IS THE HOLY SPIRIT ACTIVE IN THE BELIEVER’S LIFE, OR DOES HE WISH TO BE? Can God effect change in our lives? How would He do it? Most of us would like a better life, but fail to recognize the road to a better life. Often when we recognize it, we find it unappealing. Grace is the death of pride and pride is inextricably woven into the fabric of the flesh. We can expect the flesh always to resist grace, yet grace is the only soil in which the believer can grow. Which brings us to a crucial point. If we are to change, we must grow! Growth is the Holy Spirit’s method for producing change.

Sylvia was an unhappy Christian. She wanted desperately to exchange her unhappy existence for a happy one. She mistakenly thought that happiness was something that Christians receive when they push the right button in prayer. She kept praying for happiness, but happiness didn’t come. At first she thought that she didn’t qualify for happiness; perhaps there was some "unconfessed sin" in her life, or she wasn’t holy enough, or active enough in serving Christ. For several years she lived in the anticipation that her prayers would eventually be answered - that happiness would strike her like lightning from Heaven. That her life would change suddenly and dramatically as it had when she was first saved.

Then she began to doubt the faithfulness of God, and what began as doubt became despair. Salvation is something that God does for us instantly when we accept His Son’s death as ours. Growth is something that God does for us over a period of time. It would be impossible for salvation to be a process because 99% saved would still be 100% lost. It would be equally impossible for growth to be instantaneous because growth, by its nature, requires time.

God, through Paul, tells us to "work out your deliverance with fear and trembling, because it is God Who operates in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Here we have a plain statement to the effect that God does work in us creating both the desire and the ability to do His will. But how? How does God operate (Greek, "energize") in us to plan and to carry out His desires? The answer is found in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, "For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in reality, the Word of God, which also operates in you who believe."

Here it is! And as plain as plain can be. In Philippians God is working in us to choose and to execute His plan. In 1 Thessalonians He is doing it by means of the Scripture. In the first instance the Holy Spirit is credited with creating in us the determination and the capacity to do the will of God. In the second He is said to accomplish this through the instrumentality of the Word. Most of us spend most of our time trying to do by ourselves what only God can do! I can no more prefer and perform God’s plan for me than I could have saved myself! God alone, all by Himself, without any help from me, saved me. It was singularly and totally His work for me and not my work for Him in the least. My Christian life and ministry are as much God’s work in me as my salvation was God’s work for me.

When Sylvia learned this astounding, though little known, truth she ceased waiting for God to do something additional in her life and began to rely on the indwelling Spirit to use the dynamic of His Word to bring about growth... desirable change.

True happiness lies at the center of God’s revealed will, not at its periphery. Real happiness comes from the believer’s harmony with God’s plan, not dissonance. Lasting happiness is born when we recognize that our Christian life and ministry are divinely produced and never come through our poor, weak human effort. God, Who knows the future, knows what is best. He guides us through His Word, if we "rightly divide" it. And, through the power of that Word, energizes us for desiring and doing what is best.

All of the Sylvias in history cannot begin to effect what God finds so easy to complete. It is the business of the Holy Spirit to produce in you and in me the resolution to follow God’s way as it is revealed to us in the Bible. He is more than capable of doing perfectly throughout our lifetimes what we could not achieve by ourselves for even one minute.

Yes, God works in the life of any believer who wants Him to. That is the very reason that He indwells us. But He works always and only through His Word. If I want my little spark of desire for doing His pleasure (so threatened by distractions) to be fanned into an all consuming flame, He Who provided the spark must make it the flame. And He must do it in His own way. He has chosen to do this through His Word...a Word so powerful that it raised His Son out from among the dead. That is more than enough power to raise a dead wish to a living commitment...to mold weak dreams into a holy cause. And the power to determine is the power to do!