The Holy Spirit inspired the sufficient revelation concerning the elements of gathered worship, and so we should expect that he would naturally work through those elements—reading the Word, preaching the Word, praying the Word, singing the Word, and visualizing the Word through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. This is why Christians have traditionally called these prescribed elements the “ordinary means of grace”—these are the primary means Christians should expect the Holy Spirit to ordinarily work his grace into our lives.
Lots of confusion reigns today regarding how we ought to expect the Holy Spirit to work, but it does not have to be this way. Careful reading of Scripture gives us a robust picture of what should be our expectation for how the Holy Spirit works today.
The Spirit Brings Order
First, the Holy Spirit’s purpose in all he does is to bring order, to both individual Christians and to the Body as a whole. The descriptions in Scripture of the Holy Spirit’s activity overwhelmingly attest to this purpose. The Spirit brought order to the material God created at the beginning of time, and he brings order to time itself in unfolding God’s plan in history. He worked to bring peace and blessing to Israel as he dwelt among them in the Old Testament temple, and he does the same as he dwells within the New Testament temple. This was his purpose in special empowerment given to Israel’s kings and prophets and his purpose in the foundational gifts he gave to the apostles and prophets during the formation of the church.
And that purpose remains the same today. The Spirit brings order to the disordered minds and hearts of his elect when he convicts them of their sin and gives them new life, when he unites them into the triune communion and particularly to Christ himself in his Body. He continues to order the lives of his people in empowering them to submit to his Word and be sanctified by it, conforming them to the image of Christ and producing fruit consistent with the harmony and beauty of God’s character. And he builds up the unity of Christ’s body through providentially gifting his people with abilities to use in service of God and one another in the church, particularly in corporate worship, where he forms his people through filling them with his Word read, preached, prayed, and sung.
The Spirit Works Through His Word
Second, one of the most influential and long-lasting works of the Holy Spirit to bring order to his people was the inspiration of his Word; this is why the most frequently described act of the Holy Spirit in Scripture is the giving of revelation, and why his work of “filling” a believer (Eph 5:19) is paralleled in Paul’s writings with the Word of Christ “richly dwelling” within a Christian (Col 3:16). Thus, believers should expect that the Holy Spirit will work today primarily through his Word, and he will never act contrary to his Word.
For this reason, we must never conceive of any work of the Spirit today apart from his Word. If we expect the Spirit to do something apart from Scripture, we will inevitably subordinate Scripture itself to a subjective experience. We may say we believe Scripture to be sufficient, but ultimately we will ignore the objective Word, always seeking for subjective experiences, feelings, “inner voices,” or impressions that we assume to be the Spirit’s illuminating work. Likewise, we will also find ourselves frustrated when we don’t experience some sort of feeling that we assume to be the Spirit’s work. We will wonder why he isn’t “speaking” to us.
Rather, we must recognize that he has already spoken to us through his sufficient Word—we ought not expect any further revelation. We must simply pray that he gives us wisdom to appropriate his Word and then actively apply and submit ourselves to what he has already spoken.