Myles Munroe once said, "If you don't know the purpose of something, abuse is inevitable." I feel this statement is appropriate for the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit.

In the beginning of this year, my Pastor proclaimed this as the year of the Holy Spirit. In line with that, he has been teaching on the Holy Spirit and a couple of weeks ago, he brought a guest Pastor into our church to do a two day conference on the Holy Spirit. Those two days were very very intense as the guest Pastor was trying to give us 20 weeks of teaching in two days. Needless to say, we were overwhelmed! To me, it was invigorating. I love learning all I can about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Although it was a refresher course for me, it was extremely necessary. You know, faith comes by hearing the Word of God, and when you don't hear it for a while, on a certain subject, you tend to lose it.

As a worshiper and psalmist, nothing bothers me more than when people sing songs that insult or grieve the Holy Spirit. As stated earlier, if we don't know the purpose of singing in church, abuse is inevitable. Anyway, the first night of the conference, the choir sang, because it was a Holy Spirit conference, "Breathe On Me." They performed the song nicely and people were crying and shouting and I sat there thinking, "Why are they asking the Holy Spirit to breathe on them when He's already in them?" Well, apparently the guest Pastor was wondering the same thing because when he began teaching on the Holy Spirit, he turned around to the choir and said to them, "You don't need the Holy Spirit to breath on you, He's already in you." My point is that we can get so caught up in doing things out of tradition. Mark 7:13 says, the traditions of man make the Word of God of no effect. Just because you've always done something one way, does not mean it's correct.

Can you imagine asking the Holy Spirit, who is already in you to the fullest, to breathe on you? He's saying, breathe on you? For what? I am full of you and you don't even acknowledge that? You don't use the power that's already in you, what good would it do to breathe on you? The writer of that song probably wrote it out of emotions and ignorance, and unfortunately, it became very popular. What does that say about the Body of Christ?

The guest Pastor of the conference said that the majority of the Body of Christ is ignorant to the Holy Spirit. They only see Him in two ways. The first is to provide the gifts of the Spirit and the second is for the power of God. But he taught us as does the Word of God, that there is so much more to the Holy Spirit than that. Think about it. Jesus said, I must go but I will send you a comforter. Therefore, right off the bat, we know that the Holy Spirit is our Comforter. (John 14:16). In John 14:26 Jesus also told us that the Holy Spirit would teach us ALL things and bring to our remembrance the teachings of Jesus. There is no way the Apostles of Jesus Christ could have remembered all of those details to write the gospels without the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our helper.

Paul was chosen by God to preach to the Gentiles. Paul was a Jew. As a matter of fact, Paul was a very intelligent, prominent and well-respected Jew. At that time, the Jews really really really hated the Gentiles. Paul was also one who killed Christians. After God converted Saul from the man who killed Christians, into Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament, God gave him a revelation nobody had ever heard before, and one that went against everything he ever knew. God told him that the Gentiles were as much a part of the Body of Christ as the Jews were. Can you imagine the fear he must have had? Most Christians today would say, "Get behind me Satan! I know that ain't God." He received a new revelation from God that nobody had ever heard and he was commissioned to teach it to the Gentiles, whom the Jews hated. There is no way at all he could have done that without the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit taught him, comforted him, counseled him, gave him wisdom, gave him knowledge, gave him understanding, gave him might, shared with him the deep things of God, empowered him, and gave him the boldness to go where no man had gone before.

Even Jesus did not teach or minister to the Gentiles, except upon rare occasion, when they were persistent. That's why when the woman kept begging him to free her daughter from the unclean spirit. Jesus said to her that it was not fit to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. He called the Gentile woman a dog. But she didn't care, she responded, yes Lord but even the dogs get the crumbs, and for that he delivered her daughter of the unclean spirit. It was because of her persistence. (Mark 7:25-30.)

My point is that the Holy Spirit is so much more than we give Him credit for. We have all of these gifts that we haven't even opened yet, and yet we keep asking for more gifts. As parents, we know how we would feel if we spent all of our money, and even went into deep debt, trying to get our children everything they asked for, and then some, for Christmas; paid big money for wrapping paper, spent hours wrapping up all of the gifts and placing them under the tree, just to have our children to wake up on Christmas morning, and never open a gift. Instead, they stand in our room begging for what they have downstairs under the tree. And no matter what you say to them, they refuse to open the gifts downstairs. They just continue to ask you for what they already have. Get the picture?

Hosea 4:6 says that we are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Let's get out of ignorance and open our gifts. Our lives will never be the same.