“You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Acts 7:51).
Many Christians may find the idea of man being a Co-pilot with the Holy Spirit ridiculous because of their belief that God takes total responsibility without their input once the Christian gives his life to Jesus.
In as much as a Christian is called upon to commit all to God it doesn’t mean that he has no active responsibility as God helps him to chart the path of his life upwards.
God has made us an agent of choice: to do or not to do is in the hand of man and not for God to impose his will on him. In the book of Deuteronomy 30: 15-19 God says: “ See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction……Now choose life, so that you and your children may live”. It is a choice!
Since God has made man a free agent it is therefore important that the Christian cooperates with the instructions of the Holy Spirit if he would achieve his divine purpose to the full.
Just as there was a cooperative relationship between God the father and the Son at creation (Heb. 1:2), Jesus through the Holy Spirit is also inviting us for a cooperative relationship so that we can be recreated and complete in Christ.
Here is the reason why many have missed the purpose of God for their lives: poor choices. The degree to which we will cooperate with the Holy Spirit will also reflect the degree to which we would fulfill our divine destiny on earth.
As an analogy, for a safe flight and landing a Co-Pilot must cooperate and take instructions from the Captain.
To cooperate means to work or act together toward a common end or purpose. It also means to acquiesce willingly. The Holy Spirit is our Captain and we as Co-Pilots must cooperate with Him willingly to ensure that we optimize our divine destiny. He will not force us.
The Apostle Paul was careful to declare that he did not frustrate the grace of God upon his life but cooperated fully with the Holy Spirit. No wonder he achieved maximum success in his ministry. (Galatians 2:21).
How do we impede the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Here are a few examples:
1)Grieving the Spirit
Whenever we sin and do not confess our sins to the Lord we grieve the Holy Spirit and we block the flow of His presence in our life. In Psalm 32:1, David who had grieved the Holy Spirit writes: “ When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long”.
2)Resisting the Spirit
“But they rebelled And grieved His Holy Spirit;
Therefore He turned Himself to become their enemy, He fought against them”. (Isaiah 63:10).
Like the difficult generation of Israelites in the wilderness who never made it to the promised land due to a series of frustrating acts of disobedience, the lying conspiracy of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:5, 10) also incurred the wrath of God which led to their demise. It’s a dangerous thing to deliberately spurn the express instructions of God.
3)Doubt and Fear
Fear resists the instructions of the Holy Spirit and can rob us of His much-needed partnership. Fear is a thief that seeks to weaken our faith in God.
But thankfully Christ rose from the dead and destroyed the works of the devil who had the power of death and delivered all who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2: 14-15).
A deeper understanding of this passage reveals that sin will always make us slaves and bring us into bondage while a life of righteousness in Christ will set us free (John 10:10; Galatians 5:1, 13).
The fear of death is universal dating back to the fall of man in the garden of Eden but a Christian has a different perspective because the resurrection of Christ from the dead gives life and death a new meaning- he doesn’t live as a slave to the fear of death but lives an abundant life knowing that while he is alive or in death he belongs to Christ. (Romans 14:8).
Therefore a fruitful Christian will continually seek active cooperation with the Holy Spirit through prayer, understanding the word of God and diligently applying the same word to his life. He won’t just be idle waiting for growth to happen in his life.
While the work of salvation is very much the work of the Holy Spirit without man’s input the desire to grow spiritually will require the maximum cooperation of the Christian. In cooperating with the Holy Spirit we unlock the resident power of God in our lives as Christians.
Reading
Ephesians 4: 11-29.
