

One said to the other: "How will we tell yours from mine when we pick them up?"

"Oh that’s easy," replied the second. "We’ll cut the mane off my horse and the tail off yours."

By spring tho’, the mane and tail had grown back to normal length.

"Now what are we going to do?" asked the first.

"Why don’t you just take the black horse?" said the second man, "and I’ll take the white one."

APPLY: Now that’s silly. Nobody would overlook anything THAT obvious. But there are Christians that do it all the time. And, one of the most unfortunate topics some Christians tend to overlook is the importance and value of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Jesus taught that He was going to send us a powerful force - His Holy Spirit.

We were promised this Spirit if we repented and were baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins(Acts 2:38).

According to Ephesians 1:13-14 the Holy Spirit is the mark of our salvation.

And Rom 8:9 tells us that without that Holy Spirit within us, we wouldn’t belong to Jesus.

If the Holy Spirit is that critical to our lives - why would we overlook it?

I. One of the reasons is that some Christians just take the Spirit for granted. These Christians are a little like the woman who told her friend that she had gotten in her car one day, started it up and saw the "Check engine" light blinking on and off on the dash. She told her friend, that she looked under the hood, but she didn’t know what the problem was - the engine was still there.

In Galatians, Paul tells us that you can’t take your connection with God’s Spirit for granted. Paul gave a warning to the Galatians: "So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want." (Galatians 5:16-17)

In other words, it is critical for us to know if walking with the Spirit and if He is within us, filling us with His strength to help us contend against the power of the sinful nature. This is a serious matter. How do we know if we have the fullness of the Holy Spirit within us?

It would be SO much easier if we had an simple way to gauge the Spirit’s presence. Kind of like a gas gauge in our cars. A gauge that would helps us to know how much of God’s Spirit we had within us.

Now, in the Early Church, people had all kinds of "showy gifts" - like prophecy, speaking in tongues, healings and so on - that would have helped in assuring them that the Spirit was there. That’s why Charismatic churches have such wide appeal to so many today. With all their emphasis on "prayer languages" and "ecstatic" experiences of the Holy Spirit - they (at least) think they have the Holy Spirit. It serves as a "gauge." It meets a very critical psychological need. And it can be a very deceptive and very appealing experience.

Just as an example of how appealing this type of experience can be - back in 1995, Newsweek (Feb. 20, 1995) reported something called the "Toronto Blessing," so named because it started out in a charismatic congregation called the Vineyard Christian Church in Toronto, Canada. As Newsweek reported it: "It began when a dozen pilgrims from Oregon got up to introduce themselves and then began to fall to the floor, laughing uncontrollably. An hour later, the huge new church looked like a field hospital. Dozens of men and women of all ages were lying on the floor: some were jerking spasmodically; others closed their eyes in silent ecstasy. A middle aged woman kicked off her pumps and began whooping and trilling in a delicate dance. Scores of others proclaimed deliverance from emotional and physical pains. ’I’ve been living in my spirit,’ said a woman from Long Island, N.Y., still giggling after 20 minutes on the floor.

"In all, more than 100,000 people have experienced the ’Toronto Blessing,’ which believers interpret as an experience of the Holy Spirit much like the ’speaking in tongues’ mentioned in the New Testament.... ’It’s a gusher of the Holy Spirit,’ says pastor John Arnott of the Toronto Vineyard, who now travels around the world spreading the hilarity of the Lord."