Listening to the Holy Spirit can save us from trouble and disaster. It was early summer 2001, and I wanted to take my wife to New York City. I lead an urban mission team from my church there earlier that year, and I enjoyed my time in New York. I wanted my wife to experience the Big Apple as well. We made vacation plans while asking the Holy Spirit to lead us. The closer we got to our departure date, the more unsettled I became. Two weeks before our departure, I told my wife we should not go to New York. I told her I did not know why, but the Holy Spirit was telling me to stay home. Two weeks later, terrorists flew two planes into The World Trade Center Buildings.

While in New York City with my mission team, we purchased a bus tour which started at the World Trade Center. The bus tour then took us to China Town and several other locations. We ended the bus tour at Battery Park. I enjoyed the outing so much I planned to purchase the same bus tour for my wife and me. Had we proceeded with our plans to travel to New York City, we would have arrived Monday and would have been on a tour of the Twin Towers early Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001.

Listening to the Holy Spirit is important. We need to be in an ongoing personal relationship with Him, whether it is a matter of life and death or the simple joy of connecting with the Spirit of Holiness.  As we interact with Him daily, He will bring excitement back into our faith journey, and He will have us stop and smell the roses.

To experience holiness is to experience the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who helps us recognize our need for forgiveness. The Holy Spirit enables us to ask Jesus into our lives. It is the Holt Spirit who comes to dwell inside us the moment we believe. From the moment we come to know Jesus personally, and throughout our lives, the Holy Spirit is working in us to reveal His Holiness through us.

If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is working to help you come to know Him personally. If you have asked Jesus into your life, then you have experienced the Holy Spirit. He lives inside of you and He is here to lead, guide, and direct you. The Holy Spirit also encourages you, comforts you, and helps you in your time of need. When the Holy Spirit is living inside you, He is working to help you experience the holiness of God, which God deposited inside of you. As you embrace and experience the Holy Spirit, His holiness will flow through you. Holiness will affect people around you.

To live the Christian life without daily experiencing the Holy Spirit is like attempting to drive a car without gasoline in the tank. All the parts are there, but the power source is missing. We can know several Bible verses, go to church, read the Bible and pray. However, our faith journey will feel like we are pushing a car instead of driving it, if we aren’t in a close personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. We will expend a lot of energy and we will not get very far.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Holiness. We cannot walk in holiness without experiencing the Holy Spirit. As we cultivate a relationship with The Father and the Son, we also need to develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Ask Him questions and then listen for an answer. I do not know what to write about each day. I ask the Holy Spirit to show me what to write, and within a few minutes, an idea, a scripture, a story, an example or, a word picture comes to my mind. The ideas that come to me are not a coincidence—it is the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Enjoying life is an essential part of living a holy life. Suppose we are hyper-focused on trying to avoid evil and trying to follow a certain code of conduct. In that case, we will miss out on the joy of loving God, experiencing His love, loving others, and loving ourselves. Doing good and not doing evil is important. However, our source for holiness must always be the Spirit of Holiness and not the rule book.

The Holy Spirit is a much better source of holiness than is our ability to obey God’s law. He put His law in place to show us we are lawbreakers. The law of God helps us realize we are sinners in need of a savior. Once we place our faith in Jesus, the law of God has completed its mission. We are no longer supervised by the law. Now we are supervised by grace. We are to operate under God’s love and grace and not under the law. When we operate under grace, we operate from God’s love. Romans 13:10 says; “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

The love of God produces love and brings forth holy living. The law of God was never intended to make us holy. The holiness of God is our source for holy living. True holiness shines forth from our lives when we realize the source of holiness does not come from our ability to keep God’s law. Self-righteousness vanishes, and false humility evaporates. We become happy, healthy, loving people.

Embrace and experience God’s gift of The Holy Spirit, and you will experience holiness.

Live Loved–Experience Holiness.