There are things we take with us wherever we go. We take memories. We take values and ideas. We take our history. And for the believer, we take the Holy Spirit.

Every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

In regeneration, this indwelling Spirit gives you new life. The power of the Holy Spirit is seen in what is happening in your life.

You will never receive more of the Holy Spirit than you have at the moment you were born again.

Yet at times, it will seem as though this is so. What will change, however, is your awareness of his presence in your life. Your spiritual sensitivity will let you see what has always been true.

I want to share three truths about the Holy Spirit today that will give you a foundational understanding.

The Holy Spirit is in every believer.
“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” Romans 8:9, NIV.

What strong words. “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” But the opposite is true. “If you have the Spirit of Christ, you belong to Christ.”

Within this verse is the two parts that concern us today. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that Christ sent, the Spirit of God.

Every believer. If the believer is American or German he has the Spirit of God. If the believer is Arab or Israeli, she has the Spirit of God. If the believer is male or female, they have the Spirit of God. If they are five or fifty-five, they have the Spirit of God. If a Christian is poor or rich, he has the Spirit of God. If the Christian is homeless or lives in a mansion, she has the Holy Spirit within. If the believer is going through divorce or has been married for fifty years, the Holy Spirit is within. If the believer is losing their job, or if they are the owner of a successful company, the Holy Spirit lives in them. Every believer has the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not reside just in minister, evangelist or special people. Every believer has the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is with every believer.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;” 1 Corinthians 6:19, NIV.

The presence of the Holy Spirit in you makes your body a temple. The Holy Spirit does not come and go, the Holy Spirit is with you all the time. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would often come on someone for a special task. So David would pray, “Take not your Holy Spirit from me.” But after Calvary, after the cross, the Holy Spirit resides in us and is with us all the time. We become a temple, the home of the Holy Spirit.

When we sleep at night, the Holy Spirit is with us. When we wake up in the morning, the Holy Spirit is there. When we eat breakfast, get dressed and head out the door, the Holy Spirit is living in his temple. When we drive to work or visit a friend or relative, the Holy Spirit is with us. When we are in that difficult meeting, where tension fills the air, when we are surrounded by people motivated by greed, lust or, self-interest, the Holy Spirit is there with us, living in the temple, out body.

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” Psalms 139:7, NIV the Psalmist asks? And the answer is, “There is no where we can go where the Holy Spirit does not go with us.

This truth of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is encouraging. When we face tough situations in life, we know his presence in us is a help to us. When we face the loss of a loved one, we have this inner peace that passes all understanding. The Holy Spirit is the source of that peace. When we face a stressful situation and we pray, the Holy Spirit takes the heart of our prayer and brings it to God. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” Romans 8:26, NIV. These groans are the reflection of our heart. It is that deep request that resides in our subconscious, the request we cannot give words to, that the Holy Spirit gives not only the words, but the intensity of our concern in the form of a prayer with God the Father. We don’t know how to pray. We are too weak to have our thoughts together. The issues are too complicated for us to sort out. The Holy Spirit reaches into our heart and bring our heart desire to God.

But the truth of the indwelling Holy Spirit is also annoying. When we want to do wrong, we realize that the Holy Spirit is with us, is in us, and it gives us second thoughts. Let me say that it is the old nature that is annoyed, not the new nature.
So we start to say something and realize that what we were about to say is not very holy. Our friends look at us, waiting for us to finish our sentence. We awkwardly find some excuse to cover the fact that we just came under conviction.

Or when we become a Christian, we might be in the middle of a real mess in our lives. Before we threw the blame all on the other. We said, “If they were not so rotten, I wouldn’t be so rotten.” But now, the indwelling Holy Spirit says to us, “You need to apologize. You need to take personal responsibility. You need to change.” It is hard for us to wrap our hands around what it happening, but we have the inner confirmation that the Holy Spirit is right and that we are in the wrong on this issue.

The Holy Spirit is for every believer.
I need to close with this thought. The Holy Spirit is for every believer. Paul says it well when he writes, “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31, NIV. Or in Philippians he says, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6, NIV.

The reason the Holy Spirit indwells us is to make us better people. He indwells us to make us holy. He comes into the temple and starts to clean out the rooms. He repairs the doors and puts in new curtains. He makes an altar and a place for washing. “He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and stars, The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient He must be, He's still working on me.”

Sometimes the change seems hard. You might wonder what is going on. But when you received the Holy Spirit, God gave you some spiritual RIBS. He regenerated you (this is the R), gave you new life. He also indwelt you (this is the I). His presence is in you, with you and for you. And the work he is doing is a good work. Walk in the Spirit. Live by the Spirit. Follow his promptings in your life.