The Holy Spirit Part# 1

I'm putting together a series on the Holy Spirit for my Middle Schoolers and desired to see what people think of the Holy Spirit.  I asked my facebook/twitter friends to share their thoughts, those thoughts are below.  It's interesting to see other people's perspective on God, especially their perspective on the Person of The Holy Spirit.

  Soon, I will reflect across these ideas, and work to put a working theology suitable for Teens together in my 8 week series on the Holy Spirit.  Track with me on this fun journey and read what people think!

Marvin Nelson- For Blog post: When you hear the words "Holy Spirit" what do you think of? *please reply*



Douglas C Taylor- seriously, the first image that pops into my head, is a whirlwind of power. I can see it coming enveloping and there is nothing I can do but be moved and be amazed to follow. Have I had that happen? Not really, but close enough to think it possible.


Dara Macek Rodney- overwhelming uncontrollable power over me, revelation in confusion


 Cat Ross Miller yes please.... :-)


Roger Walburn- Wind... blowing thru tress... And Billy Graham's quote: you can't see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind...


Kelly Hines Walburn- invisible


 Larry Rhoads- since no one said this yet, i will put the sarcastic answer whiskey. to be honest, i think of an aura.


Myiah Davis- the spirit of god that lives in my heart all the time (my mom said that)


Annette Exley- The indwelling presence of God.
 
Marvin Nelson -What do you think about the Holy Spirit?


David Ketter- If it were not for his work, Jesus' blood would never have been applied to me, I would still not have power to do good, I would be terribly undiscerning, I would have no gifts for ministry and my preaching would have no power or effectiveness. In other words, I am grateful for him and his amazing work.

 Angela Corey- absolutely and totally crucial to living in power in every day life. The words says he has been sent as the the one who will convict and teach us all things since Christ has gone. NO Holy Spirit, no conviction, no conviction, no true repentance, no real repentance, no real salvation! Crucial to salvation and the growth required of Christians!

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The Omniscience of God

O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:1-6 ESV


  God cannot learn. This is an idea of God's omniscience I had never pondered before today. There is no new knowledge to God; nothing can be added to his knowledge, for He is aware of all knowledge.
A.W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of the Holy puts it this way: "To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn." (Tozer, 1961, p. 55)

We as humans have a tough time grasping this truth. We can state it as "God knows all" but when we say it in a negative form like: "God cannot learn," something in us tweaks and has trouble now grasping something we thought easily grasped. We as finite human beings always learn and are always learning. Our brains take in and give off so much information that to say someone can't learn is so foreign we balk at the very thought of it.
Yet God is so knowledgeable that learning is impossible, for God to learn would be for God to admit he didn't know something and that some other being had information He Himself did not possess. It would be to admit flaw and the Bible says that God is perfect and without flaw. (Matthew 5:48)

Tozer, in The Knowledge of the Holy also says: "We have seen that God had no origin, that He had no beginning that He requires no helpers that He suffers no change, and that in His essential being there are no limitations." (Tozer, 1961, p. 56)

Tozer here is going through the list of attributes of God in which he already discussed in the book, but when you look at this list, God is so other than us! He is so close, yet so foreign, so attainable yet so unattainable. He is Holy, set a apart and so hard to conceptualize. These attributes especially that of Omniscience is what I believe causes hang ups for those who don't believe.

How can we be made in God's image, yet Him be so foreign some may ask. My answer may not be the best, but it's simple: we have to have faith that it is true, we all believe in something and having a being who created everything in this world not be unattainable seems awkward at best. I mean think about it: this world has been here for at least 10,000 years and we still have no clue as to how all things work. Why would we expect to know the maker?

God's omniscience freaks me out a bit, but it is also very amazing to think that He knows so much that He can never learn anything!

I love that God is a mystery. I love that I can't box him up and put a bow on Him. I love that He is so very "other" (or Holy) that I can't even scratch the surface of who He is. He graciously gives us glimpses as to His true nature...but even those revelations stump us and make us dig deeper! Oh how I love that about God! Plunging the depths of His ways, plunging headlong into the bosom of who He is, drowning in the wealth of it! It's unparalleled in its amazing-ness!

A.W. Tozer was a man of a great wealth of knowledge and he has even today, some great insights on who God is, was and will forever be.  Tozer discusses how easy, yet hard it is to understand the omniscience of God and says it is easier for us to understand these deep truths by thinking in what God is "not" rather than what "God is."  To illustrate this, he says in The Knowledge of the Holy " And that abrupt statement by God Himself, "I am the Lord, I change not,"[Malachi 3:6] tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand word treatise, were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out." (Tozer, 1961, p. 56)

 I agree, Tozers negative statement: God cannot learn caught my attention and made me better understand God's omniscience!  God is deep, vast and Holy!  We serve a Mighty God!

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