Gateway leader aims to present a balanced view of the Trinity’s third person Megachurch pastor and best-selling author Robert Morris didn’t talk much about the Holy Spirit growing up in the faith. In fact, he was afraid of Him, he admits in The God I Never Knew: How Real Friendship With the Holy Spirit Can Change Your Life, releasing this month from WaterBrook Press. Morris has come a long way since then, but says: “I just kind of had that concept that if you talk about the Holy Spirit very much or believe in the Holy Spirit, He’s going to make you into kind of a weird person and so I always had a fear. … Some of us have the concept that He’s a little crazy or a little beyond our personality, and that causes us not to get to know Him as the wonderful person that He really is.” Some denominational leaders treated the Holy Spirit “a bit like the crazy uncle who shows up at Thanksgiving once every few years and horrifies everyone with his inappropriate behavior,” Morris writes. “You can’t help being related to this uncle, but you hope that if you don’t mention his name or send him a Christmas card, he will stay away.” While he addresses some of the misconceptions Christians have about the third person of the Trinity, Morris also offers a biblical view of the Spirit as a “wonderful, compassionate and gentle person” and reminds readers that He is, in fact, God. Morris urges believers to develop a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit because He is a person, not an “it.” Scriptures shows that the Spirit has thoughts, will and emotions, he said. “There are even some theological persuasions that would not see Him as a person but as a force,” he said. “If you don’t see Him as a person, then you’ll never develop a personal relationship with Him.” As a pastor gave them instruction, Morris and his wife, Debbie, learned about and began to experience more of the Holy Spirit. “It was just amazing to see how many scriptures are about the Holy Spirit and how the disciples in the New Testament had an ongoing vital passionate relationship with the Holy Spirit all through the book of Acts … as He began to reveal that to us and show us in Scripture, I think our fear and our trepidation (dissipated).” Morris learned not to be daunted by what God might do through the Spirit. “I don’t think the baptism of the Holy Spirit is anything we need to be afraid of at all,” he said. “We simply need to open up and receive and say, ‘Lord, I want you to fill me and immerse me completely and totally in the Holy Spirit so I can have the power to be the witness that you want me to be.’ ” Morris also believes that the gifts of the Spirit are for every Christian. “Every gift is for every Christian as the Holy Spirit wills and as we need those gifts,” he said. Leading Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, Morris has a very large church with non-Christian visitors present every weekend. In that light, he is careful that there is biblical order in the congregation. “We’re doing everything we can to bring them to a point of accepting Jesus as their Savior, so we would not have a tongue in that type of a setting because of our desire to see people come to know the Lord, and they’re unbelievers and they wouldn’t understand,” he explained. “We may have a prophecy, but that prophecy would not be like someone yelling real loudly and shouting like some people have done.”
|
