Isaiah 59:21 “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,” says the Lord.

God promises His Spirit to His people in various places, but here it is intimately connected to His Word. For the past hundred years or so of Church history, those who have stressed the Spirit have tended to go light on study of the Word, and those who have stressed the Word have tended to dismiss or disrespect the Spirit and those who stress Him. That’s wrong on every level! The Holy Spirit is the Author of the Bible, and as the song Love and Marriage (that seems so “quaint” now) says, “You can’t have one without the other.” Just as society seems bent on disconnecting sex from either love or marriage, many in the Church talk about the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and spiritual gifts as if they were entirely separate things, when they are not. Just as emphasis on the differences between/among the Persons of the Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – has led to people “putting God in a box” and missing out on various blessings, failing to understand that the Word is the expression of the totality of God and not just one aspect has led to the same sort of thing. We cannot grasp the totality of the Word without the help of the Holy Spirit, (1 Corinthians 2:14) and we cannot really understand the Spirit and His operation in and through us without the Word. This verse is God’s promise of both, for all generations. How glorious!

Coming from a long line of people committed to the Word of God as I do, when I first started learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit around 1973 it seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. I have been scorned by people in both “camps” by my insistence that there should be no camps, no divisions, because there is no division in God, even though He is indeed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Conservative Jews and others who scorn Christians for “worshiping three Gods” aren’t really so far off the mark at times. That is in no way to say that God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it is to say that our minds cannot grasp all of Him at once, so we need to be careful we don’t exclude one part for another.

Father, thank You for this Word right now, as I am in the middle of tumultuous goings-on. Help me be an open channel of Your grace and mercy to all around me, whatever is going on, so that they may be blessed, encouraged, and strengthened, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!