Growing in the Spirit

I’m sure that most of us know that the Holy Spirit can help us live a good Christian life. Either that or we can make it difficult for it to work in our lives. St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians tells us that “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His spirit in the inner man” (cf Eph 3:14-16)

Paul was asking the Holy Spirit to strengthen the Christians in Ephesus. In the New Testament, we can see that the Holy Spirit is the key to victory over sin and to living a holy life. The Holy Spirit provides spiritual power for ministry and to help us understand the Bible. These are the few examples in which the Holy Spirit works through us. All of this can only happen when we are “walking in” or filled with” the Holy Spirit.

There are people in this world who think that the key to victory over sin is self punishment, doing penance and abstinence. This is essentially pre Vatican thinking. St. Paul himself tells us that the key to living a holy life as a Christian is to walk in the Spirit. As Christians, we are commanded to walk in the Spirit since the Spirit is already living in us. (Read Gal 5:25)

When we start to walk in the Spirit, we will not be constantly sinning, no one can escape sin but the Holy Spirit can help us to lessen it. Once we start to faithfully and constantly walk in the Spirit, we will grow in the Spirit and the fruits of it will also bloom.

On our own effort, we will not be able to live a good Christian life, which is why God gave us the Holy Spirit so that we can continuously grow and receive God’s grace. The Holy Spirit lives in us and will never leave us. Whether we let it do something in our lives is up to us. God gave us that choice.

How do we experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives? First and foremost, we need to respond to its promptings. We should try to listen to what the Spirit is trying to tell us, what is it that it wants us to do. We should obediently follow its lead.

The Spirit is the power source of our Christian life. We are empowered by it if we obediently respond by faith. This is a gradual process. We need to continually submit our attitude, actions, decisions and lives to the Spirit. (Read Rom 8:5) Obedience is always difficult, That is why we have to continually ask the Holy Spirit to help us to be obedient to its promptings. In this way, we will slowly grow. Some may say that “Oh, I have attended LSS and that is enough growth for me” LSS is only a means to recharge our spirit and to guide us to follow the Holy Spirit that is in us.

How then, do we respond to this Spirit that God gave us? First we have to acknowledge that we are not superman/woman, we have to be honest and tell ourselves that we need the Holy Spirit in our lives. The second one is to go for confession on a regular basis, twice a month is good enough. This will help us to gauge how much we have grown in the Spirit. And lastly, we need to commit our lives to the one who gave it to us, God. “seek ye first the kingdom of God and all things will be given unto you”

We may not be able to see our own growth. But no matter how difficult life is, we must never give up, we have to faithfully believe that we are growing, no matter how slow. Life is definitely challenging, without challenges, we will not be able to realise the power of the Spirit.

If we follow the wisdom of the Spirit, it will guide and protect us. It will never fail us.