All right, all right. Join the Journey family, friends, and guests. You're listening to Join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter. Thanks for joining. This week, we are reading Acts 2, 1 through 21, and I am in the podcast studio with Watermark's executive director of the porch, Kyle and Perry. Yeah, man, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for jumping in. Second episode of the year. We've got some big questions.

So today's question for you is who is the Holy Spirit and what role does the Spirit play in the

life of the believer? So let's start with the first half. Who is the Holy Spirit?

It's the right place to begin because so often in the church, it's common to just jump to

what does the Spirit do. Sure. But we have to understand the Spirit's not just a power. The Spirit's

actually a person. And as we say that, I know you may be thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, but so many people don't

actually understand that is true. According to a study done by Legioneer Ministries and Lifeway

research, 53% of evangelicals believe the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being, which tells us

not so much that they don't understand who he is, but they really emphasize what he does.

So let's just talk about who he is for a minute,

because we need to know again that God eternally exists as three persons,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

meaning that there's three different persons,

all of whom are fully God.

Now, when you say person, what do you mean? Because I could hear you say person and think you mean a literal human being. I'm a person, you're a person. Is that what you mean? That's not what I mean. I don't mean that he's a human as you and I are humans, but what I do mean is he's a knowable entity. He's a knowable being. I don't know if entity is the right

word there. Marked by relational attributes. That's exactly right. Yeah, which is I think what we need to understand when we start talking about who he is. So the first thing you have to know is the Holy Spirit is personal. That's what we mean when he's a person. He's personal in nature. He's not a power. He's not Like someone turned on the electricity and all of a sudden you have lights in your life.

Instead, we need to understand nature. He's not a power. He's not like someone turned on the electricity and all of a sudden

you have lights in your life. Instead, we need to understand that he teaches. He guides. He testifies.

Jesus really begins to explain the personal nature of the spirit in the upper room discourse,

which we read at the end of the Gospel of John. We also note through the scripture that the

Holy Spirit can be grieved, that he intercedes on behalf of believers, he comforts and counsels. We could go on. He can be lied to. He can be lied to. He can be quenched. These are all things we know to be true that speak to the personal characteristic of the Holy Spirit. We also know the Holy Spirit is divine. Fully God.

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