I’ve made it through another fifteen chapters of Spurgeon’s work on the Holy Spirit. As I mentioned previously, this book is a collection of several sermons on the topic of the Holy Spirit. While there is quite a bit of overlap in these chapters, a few things stood out to me.
First, in his sermon on The Holy Spirit’s Intercession, Spurgeon suggests that one of the ways that the Holy Spirit helps us pray is to bring remembrance of God’s Word to our minds. He writes, when we “cannot find out the appropriate promise in the Scriptures, the Spirit of God comes in an detaches us all things and brings all things to our remembrance whatever our Lord has told us. He guides us in prayer and thus He helps our infirmity.” When we pray the Scripture, we know that our prayers please God. And since one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to bring to remembrance all that Jesus has taught us, this is one way that the Spirit helps us in prayer.
Perhaps when we consider the Spirit’s intercession in our lives, we most readily recall Romans 8:26-27 – “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” While it is a mystery exactly how this works, Spurgeon notes that when the Spirit intercedes for us, we can be confident in the sure success of all such prayers because “the Spirit of God will never prompts us to ask anything which is contrary to the eternal purpose of God.”
Second, in his sermon on The Indwelling and Outflowing of the Holy Spirit, Spurgeon reminds his hearers/readers that God will give His children His favor – and that out of His children “there shall stream a divine influence to bless” those all around you, including your household, neighbors, co-workers, etc. What a great promise. Too often we associate the Spirit’s work only with vocational ministry. But clearly, God’s Spirit is for all believers and all believers are being transformed by the Holy Spirit. It makes perfect sense, then, that the Spirit empowers and enables all those He indwells to engage in ministry for God’s glory and the good of others.
Spurgeon continues focusing on how God works in all His children in his sermon titled, Intimate Knowledge of the Holy Spirit. He claims that when the Spirit indwells God’s children, He does so “not as a latent, inoperative influence . . . [but as One who] makes our members instruments of His working and sanctifies the faculties of our nature.” In Christ, not only have we been redeemed from the curse of the Law, but we have also been given a glorious gift in the Holy Spirit. We owe every knowledge of Christ and every step of sanctification to the ministry of the Spirit in our lives!
Pastor Nate