Friday, February 25, 2011

The Spirit of Grace

Whilst I was reading the book of Hebrews the other day, I came across a phrase in the sentence in chapter 10:29 that says (in the ESV) "the Spirit of grace."
It became instantaneously clear to me that one of the personalities and attributes of Holy Spirit is 'grace, ' and thus he is referred to in this context in Hebrews as "the spirit of grace."
Many believers regard grace as a theology or one of the many doctrines, but in fact, grace is a person, grace is who the Holy Spirit is, who Jesus is, and who the Father is, grace is not a separate entity or a force apart from the trinity. 
Another verse that confirms this can be found in Zechariah 12:10 (ESV) "And I will pour out on the house of Jerusalem a spirit of grace".
What a wonderful picture of the gracious nature of God being poured from his spirit into ours!


I have often wondered why there are certain churches and moves of God that are so skeptical of the things of the Spirit that they prohibit its free flow in their meetings and in their lives in general. The answer to this question struck me as I read the Hebrews 10 text. 
A people that are controlled and oppressed by a religious spirit, have a default setting that like to control and wants to ever be in control, of people, of flow and structure of meetings, of words shared etc, etc, however, when the Spirit comes, being a Spirit of grace as we established earlier, he brings with him an atmosphere of freedom, grace and liberty, and forces control out of the room; for who can attempt to harness and constrain the Spirit of God (grace)? 
When the Spirit of God comes into a room, the people are set free, they are empowered and they begin to overflow with the things of God, and nothing is so frightening to the religious, than a people moving in the Spirit, because this is a people who knows the power that they have through their union with Christ and a people that will not allow themselves to come under a covering of control and religious manipulation. 
Due to this truth that the religious are very well aware of, they will simply put an end to all Holy Spirit movement within the four walls of the church and not facilitate the free flow of the things of the unseen realm which are spirit-based. The biggest deception however, comes when people in religious churches who do not have a revelation of the true gospel of grace, proclaim the Holy Spirit from the pulpit. They will speak about the Holy Spirit showing no indifference towards him, yet when it comes to practically making space for him to move in meetings, they will use structure and rigid timetable to stop his flow, thus the people know about the spirit in theory yet never in person and the Spirit of grace never flows in their lives or sets them free from condemnation, control and manipulation. This is something that deeply saddens and disturbs me, for the Kingdom of God is a spiritual Kingdom, it is an unseen realm of the spirit, and how can we pray "thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" if we are not 'for' the movement of the Holy Spirit of grace and an invasion of the unseen realm? 

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