Power, Love and Sound Judgment

First, I want to emphasize that there is no other agent, no other power, no other person who can do for us what the Holy Spirit can do. He is absolutely unique. If we do not receive from Him, there is no one else from whom we can receive what we need.

You see, Paul tells Timothy in

“Second Timothy chapter 1 verse 7”

three things about the Holy Spirit which I want to emphasize. He says,

“God has not given us a spirit of timidity.”

That doesn’t come from God.

“But of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Those are three of the main results which God wants to produce in us through the Holy Spirit: power, love, and a sound, sound mind or sound judgment.

Let’s look at each of those briefly in turn. What kind of power does the Holy Spirit bestow? Well, Jesus said in

“Acts chapter 1 verse 8”

to His disciples just before He left them and ascended back to heaven. In fact, this was the last sentence He spoke on earth:

“You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses.”

And He said, “Don’t go out and begin your ministry. Don’t begin to preach until you’ve received this supernatural power which can come only by the Holy Spirit.”

Now, that was not military power. The apostles had no military power. It wasn’t physical power. It wasn’t intellectual power. They didn’t spend a lot of time arguing and theologizing. It was a supernatural, spiritual power.

And you see, the message of the gospel is totally supernatural. It centers in the record of a man who died, was three days in the tomb, was raised up from death, and was raised up to heaven. Now, that is supernatural. What Jesus implies is it’s unreasonable to present a message about a supernatural set of events with merely natural power, with merely natural reasoning. He said the power that you need must fit in with the message that you’re commissioned to bring. The message is supernatural; the power must be supernatural. And as soon as the Holy Spirit descended, absolutely immediately, a totally new kind of supernatural power was released in Jerusalem and, according to Jesus’ plan, began to spread outwards from Jerusalem to the utmost parts of the earth.

Then Paul spoke also about love. And in

“Romans chapter 5 and verse 5,”

he says this:

“Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

That is an amazing statement. The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Not some of God’s love, but just God’s love. I always tell people who have been filled with the Holy Spirit, you really don’t need to ask for more love. What you do need to do is release the love that’s already been poured out in you. In fact, to ask for more love, in a certain sense, is a statement of unbelief because it’s all been released. The Bible says God doesn’t give the Spirit by measure. He doesn’t ration the Spirit out. He’s so generous. Even the Spirit Himself is called the free or the generous Spirit of God. There’s no stinginess with God. God pours out the whole of His Spirit and the whole of His love into our hearts. Our problem is not that we don’t have enough love; it’s that we don’t yield to the love that we have.

And then the third thing of which Paul speaks there to Timothy is sound judgment or a sound mind. And I understand that to mean evaluating things as God evaluates them. I’ve told people many times, the greatest realist on earth today is the Holy Spirit. He’s never sentimental. He’s never impressed by the external. He always sees right to the heart of every situation, every person, every problem, and He tells us the exact truth about it. There’s been a generation that wanted people to tell them things the way they are. Tell it like it is. I always tell those people when I minister to them, if you want anybody to tell you like it is, you want the Holy Spirit ‘cause He never sentimentalizes. He never exaggerates. He never pushes. He just tells it like it is. It’s up to you to respond.

But this is only by the Holy Spirit. Paul says in

“Romans 12:2,”

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

So our minds have to be transformed. They have to be renewed in order that we can have this kind of judgment. And the renewing agent is the Holy Spirit. In very similar language, in

“Ephesians 4:23,”

Paul says this:

“that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

Notice, it’s the Spirit that must renew the mind. It’s not psychology. It’s not education. It’s the supernatural operation of the Spirit of God that renews our mind. You see, God renews us from within. Religion works from without, preoccupied with externals. But God renews us from within. He renews our minds, the way we think. And when we think differently, we live differently. Our part is yielding to the Holy Spirit in every area of our lives.