Communion With The Holy Spirit
Last week we talked about the fact that God is Spirit. We must be born of the Spirit to see His kingdom. Christianity as God intends it should flow out of a spiritual connection. I ended with the phrase “The nature and personality of God’s invisible Spirit become visible through our communion with that Spirit.”
The fruit of the Spirit comes from our connection with the Holy Spirit. The manifestation of God’s power and glory also comes through our fellowship with God’s Spirit. Today we’re looking at a certain kind of prayer, which is fellowship with the Holy Spirit. This is one of the ways we are strengthened in our innermost being with God’s glorious might.
What Does This Spirit Connection Look Like?
1 Corinthians 1:9 (NIV) God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 John 1:3 (NIV) We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
We see here that we have fellowship with Jesus and with the Father. How? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus and the Father to us. Remember that we can’t even see God unless we are born of the Spirit?
Romans 8:9 (NIV) You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.
2 Corinthians 13:14 (NIV) May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
God’s life flows through our fellowship with the Spirit of Christ. What does this fellowship look like? How can we cultivate fellowship with the Holy Spirit?
Spanish and Portuguese Bible translations translate the word “fellowship” as “comunión” or “comunhão,” like the English word “communion.” The word “common” is “común” in Spanish, and similar in Portuguese. It’s the first part of the word “comunión.” Fellowship is based on having something in common.
What do friends “fellowship” around when they’re hanging out together? Some people “fellowship” around a game of football. Others find that they have a love for outdoor activities in common. Other friends may have an interest in art, literature, or something else. In general, we connect with people around common interests. We share joy in the same things. That’s how we have “communion” or “fellowship.”
What Do You Have In Common With God?
What do you have in common with God? You are light. Jesus said he was the light of the world, and then he told his disciples “You are the light of the world.”
Only light can have fellowship with light. God had to make us light so we could have fellowship with Him.
2 Corinthians 6:14 (NIV) Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
Ephesians 5:8-11 (NIV) For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.
How did you become light? God’s free gift of righteousness makes us light, because whoever is in Christ is a new creation. You had to receive God’s nature in order to have something in common with God so you could have communion with him.
I remember when I began seeing God heal people. I often spent three hours at a time reading all the healing testimonies I could find. My heart burned inside of me.
When my mind wanders I imagine seeing people healed, touched by the Holy Spirit, and giving their lives to Christ. These fantasies often move me to tears.
Jesus is beautiful. His patience, mercy, and compassion move my heart. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, and he loves his enemies. Even though I don’t always represent Him accurately, my heart burns to do so.
Why do these things move my heart? I’ve received the free gift of righteousness. God has planted his nature in me. The fact that these things move me shows that I’ve been born again of the Spirit. When I think about these things and my heart burns inside of me, I am having communion with God. It’s actually a kind of prayer. This is where the Spirit connection is. This is where the power flows. This is how the Holy Spirit strengthens me with God’s glorious power. When you understand this, you understand how it’s actually possible to “Pray without ceasing.”
You have to be light to have communion with God, and you can only become light by receiving God’s free gift of righteousness, available through of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
When we are saved God’s power changes us from darkness to light, enabling us to have fellowship with God. We continue in that fellowship be walking in the light.
1 John 1:1-7 (NIV) That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
We Can Only Understand The Things Of God’s Spirit Because We Have God’s Spirit
We can only have continuing communion with God’s invisible spirit and understand God because he has put the same Spirit in us. I wanted to share this whole chapter of 2nd Corinthians, but it was a bit long to do so. If you get the chance, I recommend reading the whole chapters of Ephesians 5, 1 John 1, and 1 Corinthians 2, in the light of understanding communion with God.
1 Corinthians 2:7-14 (NIV) No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
Sometimes we spend a lot of time asking God to do things that it’s His very nature to do. It’s God’s nature to heal. He is healing, and the manifestation of His glory heals. What we need isn’t for God to finally decide to act, but to be strengthened with His power through communion with the Holy Spirit. Walking in communion with the Holy Spirit is like being a battery or a capacitor being charged with electrical current. We can get so full of God’s power that when we speak or act, there’s a spark. Jesus sometimes spent the whole night in prayer and communion with the Father. Then when people so much as touched the edge of His clothing, God’s power came out and healed them.
God’s presence, like electricity, is all around us. We see the manifestation when a conductor makes a connection between the different charges. Lightning occurs when clouds become so heavily charged with electricity that the air itself becomes ionized and becomes a conductor connecting to the earth.
The reborn spirit of Man, created in the likeness of God, connects to the charge from heaven through communion with the Holy Spirit. This is how God’s invisible Spirit manifests and becomes visible like lightning.
As you walk in unbroken, intimate fellowship with God’s Holy Spirit the awareness of His glory increases until you are walking in heaven on earth. Yet many Christians only every experience this sweet communion for moments at a time, if ever. I lived too many years of my Christian life just longing for the next time I could feel close to God. In the next post we look at what hinders Christians from walking in communion with God.
If you liked this post, you may want to check out the Heaven Now book trilogy. It contains many insights into understanding simple gospel truths and exercising heaven’s dominion on earth. It’s also filled with testimonies of what happened when I put these truths into practice. I’m sure these books will encourage you and help you learn to walk as a heavenly person. Not only that, but your purchase supports our missionary work in Brazil and in every other place we go!
