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Day 46: Understanding

What have you been taught about the Holy Spirit? Is it unknown or familiar territory for you?

by David Joynt on May 25, 2016

Day 46: Understanding

JOHN 16:14
1 CORINTHIANS 12

One of the great debates in church history is about the role of the Holy Spirit. Some believers are so fearful of honoring the Spirit’s present tense power, lest previous traditions and doctrines are swept away by fresh new ideas that may downplay the Spirit’s role. Some followers are so intent on having spiritual experiences in the form of visions, words of knowledge, and ecstatic moments, that they untether their faith from scripture. Jesus teaches that the Spirit’s work is always in alignment with, and rooted in, His words. The Spirit does not “speak on His own.” This is reassuring—new revelations never outruns or contradicts scripture. But notice this is also descriptive, Jesus continues to speak through the Spirit, which still animates and empowers the current church as it did the early church.

What have you been taught about the Holy Spirit?

Is it unknown or familiar territory for you?

Tags: devotional, encountering, understanding

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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