‘Cooperating with the Holy Spirit’

Daily Devotional – Tuesday, September 8, 2021

“Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14, NLT)

Why does the author of Hebrews tell us to ‘work’ at living a holy life? Can anyone live a holy life apart from God? No. So how does our ‘work’ work to produce right living? There are two sides to the transformation that God wants to produce in us. On one side is the Holy Spirit, who will grow His fruit in us—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. We must cooperate with Him so that His work will be accomplished in us. But this is not solely a passive type of non-resistant cooperating. There is resistance required, but not of the Holy Spirit. We must resist our own nature…with all of its proclivities…tainted by the effects of sin that has infected the whole of Creation, including ourselves.

So, when it comes to our spiritual transformation, on the one side is the Holy Spirit, but on the other side is the work we must do—actively resisting our human nature. God will not simply perform surgery on us as we lay in some sort of coma-like spiritual state. The way we cooperate with the Holy Spirit requires that we resist our natural human urges and long-established sinful habits. We resist by refusing to do what comes naturally; we resist by seeking God’s help when the temptation strikes; we resist by actively engaging in new thought and behavioural patterns that are pleasing to God.
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Make no mistake about it…living a holy life takes work. It is a cooperative effort between the believer and the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent to help us in our journey as His disciples.
~ Pastor Jane