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Human-ology Series
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We gather today on Pentecost Sunday to celebrate the outpouring and coming of the Holy Spirit—the third person of the Trinity. We're in a series called Humanology, and I want to have a conversation about the Holy Spirit, because every human needs him. We cannot be fully human as God intended without him.
As a church family, I want us to be open to the comprehensive contribution that the Holy Spirit wants to make in all of our lives. That contribution is not just rebirth and refilling, but renewal.
There is a term often floated around in continuationist, charismatic, and Pentecostal communities: spiritual warfare. Although not explicitly stated in Scripture, it is blatantly supported by it.
Spiritual warfare can be summarized as the enemy's attempt to undermine God's deepest desires for your life. The God who designed you—not accidentally, not haphazardly, but strategically and intentionally—has desires for you.
We see this in Jeremiah 1, where God tells Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you." This is intelligent design. Your parents made you, but God formed you. The only thing your parents controlled was the act of conception. But what you turned out like—your strengths, capabilities, talents, temperament, and personality—God formed those things.
God has deep desires: what he wants to do in you (the kind of person he wants you to become) and what he wants to do through you (the contribution he wants you to make). Spiritual warfare, simplified, is the enemy's multi-faceted attempts to undermine whatever those desires are.
But here is a crucial axiom: Spiritual warfare is not just the enemy's attempt to take us down; it is also his attempt to wear us out.
One of the weapons of his warfare isn't just demons—it's depletion. He knows we are more prone to dysfunction and self-destructive behavior when we're depleted. So he will intentionally orchestrate or exploit experiences that sap and siphon from us the energy we need to be who God's called us to be and to do what God has called us to do.
Depletion is an inevitable reality for every human. No matter how prudent, prayerful, or perceptive you are, you will step into seasons that place a disproportionate demand on your supply of spiritual and emotional energy. And the next thing you know, you find yourself in a season where you won but you're still worn down.
You got the degree, but it wore you down. You recovered from the breakup, but it wore you down. You built back what they stole from you, but it wore you down. You bounced back from your own missteps, but it wore you down. I'm winning, but I'm worn down.
There is another individual presented to us in Scripture who knows what it feels like to win and be worn down: Jesus.
In Matthew 4:1, we read: "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."
Notice: Jesus was led by the Spirit, not by the devil. The devil likes to meet you in the wilderness. The wilderness in both the Old and New Testament is a metaphor for certain types of seasons we go through in our lives.
A wilderness season can be a transition season—not where you were, but not where you're going. Things are not as bad as they used to be, but they're not as good as they're going to be. You know you're not going back, but you're still trying to figure out what "here" looks like.
It's a season of conflicting emotions—cautious and optimistic at the same time. Far enough out to be glad you're out, but close enough to still remember what it felt like. It's when God disrupts what's familiar but doesn't fully disclose the future.
God and Satan want to use the wilderness two different ways. Satan wants to use transition to create cynicism. God wants to use transition to create trust. Trust is what you need when God refuses to give you an explanation.
The wilderness also represents a time of preparation. God is having conversations with you that don't match your location. In Deuteronomy 8, God tells Israel in the wilderness: "When you get wells you didn't dig, vineyards you didn't plant, houses you didn't build, you shall remember the Lord your God."
They don't have these things yet, but God is teaching them how to handle what they don't even have, so that when they get it, they don't lose him. God will get your mind there first, and then he'll take your life there.
Preparation requires delay. You may be good at something here, but you're not developed enough there. God doesn't want you to get the grapes and lose God. So even though he's gifted you in certain ways, he puts you on a timetable. The desert is for your development.
The wilderness also represents a season of separation. In the Old Testament, not everyone who came out of Egypt went into Canaan. The separation isn't always about evil—sometimes it's about appetite.
Some people who came out of Egypt were so glad to be out that they weren't willing to pay the price to go to Canaan. It's not just about whether they're evil; it's about whether they have an appetite to keep progressing when their destiny requires them to do so.
When Moses was on the mountain communing with God, the people grew anxious. In Exodus 32:1, they gathered around Aaron and said: "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."
Because the only leadership they'd experienced was Pharaoh's abusive authority, they interpreted Moses's absence as abandonment. They had unconsciously become codependent on Moses. They wanted Moses, not Canaan. What they really wanted was comfort, not destiny.
God sometimes leads us into the wilderness to orchestrate separation—not because there's evil, but because there's a lack of appetite. He needs to raise up a generation that actually has an appetite for the promise.
Finally, the wilderness represents a season of temptation—when anxiety with the unfamiliar prompts us to engage in activity that is unwise, unhealthy, unbiblical, but makes us feel comfortable.
Israel in the Old Testament failed every test. They didn't manage transition well, didn't manage preparation well, didn't manage separation well, and didn't manage temptation well.
Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and passed every test. He managed transition well. He managed preparation well. He managed separation well. He managed temptation well.
But look at what happens in Matthew 4:11: "Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended to him."
Why would angels need to come and attend to Jesus when the devil left? Even when you win, winning will wear you down.
Jesus was physically depleted—he fasted 40 days. He was emotionally exhausted. He was spiritually battle-worn from constantly resisting temptation. And the angels came and ministered to him.
But here's the thing: This wasn't the end of the story. Chapter 4 is not the end of the story. Jesus hadn't even done public ministry yet. The restoration wasn't just for his formation; it was for his function—for his assignment. The wilderness didn't complete the work; it got him ready for the work.
Jesus was just in chapter 4. If Jesus had to be attended to because he was spiritually battle-worn and emotionally depleted and physically depleted, how are you carrying everything you're carrying without a strategy?
What Jesus needed is what we need, because we're regularly going through seasons of transition, preparation, separation, and temptation. What the angels did for him, the Holy Spirit does for us.
We need to expand our understanding of the contributions that the Holy Spirit wants to make to his people. Very often, the contribution of the Holy Spirit is limited to rebirth. Titus discusses rebirth—the Holy Spirit does regenerate us and make us new creatures. But Titus also talks about the renewing work of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit not only orchestrates rebirth; he orchestrates renewal.
When I'm running on empty—and I will, because there will be seasons that place disproportionate demands on me emotionally, spiritually, and physically—life is not linear. There is no equal distribution of pressure throughout the year. You might have three months where everything's going amazing, and then six months where the whole body is like, "Wait a minute. This is 6 and 3, not 3 and 3."
The Holy Spirit is like a tag team wrestler standing outside the corner, watching life beat us up, saying, "I wish you would just tag me in." Because I have a renewing ministry. I refill and refuel you with what you need when the disproportionate demands of life sap the spiritual and emotional energy and strength that you need to be who God's calling you to be and do what God's calling you to do. Your assignment and your evolution require energy.
I am not at my best character-wise when I don't have what I need. When you're tired, you're not full of kindness.
Depletion is a revelation of your human limitations. It's intended to create a degree of dependence on an inexhaustible source and supply found in God and not in you.
God says: "Yes, you're going to get to the end of your rope, so that you know the end isn't the end. Yes, it's going to feel like you can't carry anymore. You can't. Yes, it's going to feel like you can't do anymore. You can't. But I can. And I will renew you. And I will refill you. And I will replenish you. And I will dispense unto you the spiritual virtue that you need to carry you until the time of your next refill."
On this Pentecost Sunday, I didn't want to just talk about how the Spirit will distribute gifts to us, how the Spirit will empower us. I wanted to reintroduce us to the renewing ministry of the Holy Spirit who, when you feel depleted and done—done with a capital D-O-N-E, three exclamation points—he's there.
Jeremiah said, "I'm done." But his word was in him like a burning fire shut up in his bones. He says, "I grew weary of holding it back." The Holy Spirit is a renewer.
You're carrying a lot. You're in a season where there are disproportionate demands. Let's not act like this is not a lot. This is a lot. And you expect to carry all of this as a human, as a human without help. The Holy Spirit is outside the ring. He just needs you to tag him in.
This requires acknowledging: "I've been over-relying on my own strength."
The things that people have been bragging to you about have actually become a liability to you, because you've started believing what they've been affirming when some of that stuff God wanted you to adjust. They've been talking about how much you carry, and you assume you're supposed to carry this. But God says, "I told you to cast it on me."
People say, "You're so strong." But God says, "I never intended for you to be strong in yourself. I told you be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might."
The Holy Spirit wants to renew you. Some of you are in a season where you're trying to make life decisions. This is a lot. And you're depleted. And it's got you showing up in ways you're going to regret.
There's a day coming when you're going to wish you managed this time differently. You can't keep trying to do this by yourself.
Jesus spent three years discipling and teaching his disciples. Three years. After three years with them, he said, "Still, don't you do a thing until you get power from on high, because you're going to have three years worth of notes that you will not be able to put into practice because I'm giving you my person to redeem you. I'm giving you my principles to give you revelation. But you're going to need the Comforter, the Paraclete—the Holy Spirit—to actually put into practice what I am sharing with you."
You need him. He saved you. He's filled you. But are you allowing him to regularly renew you?
What if your daily bread is not just bread? Some of you have food. So what is your daily bread? It's what you lack in the season you're in.
For some of you, your daily bread is: "Lord, I need strength. Every day."
I really need to do a series on spiritual warfare without talking about demon casting, because that's not 99% of people's problems. Some of this is wounds that God and the enemy has orchestrated in a season of your life. Those wounds have shown up not in the form of pain, but in the form of personality traits. And you've carried those personality traits so long that you've attached them to your identity.
You don't even know his work is embedded in the person you've created for yourself that you've accepted as your own. So he doesn't have to keep attacking you. You attack yourself.
Some of us have dealt with such little support and such little help that not only do we struggle to receive it from humans, we don't know how to receive it from God. A childlike, helpless dependency is something we can't even relate to because sociologically, in our background, we never had a chance to be one.
When the Bible says "enter the kingdom like a child," some of us can't relate because we didn't get to be one. We had to be adults when we were children.
For those of you who've raised children, you know what it means to watch somebody want to do something for themselves and can't, and you're longing to help them. The Holy Spirit is longing to help you. He wants to re-parent you in a way you didn't get to experience. He wants to show you how to actually be a daughter or son of God.
On this Pentecost Sunday, I'm going to pray. Father, I lift up your people. Exhaustion, depletion, disappointment, discouragement, fatigue. You said if we wait on you, you would renew our strength.
Holy Spirit, would you do that? Would you do for us what the angels did for Jesus?
I lift every person up to you now. Strength for today. Strength for tomorrow. Strength for the days and the weeks to come. Strength to endure the sickness. Strength to care for the parent. Strength to build the thing you've called them to build. Strength to repair what's broken. Strength to make the change. Strength to resist and fight the temptation.
Holy Spirit, renew and restore. Do it today. Do it tomorrow. In Jesus' name. Amen.
