Rom 8:16 (NIV) The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

How can we know we are saved? The Holy Spirit tells us we are. He speaks directly to our spirit and assures us that we have been born again. If the newly saved person continues to be poor in spirit, the conversation and relationship with the Father can really start to flow. One might assume that this communication would be some kind of words flowing through our mind as God talks to us Spirit-to-spirit. Since God is sovereign, He can do that if He wants to. That, however, isn’t God’s major objective in establishing this communication and relationship.

Rom 8:13-14 (NIV) For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit YOU put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

When Am I Going To Be Through With This?

As the Holy Spirit starts talking to us, He starts pointing out things we are doing or not doing that need to be addressed. These issues typically don’t come to us in words.

They come to us as feelings of dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction can be responded to with us attacking ourselves for not living a very good Christian life; or they can be responded to by us turning to the Holy Spirit for power to handle the situation.

As a minister and a mature Christian, you can really start attacking yourself. Some ministers realize that no one is perfect and they stop having a poor spirit. They “forgive themselves,” justify their behavior, ignore their sins and shortcoming, act like the life of Romans 7:15-24 is normal for mature Christians and ministers, and many other things. This destroys their life and ministry and does damage to the people they were ministering to.

Others allow Satan to take advantage of their being poor in spirit and start wondering why they are still having problems with desires of their body, allurements of the world, and temptations of the devil. What the Holy Spirit will be doing for the rest of your life, no matter how long and how mature of a Christian you become, is to keep bringing spiritual issues up to you. He won’t give you too many things to work on. So, it will take you the rest of your lifetime to keep having to deal with shortcomings, mistakes, misdeeds of your body, and sins. However, you should be gaining new victories over new issues on a regular basis.