The Holy Spirit's work first withers your self-righteousness. He makes you feel the curse and bitterness of sin and the very sentence of death in yourself. The Holy Ghost begins to haunt you, and you grasp you are a condemned sinner; He silently works in you and causes you to sense the bondage and burden of your sins against God: First, making you know you are hopeless, helpless, and guilty; you finally see the light; you have no hope in your own filthy self-righteousness, you're dead in your sins and dead to God; and Second, He makes you feel that the Divine Justice of God must punish you for your sins. You try to think better and do better, but you only grow worse and worse. It's a wonder God hasn't damned you years ago. You begin to marvel at how your Maker has allowed a rebellious wretch such as you to live this long. You have forgotten God days without number, and rejected His dear Son intentionally. You've done everything that is wrong.
You become uneasy and troubled, and actually begin to dread the Second Death that will never die. Faith in Christ is very opposite of self-confidence and self-help. You have transgressed God's Laws, despised God's gospel, and slighted God's Son. The Holy Spirit turns on His ultra bright spotlight of the LAW, and begins to search the dark cellar of your Christ-rejecting Heart, and the innermost chambers and crevices of your sinful Soul. The Commandment came, Sin revived, and I died. The Spirit of God makes you feel the guilt of sin, the misery of your iniquities, and persuades you to seek the Lord Jesus Christ for Salvation and Deliverance from the power of Satan and Sin.
You'll definitely know when the Holy Spirit begins to work in you (this is not religion, this is Reality): You will begin thinking about your sins, become convinced of your emptiness and the deadly nature of evil that lurks within you; you will become concerned about your deadly condition and alienation from the life of God; You will get sincerely interested in the real Remedy for Sin, and Seek the one Mediator between God and men. You become fully aware of your Soul's real need; you finally become aware of your imminent danger, and begin to inquire for the Way of escape. You start to sense your unfitness, nothingness, inward corruptions, perceive your need of the Savior, you begin laboring under a sense of guilt, become heavy laden, and realize you are inclined to evil, your judgment is darkened, affections are depraved, inflamed with lustful thoughts, desires are selfish, imaginations are only evil continually, and pangs of thirst begin to set in deep in your Soul.
The Eternal Spirit leads us to not just do right, but to love the right; not only to avoid wrong, but to hate wrong; not only to refuse unrighteous gain, but to utterly despise it; not to just to steer clear of ungodliness, but to deny it altogether. Only the Holy Spirit can create a true thirst in your heart for the Water of Life, Jesus Christ Himself. The dead conscience can only be touched and awakened by the Holy Spirit. (Hebrews 9:14) A spiritually thirsty Soul is a rarity here in 2025. If you continue to love sinning, nothing will go right with you. The Holy Ghost causes us to feel our emptiness, and we become discontented with ourselves and distressed, and we begin to understand our debt of sin. The consciousness of your own unconsciousness is the truest consciousness: It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. We become anxious to be forgiven and reconciled to God, pining to find the Savior. The Holy Spirit invites us to come to the Savior for pardon through His Precious Blood; then the Spirit of Grace will change your inward nature, and make you a new creature in Christ.
The Spirit of Christ helps us understand the brevity, frailty, and uncertainty of life. The Holy Spirit induces us to come to Christ for Mercy and Grace. All my desire is before Thee, and my groaning is not hid from Thee. The Spirit of God's Son gives us quickening direction and directs us to humbly consult with God. The Spirit of the Living God brings the word of God home to my heart, impressing the Law on my conscience, opening my ears and heart, making me wise unto salvation. JESUS was born into this world, so we could be born again of the Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit's sacred operations are withering, searching, warnings, alarming, consciousness, reproving, prompting, directions, awakening, convincing, drawing, humbling, checking, opening, persuading, reminding, regeneration, translating, creating, enlightenments, comfort, exhorting, conforming, communion, renewing, purifying, enabling, strengthening.
The Holy Spirit brings saving power (Grace) with Him; He reveal Christ to you; He takes the Truth of God's words, He opens your heart, He plants the living Seed inside us, He keeps the Seed alive, and He gives the increase. Absolutely nothing Eternal will ever happen within you without the Spirit of Jesus Christ doing it. (Philippians 1:19)
Forsake all your own righteousness; turn from deadly Self. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Completely divorce yourself from your own righteousness, and lay hold on Christ's Righteousness by Faith in His Precious Blood. Forsake all your favorite sins and dumb idols for Jesus' sake, and flee to Christ Jesus for eternal Refuge; Let Him be your Soul's eternal Hiding Place. Receive the living Savior into your empty dead Soul. You are all Sin from head to toe; simply be willing to be made righteous by the Righteousness of another, even JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS. You are very welcome at the Cross now. Whosoever believeth on Jesus shall never perish, but hath eternal life.
