How Much of You Does the Holy Spirit Have?

Last Sunday, I talked about 3 requirements that Jesus laid down for people become “his disciple.” (You can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7p_BEWmQ3c) I said these requirements are so urgent simply because Jesus calls these people: “My disciples.” He is taking over full control of the people that desire to follow him. He calls us to take up our own cross and follow him. That was not lost of the Israelites in the crowd, they knew exactly what he meant: he meant that you take up your cross and you die. But we don’t want to go that far into a commitment with Jesus, we want the commitment that only asks us to come to church once in a while. We knew that this kind of disciple is going to be called names, not accepted in groups or even worse in families anymore. So, we begin to find ways to compromise and not go all the way with Jesus. Many years ago, a psychologist by the name of Solomon Asch did an interesting experiment with teenagers in the psychology of conformity. They brought the teenagers into a classroom in groups of 10 to answer a couple of simple questions as a vision test. Nine out of the ten teens were plants to one particular question. They were all asked which of two lines where the longest. The nine were to vote that the second line (the obviously shortest line) was longer than line #1. In more that 75% of the time the tenth teen would eventually raise their hands to join the group because they were convinced by the peer pressure around them. They knew the line was the shortest, but they didn’t want to be the person to say it or vote against the crowd. The point, when you surrender your life to Jesus, you give him, the Holy Spirit veto power over your life. This means that what the Holy Spirit says through the word of God is what has to go in your life. Too often we are praying that we can get more of the Holy Spirit in our lives, when in reality, we should be asking how the Holy Spirit can have more of me! How much of you does the Holy Spirit really have?