THE COMFORTER HAS COME: A Manual for an Enhanced Fellowship with the Holy Spirit

By Ronald Price

Book /

But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away the Helper (Comforter) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him (the Holy Spirit) to you. [John 16:7]

Many have confessed Jesus Christ as Savior and have the assurance of eternal life. However, due to an inadequate fellowship with the Holy Spirit, many Christians are experiencing a dysfunction in attaining the peace of God that salvation offers. This is a growing anomaly in the Christian faith. The Comforter has been sent by Jesus Christ to engage the daily life of every believer. However, fellowship with the Comforter is often hindered by a complacency from those whom He came to help.

In The Comforter Has Come, the author aims to heal this growing dysfunction in the body of Christ. It features twelve fundamental components of the daily activity of the Holy Spirit from biblical data. A serious analysis of each component will serve to enrich Christians in achieving a wholesome appreciation for the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. Furthermore, an intentional interaction between the believer and the Holy Spirit will be discovered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662480164

Ronald Price

Ronald Price holds a pastoral degree from the Berean School of the Bible, a school of Global University. He has acted as a missionary assistant in four countries and served for many years as a chaplain at his local children’s hospital. The author of numerous devotional articles, he is also a Christian speaker and teacher and sings in a gospel choir. Now retired, he lives with his wife in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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THE COMFORTER HAS COME

A Manual for an Enhanced Fellowship with the Holy Spirit

Ronald Price

Copyright © 2022 Ronald Price

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8015-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8016-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

The Person of the Holy Spirit

The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit

The Anointing of the Holy Spirit

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

The Mission of the Holy Spirit

The Conviction of the Holy Spirit

The Adoption of the Holy Spirit

The Graces of the Holy Spirit

The Emotions of the Holy Spirit

The Quenching of the Holy Spirit

The Grieving of the Holy Spirit

The Filling of the Holy Spirit

Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author

Preface

One of the most fascinating experiences that I have had on my Christian journey was an introduction into a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Many years had gone by since I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. However, the Person of the Holy Spirit was not one with whom I had enjoyed a meaningful relationship. I had experienced many years of satisfying worship, enjoying sermonic preaching, and singing worshipful songs of praise to the Lord. I enjoyed the worship of serving, giving, and studying the Scriptures during quiet personal times. In my preteen years, I recall joining a community church and participating in the youth choir ministry with much enthusiasm. However, as much as I was enjoying the many activities of the Christian life, there always seemed to be a subtle feeling of distance in my relationship with God. Nevertheless, I routinely continued my walk of Christianity into adulthood with the resolve that a distant feeling of a relationship with God was probably the norm. After all, is it really feasible for a mere human being to relate intimately to the Almighty God who created all things and whom you cannot see?

On one particular morning, as I was nearing my thirtieth birthday, I had an interesting encounter while sitting alone in my apartment preparing to get the day started. I have always found it difficult to find adequate words to explain the encounter of that morning. It was a gentle and loving voice that spoke to me concerning the idea of making some empirical adjustments to my lifestyle. I was nudged to consider the quality of my lifestyle and the quality of the impact that I was having on others.

At the time, I was enjoying a somewhat law-abiding reputation, good friendships, and satisfaction with a fair share of materialistic goods. It was later that I realized I was at the beginning of an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit, which has now blossomed for more than two decades and has filled the void that I once experienced for many years. The feeling of distance in my relationship with God has since dissolved. I came to the realization that the Person of the Holy Spirit had robustly witnessed to me and extended an opportunity unto me to mature in relationship with Him. It took many years as a Christian for me to understand why my relationship with God was dysfunctional. I was aware that I was redeemed by the Lord, but a sense of satisfaction or being at peace with the Lord had eluded me. I was always anxiously waiting on the Lord to go ahead and change me to what He wanted me to be. However, I had noted an eerie silence on my Christian journey.

That particular morning of my vivid encounter in that apartment has changed the trajectory of my life immensely and eternally. The Person of the Holy Spirit has ministered to me and continues to guide me into a very fulfilling and flourishing relationship with God and the Son of God. Many of those things that I was anxiously waiting on God to change about my life have since been secured by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He continuously guides me through the process of bringing forth renewal and hope in my life.

I wonder at times just how many other Christians are anxiously and idly sitting by and waiting on a godly change in their life aside from making personal effort along with enjoining the guidance of the personal Helper. It is my hope that in addressing this matter, it will bring both encouragement and challenge to other Christians to rigorously evaluate their relationship with God. A relationship with God that has been surrendered to a feeling of distance and emptiness as a Christian norm must be staunchly renounced. Distant relationships such as this are becoming far too common in the Christian community today.

Unfortunately, much too often, it is supported by a growing Christian culture that obscures, rather than make obvious, the exigency for biblical doctrine that accentuates a personal relationship with the Third Person of the Godhead. If there is to be an effectual relationship between God and a born-again believer, it will begin with nothing less than a deliberate effort by the believer to acknowledge the presence and the Person of the Holy Spirit and His ministries as revealed in the Scripture. If the believers' desire is to truly exemplify an ongoing spiritual life of enrichment and empowerment, which brings glory to God, there must be an acceptance of the challenge to move beyond the borders of aimlessly floundering in the traditions of a doctrinal-indifferent Christian culture. There must be a carefully weighed endeavor to develop a sincere relationship with the divine Person of the Holy Spirit.

My prayer is that all who have responded to the call of the Holy Spirit to be a follower of Jesus will come to know the Spirit more intimately. There is indeed an urgency for all saints to vigorously discover an intimate relationship with the One who was sent to secure the believer in the enjoyment of life and to guide all mankind from darkness into a daily walk that will glorify God.

The Person of the Holy Spirit

There is much that has been written, spoken, and illustrated in an effort to articulate the identity of the Holy Spirit. Many have made common usage of the phrase higher power in referencing the Holy Spirit. Some have postulated that the Holy Spirit is simply the presence of God, or rather an essence of God's spirit, being revealed or experienced in certain situations or events. Such ascriptions to the Holy Spirit's identity are undoubtedly a denial of what the Scripture affirms. The aforementioned connotations reveal the need, particularly for evangelical Christians, to establish a clear understanding of what is biblically documented about the identification and the work of the Holy Spirit. When one lives as a Christian, apart from embracing what the Scripture affirms about the Holy Spirit, it will unavoidably and negatively impact the believers' self-image and their perception of God Himself. Ultimately, the Christian will be found to be dysfunctional in true fellowship and worship.

The work of the Holy Spirit takes on a unique agenda in the New Testament that is otherwise unfounded in the writings of the Old Testament. The unique agenda of the Holy Spirit, which is clearly seen in the New Testament, offers clarity to the nature of the Holy Spirit and divulges a biblical perspective that will aid the believer in understanding the true identity of the Holy Spirit. This understanding is crucial in fostering an ongoing relationship with Him. The New Testament records the upper room farewell discourse of Jesus and His disciples as highlighted in John 14:12–17. This preview of the introduction of the Holy Spirit is given by Jesus as He reveals to the apostles that He would soon be going away. He encouraged them to continue to show their love for Him by being true to what they had learned during the time they had spent together with Him. Jesus subsequently makes a promise to the apostles that He was not nor would He ever abandon them. He says in verses 16–17 (ESV), I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. The use of the personal pronoun him from the Greek translation to English is a clear indication that Jesus speaks of a Person as the proposed Helper. Jesus continues to assert His reference to a Person as He speaks in John 16:7 and conveys, Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. The Scripture affirms, in the words of Jesus, that even though the Helper or, yet, the Spirit of truth is invisible, He is a real Person who has been given an assignment to those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Some English Bible translations will use the terms the Helper and the Counselor interchangeably. Other equally descriptive terms have been used as well to denote the Person of the Holy Spirit, such as Advocate, Comforter, Intercessor, Strengthener, Supporter, and Protector. However, the Counselor is a term translated from the Greek word parakletos. In reference to parakletos, the word was used of legal assistants who pleaded a cause or presented a case as a representative of another. "The Holy Spirit is called a