IS HOLY SPIRIT IN YOU?

By Danelle Carvell

                                                        

                                                    

The walk is more pleasant when you have something strong to catch you if you fall. 

I often wonder how I got through the early years of my life. I know now that something was very much missing, and I wonder how life would have been different if only that missing piece had been firmly in place. I'm talking about the better life we enjoy when we invite the Holy Spirit to come along with us on the journey. 

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity, which also consists of Father God and His son, Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit, God acts, reveals His will, empowers individuals, and discloses His personal presence. 

You receive the Holy Spirit when you hear the message of salvation, which is that the only way to Heaven is through Jesus Christ, the son of God. When you believe that Jesus died for your sins and you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell inside you. He is the down payment of your future inheritance, which is seeing the Kingdom of God and spending eternity in Heaven. 

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is like an inner guide that walks with you through each day. He will strengthen you, guide your steps and your decisions, and through the Spirit, you will feel God's presence and enable Him to work in your life. 

People who live without the Holy Spirit are left to their own limited strength and their own discernment and guidance. They cannot access the power of God in their lives and they cannot feel God's presence. 

So the question is this...Do you have the Holy Spirit in you, and are you sensitive to the Spirit's promptings? You can ask yourself three questions if you want to know the answer. 

• Do you catch and deal with compromise early?

People with Holy-Spirit-led discernment often find that what doesn't bother others will bother them. If you are often rejected because you don't do things the way others do it, or you don't think the way others think...that's a good sign that the Holy Spirit is leading you. 

Because you live in this world but you are not of this world, you will have a world view that is grounded from an eternal perspective. Everything that crosses your path will be scrutinized according to God's standards and you will make decisions based on the truth that's found in His word.

Because you have a higher standard for your life than others, there are certain things that you will not tolerate and things you will not want to be part of. There might even be places that you will refuse to go or people you don't want to associate with. Because of your high standards, you may find yourself being excluded from groups or gatherings. 

Compromise is when someone ignores God's principles and makes a decision to act dishonorably. When a Holy-Spirit-led person observes that act of compromise, he or she has no choice but to deal with it immediately. The indwelling Holy Spirit simply will not allow the compromise to go unnoticed and unchecked. 

• Do you consult God on decisions?

You must have a constant prayer life if you want to hear and be led by the Holy Spirit. He will guide you through each day, tell you which way to go, what job to take, where to live, who to marry and every other answer you need. If you always consult God when a decision needs to be made and you pray until you get an answer, then you are being sensitive to the Holy Spirit. 

• Do you avoid the trap of tradition?

Tradition is the act of doing things simply because it's the way that things have always been done. When you make decisions based on what our culture tells you, then you are trapped by tradition. Some people will do things because it feels familiar and safe. They are afraid to go against popular opinion and they easily cave-in to cultural pressures. 

You can't live a successful, fruitful life when you cling to tradition instead of being led by the truth of God's word. I asked my husband for a good example of someone who is trapped by tradition and he gave me a surprising answer, which I hesitate to share. It's a controversial subject that tends to offend people, but here we go. 

His answer was... "women thinking that they have to work in order to be accepted by our culture. Women in the workplace has been a disaster in many ways." 

Some people might hate hearing that so much that they stop reading at this point, but I invite you to hear me out. We do recognize that some women have no choice when it comes to being in the workplace.

 My husband was making an observation about mothers who would be able to stay at home if they made some sacrifices, but they choose instead to pursue a career over being full-time mothers and homemakers. The pressure to be seen as someone "worthy" can entice a woman to make that decision. 

I'm not sure that I could have handled being at home with my daughter for years unless I had been able to tune out the cruel and critical voices of our culture that constantly told me I was lazy and worthless because I wasn't making money.

The "disaster" that my husband was referring to is the stress that comes with a two-income family, the effects on children when mom is spread so thin, and the effect on the marriage and family when both parents are running back and forth to full-time jobs. 

I have a friend who believes her marriage fell apart because of the stress she was under while working full-time and managing a large family. The majority of housework and the children's needs fell on her, and she was exhausted all the time with the demands of her job and her responsibilities at home. 

All she wanted to do was cut back to part-time work, and their finances could have easily handled that, but her husband was not filled with the Holy Spirit and he insisted that she continue as a full-time career woman. 

My husband notices how stressed women are today. He often comes home with a story about the latest woman driver who honked her horn or aggressively passed him on her way to wherever she was rushing to. 

In the book, Home By Choice, Brenda Hunter does a beautiful job of describing the attack on motherhood that caused our culture to shift toward a mindset that has become the traditional norm we see today.

"For almost [six] decades, the mother at home has experienced a massive fall from grace. In their push for equality of the sexes, feminists, beginning in the sixties, launched a wholesale assault on marriage and motherhood that continues today. 

It began in 1963 with the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, in which Friedan stated that home was a prison for all those mothers in Suburbia who, having devoted themselves to child care, still feel empty inside and unfulfilled. 

Friedan wrote that many American women in the fifties and early sixties suffered from a "problem that has no name," which produced feelings of restlessness, loneliness, and desperation. Friedan felt that being "just a housewife" destroyed women's potential and caused brain rot. That she hit a nerve was evidenced by the media sensation this suburban wife and mother caused and by the subsequent huge book sales.  

Once Friedan had delivered her broadside on housewifery, it wasn't long before motherhood came under attack, and the mother at home, once the keeper of the family dream, came to be regarded as a societal pariah." 

Today, women feel like they must be employed if they want to maintain any feeling of self-worth. And perhaps the best at keeping that mindset going are working women. From the discussions that I have overheard, stay-at-home moms are often attacked by career women with no Holy-Spirit-led discernment. When you're led by the Spirit, you don't need or want to put down women who choose a different path than the one you chose. 

So when I say that being sensitive to the Holy Spirit means that you do not make decisions based on tradition, I am offering the example of rejecting a culture that says she's worthless unless she's employed. And that example came from a man. 

So to recap what it means to be led by the Holy Spirit... if you deal with compromise early, you consult God on decisions, and you avoid the trap of tradition (whatever that might mean for you), then you are sensitive to the Holy Spirit and His guidance in your life. 

I think of the Holy Spirit as my safety net. He's always there to catch me. I can't imagine life without Him and I truly wonder how others get through a single day without the peace-of-mind and guidance He offers. He keeps me out of trouble, comforts me and gives me confidence even when the whole world seems to come against me. 

There is no greater friend to have.