Can you lose the Holy Spirit? Will the Holy Spirit ever leave a believer? Can you exhaust His patience with your many mistakes and repeated sins?
All too often, I’m approached by Christians who are filled with fear and doubt - they wonder if they have finally gone too far. They imagine that their most recent mistakes have done them in, disqualified them from fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
To be clear: I’m not writing about losing your salvation. That’s an entirely different topic which would require another blog altogether.
What I’m addressing here is the idea that a Christian can be abandoned by the Holy Spirit. Let’s settle the matter now by looking at what Jesus said:
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. (John 14:16-17, NLT)
The Holy Spirit doesn’t abandon us when we make mistakes; instead, He remains to rescue us from ourselves. Think of all that Jesus taught concerning forgiveness and patience, and then realize that God keeps to His own standards of mercy.
The Holy Spirit abides faithfully, patiently, working with us to overcome the worst parts of our humanity. The Holy Spirit is not a reward for the spiritually elite, if ever such a group existed. The Holy Spirit is our only chance at truly being spiritual. What sense would it make for God to withdraw from us our power to be holy as punishment for not meeting standards of holiness?
The Holy Spirit’s patience is by no means an encouragement to go on sinning. And one of the marks of a true believer is a true desire to be holy, backed by a lifestyle of true repentance.
But it is a relief to know that we are not abandoned just because we make mistakes. When you sin, repent. When you fail, turn to the Lord. When you make an ungodly mistake, humbly turn to your friend, the Holy Spirit, the One Who never leaves you, the One Who stays faithful to you, even when you are unfaithful to Him. He is more loving than we are flawed, more patient than we are stubborn, more faithful than we are sinful.