The Purpose Of The Holy Spirit Series

And because we now belong to God, His Spirit expects to make changes in our lives.

Now sometimes the change He makes in us is dramatic.

I’ve seen people who’ve come out of alcoholism, drug abuse and other disastrous lifestyles when they became Christians. It was like the wickedness of their life and simply snapped away and they had literally received a different personality.

But more often the change in our lives is far more subtle.

In fact, it can be so subtle that we don’t even know that’s it’s happening.

ILLUS: My folks were faithful Christians who lived what they believed.

Mom once told me of the time they visited some friends they hadn’t seen in years. They were visiting and talking… and suddenly one of them asked: “You’re a Christian aren’t you?”

The topic had never come up, but there was something about how my parents talked that made it obvious that they spent their lives walking by the Spirit of God. And that Spirit made them look/act different than other people

But THIS IS KEY - I don’t become a better person because I’m a superior individual.

I become a better person because God’s Spirit is a superior influence in my life.

So, 1st - God’s Spirit changes my priorities.

2ndly – when God’s Spirit takes over my life… I pray differently

The Holy Spirit changes how I think when I pray.

Romans 8:26 tells me “… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

The Spirit is there to guide me in what to pray for… and how to pray for what I DO pray for.

ILLUS: Several years ago, Guideposts carried this story by a man named Mac St. Johns

It was the Winter of 1944 during World War II. St. Johns was in France, a platoon sergeant in the Yankee Division under General Patton. As he told the story:

“About mid-December I received a letter from my mother back in the States. ‘Can you remember,’ she asked, ‘where you were on Thanksgiving Day?’

Could I remember? How could I forget the odd thing that happened that day. At dawn I was sent to check out a crossroads where an enemy strongpoint was suspected. Normally I would have had my men fan out so that they could move with the cover of the trees. But just before we started out that Thanksgiving morning, I stopped. I stood stark still arguing with myself about what I should do.

Then, going strictly against the book I walked my men right down the middle of a road in an exposed column. No one fired at us; there was no evidence of the enemy. We found the crossroads unoccupied and turned to walk back. There, on the backside of the trees where only the German soldiers would have seen were signs cautioning "MINEN". The woods were mined.

We could have been blown to bits!

Mother’s letter continued. She told me how she awakened after midnight on Thanksgiving Eve when it would have been daylight in France: "I had a strong feeling that you were in great danger," she wrote. "When I opened my Bible, a phrase in Second Chronicles [20:17] gleamed on the page: ’Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord with you..."’