Come Holy Spirit: The Third Person Of The Trinity

Who Is The Holy Spirit?

Who is the Holy Spirit? In many churches you will hear messages on God as Father, and God as the Son. But how often will you hear a message about God as the Holy Spirit? The truth is that the Holy Spirit may be the least understood Person of what church history calls the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The Vineyard story is driven by the reality that God eagerly desires us to experience his presence. The presence of God is expressed by the Spirit of God, and it is the experience of the presence of God that empowers us to do the work Jesus has called us to do in the world.

Recognizing The Person Of The Spirit

We are committed to being “functionally Trinitarian” in all our church activities, recognizing that the presence of the Holy Spirit among us means everything to the church Jesus is building. Recognizing the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and communities, we are softened in our desire to become “change (coins) in God’s pocket” (John Wimber) – people ready to be spent by the Lord and led by the Spirit into any act of kingdom service he desires.

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According to church history, the Holy Spirit is God, and as such, shapes our lives as God indwells us, by his Spirit through the work of Christ (Col. 1:27). In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is called by many names including the Comforter (Jn. 14:26), the Advocate (Jn. 14:16), and the Spirit of God (Gen. 1:2).

The Spirit is given to us as a deposit guaranteeing God’s goodness to come (2 Cor. 5:5), to assure us of Christ’s presence within (1 Jn. 4:13), to speak through us to one another (1 Cor. 12:18), to guide us in our understanding of God’s gifts to us (1 Cor. 2:12), to empower us to impact nonbelievers (Mk. 1:11), and to give us rest (Is. 63:14).

Jesus And The Spirit

It is by the power of the Spirit of God that Jesus ministered:

“One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick” (Luke 5:17).

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The Spirit also empowered Paul and the other disciples to do the works of Jesus, and touched those to whom they ministered:

“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:15-17).

In the Vineyard we believe that the Holy Spirit, likewise, distributes gifts among us, his Church today. These gifts of healing, prophecy, prayer languages, miracles and many other gifts enable us to experience God’s presence personally and corporately. These gifts enable us to minister to the world around us imbued with the power of God.