God the Holy Spirit, Mentor's Guide, MG14

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G O D T H E H O L Y S P I R I T

The Prophetic Work of the Holy Spirit

Welcome to the Mentor’s Guide for Lesson 2, The Prophetic Work of the Holy Spirit . The overall focus of the God the Holy Spirit module is to enable your students to understand who the Holy Spirit is (person) and what he does (work), to be able to defend this understanding from the Scriptures, and to see the implications of these truths for ministry in and through the Church. The focus of this lesson is to help students understand that all knowledge of God comes through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is the one who reveals God through prophetic speech and he is also the one who enables human beings to be delivered from spiritual blindness so that they can both understand and respond to the truth about God. Throughout this lesson you should attempt to make sure that students understand and avoid the Pelagian heresy (see mentor’s notes for segment two) which falsely teaches that man can naturally understand God and respond to him apart from the gracious and powerful help of the Holy Spirit. Please notice again in the objectives that these truths are clearly stated. As usual, your responsibility as Mentor is to emphasize these concepts throughout the lesson, especially during the discussions and interaction with the students. The more you can highlight the objectives throughout the class period, the better the chances are that they will understand and grasp the magnitude of these objectives. This devotion focuses on the gift of the Scriptures that were “breathed out” by the Holy Spirit through the prophets. We often speak of the “gifts of the Spirit” only in terms of the charismata , the special empowerments that he gives the Church for ministry. And yet in a real sense, everyone in the class that has a Bible with him or her also has a “gift of the Spirit.” The Word of God is, itself, the Spirit’s great gift to humanity. Without this divine revelation humanity would have been lost; unable to recognize the Living God or his purposes. Everything that you teach in this course about God will only be possible because of the fact that “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” What a remarkable treasure we have in the Holy Scriptures and what a debt we owe to the gracious Spirit of God who reveals the Living God to us.

1 Page 49 Lesson Introduction

2 Page 50 Devotion