As we look to Jesus in love and trust, the Holy Spirit (without any effort on our part) raises us into the new way of life. Walking in the Spirit is a great beginning; supernatural empowerment lies just ahead.

Jesus said He wouldn't leave us comfortless and He hasn’t. He is living in us through the Holy Spirit! Since He draws so little attention to Himself, you would hardly know He is there. Part of the “fun” is learning to recognize our incomparable Guest.

The family resemblance is uncanny. Jesus' earthly relationship with the Holy Spirit is exactly mirrored by our own. The few remaining parts of the image require our trusting obedience to fill in. Will we allow God to finish the portrait?

Our gracious Father made two outstanding promises in the Old Testament. Promises that we would have a power sent from Him to live in a way none of us can on our own. This is our Promised Land! Yet, many Christians hardly know it's there.

Surprise! God's Spirit is now living inside of you! He has always been with you, but now He is in you. It is impossible to live as a true Christian without God’s help and we don’t have to: The Helper is always as close as your next thought. 

Jesus actually told the first disciples “Don’t leave home without this!” So important is this spiritual empowerment that even the followers who had been trained by Him in person, prayed to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If they needed it, don’t we?

Do you have to? No, but you can if you want to and you just may want to. Paul did. In fact, he was glad that he prayed in tongues more than anyone he wrote his letters to. Maybe he knew why something this "scandalous" is so secretly good!

Jesus never intended for His church to be powerless. The baptism in the Spirit is His idea. Like the tithe, it's not forced on anyone, but when believers come into obedience, watch out—the “windows of heaven” open wide! And these gifts tumble out...

Here we seek to lift the veil on aspects of our relationship with the Holy Spirit that are more intimate and subtle and, therefore, harder to describe. That should not surprise us. The closer we get to any mystery, the more mysterious it becomes.