Let’s face it, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives is incredibly fantastic but somewhat mysterious at the same time. Because of the element of mystery, many writers have portrayed the ministry of the Spirit as a “secret.” It’s not uncommon to see such titles as “Unlocking the Secret of the Holy Spirit.” It’s as if God is playing a shell game with us. “Guess which shell the secret is hidden under! Nope, not that one! Sorry, you lose again. Haha!” Only the initiated, only those with special knowledge, only those who know the “secret” can genuinely walk with God and unlock the mystery of the Holy Spirit.

I’m happy to inform you that God doesn’t work that way. Why would He? He wants us to know His truth, and He has made it plain. Sure, the disciples struggled to understand what Jesus was teaching them. Still, He gave them this promise which is also for us, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” We struggle too, the Scriptures are hard to understand sometimes. That’s we are to “study to show yourselves approved.” But we are graced to live in an age with the completed Scriptures and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to give us understanding. God is hiding nothing from you.

So how does the Holy Spirit work in our everyday lives? The Bible is full of truth about the multifaceted ministry of the Spirit in our lives, so it’s impossible to speak to them all at once. But here are a couple of things that Jesus says in the book of John:

“He will testify about Me,
and you will testify also” John 15:26-27

“He will glorify Me.” John 16:14

You can see that one of the primary ministries of the Holy Spirit is to speak of and make known the Son of God. To glorify Christ is to make Him known; who He is, what He is like, why He came, what He has done, how one can know Him. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.

But we see our part as well, “and you will testify about me.” We have the incredible privilege of participating with the Holy Spirit by testifying about Christ, making Him known, and glorifying Him.

We are to testify about Him in words. That is a given. We must be able to verbalize the Gospel and tell others of the Good News of Christ so that they may know Him as well. The Holy Spirit enables us to do so.

We are also to testify of Him in our daily lives. Our words are worthless if our lives don’t match the message. I saw a bumper sticker years ago that said, “Is your life a message or a mess?” Actually, if your life is a mess, that’s a message in itself, and a poor one at that. The Holy Spirit enables us to make Christ known in our words and make Him known in how we live our lives as well.

We do this in our day-to-day lives as we walk by the Spirit. In the letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul said, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). The word “walk” is used throughout the Bible to simply mean how we live our lives. You can live in love, live in the Spirit, or you can live in strife and hate or by the flesh. There really is no mystery here. Our lives are to be characterized by an awareness of and intentional dependence on the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. If we do this, Paul says, we will not “carry out the desire of the flesh.”

What is the desire of the flesh? It is the everyday battle against our own propensity to sin. We come by it naturally, and it doesn’t completely go away when we come to Christ. The desire to sin will be with us until we are set free when Christ returns or takes us home. In the meantime, God has given us the Holy Spirit to help us overcome this desire.

The Apostle Paul continues.

“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; 

for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing” (Gal 5:17-21).

That’s quite a list of things that are warring within us against the Spirit who leads us. We are helpless and hopeless in ourselves to conquer the downward pull of sin in our lives. But God, through His Holy Spirit, has given us the power and presence to testify of God’s presence.

The answer is to “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” And the result is that the Holy Spirit will produce in us all that is contrary to the flesh, the fruit of the Spirit: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Gal 5:22-23)

Carefully read each element of the fruit of the Spirit. What does it describe? Rather, Who does it describe? It is a portrait of Christ. Every bit of the Spirit’s fruit was present in the words and works of Jesus Christ. As the Spirit of God who lives in us produces His fruit, He is making known what Jesus Christ is like. This is how our Spirit-directed lives exhibit the testimony of the reality of Christ.

A secret? Hardly. It’s given to us plainly in Scripture.