Your New Life

By now you may be saying to yourself: “This Christian life all looks too hard for me. I don’t know if I can live it. There are so many things to do! I can’t even remember them all—much less do them.”

Don’t be discouraged. God never intended for you to be a Christian without His help. In fact, God has come to actually live in you by the power of His Holy Spirit. You are not alone!

Some people think that becoming a Christian is just learning a new set of rules. They are wrong. The Christian life isn’t a set of rules that you must keep. It doesn’t depend on your struggles to be good. It is a new life from God springing up inside you and flowing out from you.

As you let the Holy Spirit guide, you will discover that you can learn how to keep the standards God has given you. The Holy Spirit will give you power to turn away from evil and choose what is right. Day by day, you will grow more like your heavenly Father.

Yes, you have a wonderful Helper! This lesson will explain who He is and how He helps you.

In this lesson you will study . . .

• The Holy Spirit Is Your Helper
• The Fruit of the Holy Spirit
• Walking in the Holy Spirit
• The Power of the Holy Spirit in You
• The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

This lesson will help you to . . .

• Explain the help God gives you to live for Him.
• Describe the different ways in which the Holy Spirit works in your life.
• Experience personally the power of the Holy Spirit.

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS YOUR HELPER

Objective 1.     Identify the reason why God sends the Holy Spirit to help you.

Through the life and death of Jesus Christ, God provided everything for your salvation. He has also provided all you need to live your new life. He has done this by sending His Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit can be everywhere at once. When Jesus was on earth, He could be in only one place at a time. When He went back to heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to be with all the Christians in order to live in us, guide us, and help us with our problems.

John 14:16, 26. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you forever. The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you.”

THE FRUIT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Objective 2.     Describe the fruit of the Spirit.

The presence of the Holy Spirit in your life produces results that are called the fruit of the Spirit. He gives you the desire to do the right thing, and then He gives you the strength to do it. As you let Him lead and help you this way, He develops in you a wonderful Christian character. Your good attitudes, speech, and actions show that you are a child of God. Your family and friends will enjoy being around you, but most of all, this fruit of the Spirit will please your heavenly Father.

Galatians 5:22-23. But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.

John 15:8. “My Father’s glory is shown by your bearing much fruit.”

WALKING IN THE HOLY SPIRIT

Objective 3.     Identify an example of “walking in the Spirit.”

It is natural for us to want to have our own way. This is a tendency of human nature. We want to do as we please instead of what we know we ought to do. This is why we need to listen to the inner voice of the Holy Spirit as He urges us to do God’s will and shows us the way.

Galatians 5:16, 25. Let the Spirit direct your lives, and you will not satisfy the desires of the human nature. The Spirit has given us life; he must also control our lives.

God’s Spirit will direct and strengthen you, but He won’t carry you up the road to heaven. You must walk on your own two feet. You must cooperate with the Holy Spirit and let Him guide you. This is what the Bible sometimes calls “walking in the Spirit.” You are already doing this as you read your Bible and put into practice what it teaches.

THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN YOU

Objective 4.     Choose descriptions of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus knew that His followers would need a power greater than their own to do the work that had to be done for God. So He told them to wait until they were filled with the Holy Spirit in order to receive power to be His witnesses in all the world.

Acts 1:4-5, 8. “Wait for the gift I told you about, the gift my Father promised. John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. . . . When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

John the Baptist said of Jesus:

Luke 3:16. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The book of Acts gives us the thrilling story of how God fulfilled this promise on the Day of Pentecost and of the wonderful results afterwards.

Acts 2:4-5, 7, 11. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were Jews living in Jerusalem, religious men who had come from every country in the world. In amazement and wonder they exclaimed, “These people who are talking like this are Galileans! . . . Yet all of us hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things that God has done!”

This baptism in the Holy Spirit, or infilling of the Holy Spirit, is also called the Pentecostal experience because it first occurred on the Day of Pentecost. When a person speaking under the power of the Holy Spirit uses a language that he or she doesn’t know, we sometimes call it glossalalia. This Greek word means “speaking in tongues.” We also call it a charismatic experience, from charisma, which means “gift.” This means that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit and a supernatural experience.

Speaking in tongues was the sign that the Holy Spirit had come. But that was just the beginning.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would give us power. This power is for two purposes:

• To help us tell others about Jesus.
• To help us pray more effectively.

As Christians witness and pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, wonderful things take place in answer to prayer, and many souls turn to the Lord.

Acts 2:14, 41. Then Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles and in a loud voice began to speak to the crowd. . . . Many of them believed his message and were baptized, and about three thousand were added to the group that day.

Acts 4:31. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim God’s message with boldness.

This same power is for Christians today. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, several million people, in churches of different denominations all over the world, have enjoyed this Pentecostal experience in a baptism of power.

Acts 2:38-39. “Each one of you must turn away from his sins and be baptized in the name     of Jesus Christ, so that your sins will be forgiven; and you will receive God’s gift, the Holy Spirit. For God’s promise was made to you and your children, and to all who are far away—all whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

This wonderful Pentecostal experience is for you. Ask God to baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

Objective 5.     Identify truths about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

As you have just read in Acts 2:38-39, the Holy Spirit himself is called a “gift.” This word also points to the abilities that He gives to Christians. They are called the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit. Christ wants His church to be full of spiritual power, so the Holy Spirit gives special abilities to its different members. In this way each person may have a part in the work and growth of the church.

1 Corinthians 12:4, 7, 11. There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit gives them. The Spirit’s presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all. . . . As he wishes, he [the Holy Spirit] gives a different gift to each person.