The Person we call "The Spirit"
After marching slowly through a series of lessons unpacking the person and work of Jesus Christ our kids staff at Lighthouse Church is taking you and your kids on a journey to better know the Holy Spirit. He is the hardest to identify with because he is the least referenced with human attributes and spends most of his effort in directing attention to God the Son or God the Father. Yet, as we read through the scriptures we come to recognize that he is a person who is fully God. He may be third in our references to the holy trinity but he is by no means the lesser.
Our defintion of a disciple is "one who listens to and obeys God by the power of the Spirit." Given this defintion and our desire to make disciples of our children it stands to reason that some study in the scripture on the person and work of the Spirit will be immensely helpful. As your children experience the work of the Spirit in their life it would be amazing to have discussions around your table or at the bedside on how that came about and what resulted. Of course, a foundational assumption at Lighthouse Church is that parents (adults) disciple kids mostly by what they model and a little by what they say. Therefore the goal would be to discuss what it looks like when the Spirit speaks to us and then compare that with their experiences and bring it all to the bible.
Contained within the teachings will also be our pentecostal distintive which is Spirit baptism as an experience in God that is distinct from salvation and accompanied by the sign of speaking in tongues. Obviously this will be shared in different degrees depending on the age and maturity of the children but let us never underestimate their ability to connect to the Spirit. I was very young when I senesed the Spirit drawing me to repentance. I was in grade 3 when the Spirit impressed upon me the need to read my bible and pray every day. I was only 10 when I experienced Spirit baptism and spoke in other tongues. Before I was even a teenager I had many significant encounters with the moving of the Spirit. In elementary school I was fully engaged in sharing my faith with my friends. At 14 I felt called to serve other teenagers and I started a youth bible study at our church and by 15 I was leading and preaching an average attendance of 15 teens. All of this was due to my desire to see the Spirit move in my life.
It is my prayer that God would help us to raise up a new generation that will fully embrace the person and work of the Holy Spirit and help many to come fully alive in Christ. If you share a dream like this then I suggest we start by seeking for the full work of the Spirit in our lives. To lead by example. This May, on the celebration of Pentecost Sunday, we are going to host another "worship night in the morning." A chance for us to all be filled again with the Spirit as Paul encourages to continuously to be (Eph 5:18).
The words of an old chorus sum it all up very well. "Come Holy Spirit, we need thee. Come Sweet Spirit, we pray. Come in thy strength and thy power. Come in thine own gentle way."