Serving Others Through the Power of the Holy Spirit

Summary

The Holy Spirit empowers believers to serve others through both spiritual life and sustained effort. Just as physical healing often requires time and discipline, spiritual fruitfulness grows through a lifelong process guided by the Spirit. He provides wisdom, right motivation, and spiritual gifts rooted in God’s love. Following Jesus’ example, effective service depends not on human strength but on the Holy Spirit’s power working through faithful obedience.

Strength Through a Process, not a Shortcut

Back problems derailed my ability to mow the lawn or do many other tasks in 2016. The Holy Spirit gave me the wisdom, energy, and perseverance to address the underlying issues that curtailed my ability to perform many normal activities.

Ten years later, my back is significantly stronger and healthier. Without going into details, a back-stretching machine, a tennis ball, and stretching and strengthening exercises have empowered me to continue to serve God and others. To God be the glory!

The Spirit Empowers Faithful Effort

Let me share how to find life-fulfilling service through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers us for service, but that doesn’t exclude the need for our all-out effort. Strengthening my back has taken years of effort. God could have done it in an eyeblink, but He chose to do it through a process that required my time and energy.

That is also the story of my spiritual fruitfulness. He could have used me to win and disciple hundreds of people from the beginning of my pastoral ministry. He didn’t. He equipped me through a process that lasted forty years and is continuing.

From Spiritual Death to Living Water

Every Jesus follower begins with a spiritual resurrection of sorts. The Spirit has given spiritual life to us who were spiritually dead because of our disobedience and countless sins (Ephesians 2:1).

That Spirit-birthed spiritual life is eternal. It arrived by God’s grace through faith (John 3:6, 6:63). That life is like rivers of living water flowing from our hearts and blessing others near and far (John 7:38).

Wisdom and Motivation for Serving Others

To be that kind of blessing to others, we must be full of faith, the Holy Spirit, and wisdom (Acts 6:3, 5). If the Holy Spirit doesn’t control and empower us, baser motivations will (1 John 2:16). Without His wisdom, we will lack the skills to serve others most effectively.

Jesus’ Dependence on the Holy Spirit

Jesus of Nazareth did not serve others in His strength. God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power. Only then did Jesus move about doing good and bringing relief to those the devil oppressed (Acts 10:38). If Jesus needed the Holy Spirit’s power to serve, we certainly do.

Spiritual Gifts Flowing from God’s Love

We must serve others with the right motivation. We don’t do it to accrue some merit before God, so He accepts us. We don’t do it to further our financial well-being.

We serve because God’s love already embraces us and motivates us to let that love flow through us to others (Romans 5:5). The Holy Spirit gifts us with the ability to love God and others (Romans 15:30; Colossians 1:8).  In our love for others, we are becoming more like God who loves us, not because of who we are, but because of who He is.

The Holy Spirit gives us spiritual abilities (1 Corinthians 12:1). As some people have a natural ability to do math well, run fast, jump high, or throw far, the Holy Spirit distributes abilities to do various kinds of spiritual ministry.

Those abilities include giving wise advice, communicating special knowledge, great faith, healing, performing miracles, prophesying, discerning whether messages are from God, speaking in unknown languages, and interpreting those languages. (1 Corinthians 12:8–11). See more about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Believers don’t pick their special abilities, but if they could, prophecy should be it because it strengthens the whole church (1 Corinthians 14:1, 12). The Holy Spirit assigns the gifts in harmony with God’s will and plan. He provides passion to use our special abilities to build His Kingdom. For what ministry do you have a passion?

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