Who is The Holy Spirit (Middle School Lesson)

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(This was a lesson taught at Granada Heights Friends Church 2/9/23 to the Middles School Department.)

Let me give an analogy to help us understand the Holy Spirit. We are like motion sensor drones. 

Before we believe that Jesus saves us, we're powerless to move spiritually. We're like a drone without power, sitting on the ground motionless. When we believe, we become alive and learn to move and act towards God through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

That's like someone inserting batteries into the drone and turning it on. Now it's able to move. The Holy Spirit would be like if someone were to walk alongside the drone and guide it towards its destination.
Motion detecting drones have sensors built into them to sense when they're near an object. Similarly, God made us to have built-in sensors to discern the Holy Spirit’s leading. We have the five senses—hear, touch, taste, smell, see—and then we have an internal sensor to understand where the Holy Spirit would like to lead us.

This does not mean The Holy Spirit is trying to control us. God’s goal is not to control us. God’s desire is for us to control ourselves to live our best life. And only God knows what our best life looks like.

However, it's easy to get stuck believing God is trying to control us, so let's unpack that for a bit. On the pyramid of earthly authorities, most kids are probably towards the bottom. Kids are in charge of a pet or their room or a younger sibling. Parents, coaches, and teachers are in charge of kids. Police are in charge of citizens. Next up on the totem pole would maybe be mayors, then governors, then presidents and finally God.

Each level of power has the authority to make sure the people under them do certain things. For example a teacher is there to make sure students learn something. One of the cops jobs is to make sure we follow the traffic rules. If people don't obey or succeed or submit, those in authority have the power to give consequences. A coach might kick someone off the team. A teacher might fail a student. A president might remove someone from office.

Human authorities have the power to govern our actions, but they don’t have the power to govern our feelings or desires or thoughts or tastes. In fact, we ourselves can’t even govern our own feelings, desires, and thoughts without help. Here’s what I mean.

Let's say your mom tells you to clean up a mess and you didn’t make the mess. Your little sister did, but your mom says clean it up anyways. So you do it, but inside you’re like, “Fine. I’ll clean it up, but I don’t have to like it!” And you kind of make your mom pay by giving her attitude. Your Mom can make you clean something up, but can she make you like it? Right?

Or here’s another example. Let’s say you’re going to try out for something and you’re really nervous. You’re so nervous you feel sick. Do you have the power to just tell your nervousness to go away? No. You can distract yourself or try to think about something else, but this isn’t really changing your fears; That’s just burying them under a disguise of sorts.

Or here’s another example. When someone important in your life treats you like trash, you start to think that you are worthless. You can’t just tell yourself, “No self, you’re actually really great,” and then automatically think better of yourself. You don’t have the authority to just transform your mind. Again, you can distract yourself or pretend you don’t care what they said. But this isn’t really changing your insides. It’s just fooling yourself.

None of the earthly authorities can fix our insides, and we can’t either. And this is a big problem because the God of the Bible doesn’t want us to just do the right thing. He wants us to feel right on the inside. God doesn’t just want us to honor him with our words, but to honor him with our hearts and thoughts and desires (Matt 15:8). Jesus commands us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Luke 10:27).

However, most of us probably think that the Holy Spirit is there to make us behave and that by behaving we move closer to God. This is not what I mean. Anyone can behave. You don’t have to be a Christian to do good things.

Only someone with the Holy Spirit inside them can feel and think and desire rightly because only the Holy Spirit can get inside us. Parents can't get inside us. Cops can't get inside us. Neither can the president. Only someone who is spirit can get into our spirit. And there are two types of spirits int his world. God's spirit and demons.

God's spirit doesn’t do hostile take overs. He doesn’t force himself into us. He could but then you’d be like a puppet, like a servant or slave with no choice in the matter. God doesn’t want slaves, he wants sons and daughters. That’s the difference between demon possession and God’s Holy Spirit. Demons come in to take over and devour like a lion does its prey. God doesn’t want to take over. He wants to teach us to be in control of ourselves.

But God will come into us and help us change our insides, if we let him in. If we say, “Lord, I don’t want to obey my mom. I can’t make my heart right. Please, do it for me.” Or “Lord, I’m nervous. I can’t get rid of this fear. I’m afraid of people looking at me. Help me trust that only how you see me matters.” Or “Lord, I’m hurt. These people are making me feel worthless. Help me believe what you say about me.”

By actually believing theses things, we give God permission to grow within us and change us. It’s like a friendship inside our hearts. Us and God doing things together. And when we're partners with God, suddenly, our position on this totem pole changes. We're not down at the bottom anymore. We're united with Christ way up at the top. We have God’s authority.

That's why we can pray that the Lord changes other people’s hearts—teachers, coaches, parents. Or change the hearts of people who bug us at school. We can pray that the Lord changes the direction of storms, changes state laws, thwarts the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or closes down a shop selling pot. History is filled with examples of the great things people did because they were united with God's spirit to work and act in power. That’s Holy Spirit power: changing our insides and changing the world.




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