When the Spirit is poured out over you, do you then change? If yes, how do you notice it?
And if not, why not? These are some questions that pop up around the time of Pentecost.
The pouring out of the Holy Spirit is a feast, a concrete fact of salvation, but in the everyday life it can become something vague for many people. Am I now different than I was before?
And is that earth-shattering?

Searching for Recognition⤒🔗

It has been tried to mark our spiritual lives in various ways to make it more clear. For example, by putting greater energy in the gifts of the Spirit. The speaking in tongues, the healing of the sick, the receipt of special messages, are all works that are being praised for their clarity. This is how you recognize the Spirit. He would like to give you all of that.

Others place a greater emphasis on the fruits of the Spirit. That he can help you climb in holiness, in staying away from sin, in the dying of your old life, in growing in love and wisdom and you name it.

In the first instance you become stronger because of the Spirit; your opportunities increase.

In the second example you become better because of the Spirit; you rise above sinful ways of life. And of course this sounds very attractive. If your own spiritual life is not all that clear, and you are invited to make great strides in it, it makes sense that you would want to try this.

Stronger, better, nicer, can you not recognize the spiritual growth in this?

Contradictory Experiences←⤒🔗

Yes, it seems so. Until you read in the Bible that through the Holy Spirit you may also loathe yourself (Ezek. 36:25-32). He confronts you with God and with his Word, opens your eyes to your sins and lets you discover how entrenched you are in sin. It is not something to make you happy. At least, not right away, but probably after some pondering.

Imagine your heart is a dark chamber, and in it are all kinds of garbage and junk. It does not bother you as long as the light is out. But oh boy, when someone turns on the light, then you see everything that lies on the floor. In the same way, the experience with the Spirit can be felt as a big step backwards, for your sins start to trouble you and you see more and more of them. And yet, it is a big step in the right direction that the light now shines upon them and the sinful darkness has been exposed. At this point your feelings can be quite contradictory, and the experience is surely not only that your life has become stronger, better, and nicer.

The Work of the Spirit←⤒🔗

Should we now try to sail between the cliffs? Not too happy and not too sad? Not too optimistic and not too pessimistic? Not too enthusiastic and not too passive? So like taking a bit from both sides?

Not at all. For spiritual life cannot be interpreted in all kinds of experiences and results. That is a big pitfall which is present on both sides in a life-sized way. All the different mood-swings must be points of recognition. And true, they are part of this, but you cannot just quickly deal with them in a straightforward manner.

The point is, in all that has been said above, not a word has been said about the work of the Holy Spirit; his one work, his one goal. He has come (in summary) to lead us to the full truth. And that truth, says Jesus, is Me (John 14:6 and 16:12-15).

Gifts and fruit, holiness and power are not loose articles which the Spirit sprinkles around in the hearts of God’s children in such a way that you would have to scramble and gather as much of these as possible. No, the Spirit enables you to partake in Jesus Christ.

In everything he puts the Saviour in the centre. He distributes of his words and deeds; he leads you to him and brings you to faith and to adoration. This is to laugh and cry at the same time, you cannot even tell it apart and it does not really matter anymore.

It is to grow and become smaller at the same time. Suddenly you see more good and more evil. But those are no loose standing emotions or experiences. This is all the result of getting to know Jesus, to meet him and to accept him. That is what causes you to become another person.

Not because of your increased opportunities or your new strength (as if they were even available separately), but purely and only because you are closely connected with the Son of God.

Do You Live, or Do You Not?←⤒🔗

This difference seems to be very subtle, but it is as clear as glass, and it is the difference between life and death. Say someone has grown enormously in knowledge, he knows a lot about the Bible, of the confessions, of the church, of church history, of the liturgy and so on.

He judges and criticizes all kind of things and has plenty of arguments. Is that walking by the Spirit? This is possible, but not necessarily so. Paul says: if you knew all that there was to know, if you knew the Bible by heart, if you were bigger and better in that than everyone else, but you did not have love, then you are a zero. If you gave all you had to the poor, but did not have love, then too you are a zero. And if you spoke with tongues of angels and of people, but you did not have love, then you are still a zero. That is three times zero.

So, all that is not a goal in itself, and it has no value whatsoever in itself either.

The real question in the centre, is this: have you met Jesus Christ, God’s love in person?

Do you accept him and all that is in him, his life, his holiness, his character? Not that you can absorb all of this, but do you search in him the beginning of your being, of your thoughts and your speech, your actions, and your busy-ness?

That is walking by the Spirit. The Spirit does not have his own business and he does not draw attention to himself. He is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and by also living in our hearts, he is the most intimate connection between Jesus Christ and us. This is how we become Christians.

We become different on the inside; not alone anymore but connected with him, not rejected anymore but accepted, not an outsider anymore but a family member and so on.

And because we have become different, members of the family of God, we will conduct ourselves differently. Then the gifts are being employed, not to push ourselves higher up the ladder, but to serve others. Then we apply ourselves to the fruits, not to become more holy, but to show some of God’s goodness. Then we stand strong, not because that is expected of us, but because we never stand anywhere by ourselves, but always together with him.

Real and Fake←⤒🔗

That is walking by the Spirit. Whoever has tasted some of this, becomes on guard for fake fruit and fake results. In our circles there is much wisdom, knowledge, and experience present. Sometimes this is being bandied about effortlessly and easily used as protection. Though this may be extremely clever, the deciding question will always be: what do you mean by this, is it to serve or is it about your own right? In other words: is it out of the disposition of Christ, or is it to maintain yourself and your own position?

Believing Neurotically←⤒🔗

I found a fitting illustration of this by Packer, Walking by the Spirit, page 33. He describes there how people can work hard to live a holy life, personally and in church, without first having allowed God to permeate them with his saving love. Then you see a variety of pious fruit, but not from the right root, and that is noticeable. Packer has a few keywords for this. These people have a tendency to become legalistic, as they seek their strength in strict and limiting patterns of behaviour, which then become their strongholds form which they operate.

They become phariseistic, for their principles get more attention than the love of Jesus.

They become scrupulous, afraid to be tainted, without any reason for this, and they are not willing to let themselves be reassured. As they are continuously thinking about how relentless and unrelenting the battle is, they become joyless. They become sombre, always searching within themselves and pondering the depravity of their heart in a manner which only leads to gloom and listlessness. They become pessimistic about the possibility of progress, in every regard. They do not have much expectation that they will be freed from their sin. Such an attitude can, according to Packer, be defined as spiritual neuroticism, a deformity and dishonour of the sanctifying work of God’s Spirit in our lives.

This is quite a mouthful. But how important it is to view and understand how unspiritual is that which seems spiritual. To discover this kind of damage, we do not have to look at different groups (of faith), as this happens just as easily in our own circle, in our own life.

The Spirit Changes People←⤒🔗

When the Spirit is poured out over you, do you then change? Most certainly you do! How do you notice this? Because your starting point changes, and thereby your centre point. The change is at least as big as on a wedding day: first you were by yourself, now you are together. First you thought by yourself, from the “me”, now you learn to think from the “we”, from the “Jesus and me together”.

This is radically new; no human being can give it to himself. You can only receive it from the Redeemer, by his Spirit. And even then, it takes a lifetime to get used to.

How earth-shattering is this change? It is a complete re-birth, so it is quite noticeable. People in your surroundings will be regularly surprised when they notice how you think and where your love is channeled toward. This is not normal. Sometimes they will also realize that in the past you spoke and acted differently, and they will wonder where this change came from.

May the Spirit Have You?←⤒🔗

And if you think you do believe but you do not change at all, how could this be? Is the Spirit then living in you? Probably yes, for no person can accept something from God if it has not been given to him/her. And on top of that, the working of the Spirit is promised to you when you were baptized. But perhaps it can help to change the question somewhat. Not: “do I have the Spirit?”, but “does the Spirit have me, may he have me, or do I belong stubbornly to myself?” Here is often an important hinge that makes everything turn (or where everything gets stuck). It is a direct result of the fall into sin that even in our faith life we have the tendency to do things without God. Then we must first better our life in our own power, so that we feel more or less acceptable. And this does not work. And so, the new life is like something delicious which continuously hangs in front of our nose, and that we run after and that we can never take a bite of.

When we all see this, then perhaps Pentecost can become a real feast, perhaps as yet. And then I mean not the yearly celebration, but the dispensation of the Spirit which envelopes your whole life.