Holy Spirit

[In his defense before the Sanhedrin, Stephen said,]  "And you continue, so bullheaded! Calluses on your hearts, flaps on your ears! Deliberately ignoring the Holy Spirit, you're just like your ancestors. Was there ever a prophet who didn't get the same treatment? Your ancestors killed anyone who dared talk about the coming of the Just One. And you've kept up the family tradition — traitors and murderers, all of you. You had God's Law handed to you by angels — gift-wrapped! — and you...

 

And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.

—Romans 8:23 NLT

Key Thought
For most of us, the gift of the Spirit living within us is a calming reassurance of God's love and of our future glory. Even in our...

 

For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

—Romans 8:16-18 NLT

Key Thought
The new way of God in the Spirit means not only that we are God's children, but that we are also joint heirs with Jesus...

 

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, "Abba, Father."

—Romans 8:14-15 NLT

Key Thought
"She wanted a mother. She wanted me to be her mother. And I wanted to be her mother, but it could not be." My wife, Donna, said these words with tears in her eyes as she thought about precious Gladys, a nine-year-old who...

 

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation — but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

—Romans 8:12-13 NIV

Key Thought
In Romans 7:5, Paul made it clear that when he said "flesh," he was talking about "sinful passions." Then, in today's verses, two things capture my attention. First is the word "obligation" — I don't owe my...

 

But for you who welcome him [the Spirit of Christ], in whom he dwells — even though you still experience all the limitations of sin — you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that...

 

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about.

—Romans 8:9 MESSAGE

Key Thought
God's children have the Spirit of Christ living in them. But more than having the Spirit just as a visiting guest, those who follow Jesus want to welcome the Holy Spirit to his home in their hearts. More...

 

Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives.

—Galatians 5:25 MESSAGE

Key Thought
God's written word is invaluable to us as we mature in Christ and learn more and more of God's will. As we mature, we will choose "the life of the Spirit" rather than just trying to follow God's commands written on stone...

 

Whenever, though, they [the Israelites]  turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are — face to face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the...

 

Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant — not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

—2 Corinthians 3:4-6 NIV

Key Thought
God's words in Scripture remind us of both his holiness and his holy standards for us. The letter — that is, legalism — kills. It leaves us afraid...