I grew up hearing that infamous announcement at the end of a gruelingly long sermon; “The Spirit of God is in this place tonight.” The lights were dimmed and the music was playing softly in the background as the sounds of people weeping and crying out to God filled the front of the building. As a kid, this usually meant that I had about 20 minutes remaining before we could leave and I could be reunited with the G.I. Joes my parents made me leave in the car.

Truthfully, I dreaded this moment at the end of all our Sunday evening services, because the spirit of the room was so depressing and sad. I found myself wishing I were a million miles away. Almost always the Pastor would tell us, “People are literally weeping and crying because the conviction of the Holy Spirit is on them tonight,” as if we couldn’t hear it for ourselves from anywhere in the building. It was as though we had set apart a special time in each service for everyone to be riddled with guilt and shame for their inadequacies and personal failures. It seemed that any time the Holy Spirit would show up, He would bring such conviction that everyone present was keenly aware of their every sin and shortcoming. This was always perplexing because I was told, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ,” and yet the moment the Holy Spirit entered the room, He heaped condemnation and guilt on everyone there. Either He was working against the work of Christ or we were understanding something drastically wrong.

As a child, I learned to hate it when the Holy Spirit decided to pay our Church a visit. I loathed the feeling in the room. He reminded me of my best friend’s mother. She always followed him around and told him every time he did something wrong. I hated going over to Jesse’s house. We felt his mother’s eyes on us all the time. She was always trying to make us feel guilty. If we didn’t feel guilty, she had a way of making us feel guilty for not feeling guilty. She was exhausting. The Holy Spirit for me was that part of God that we had to be friends with because He came with the God-package. If He wasn’t attached to God however, I knew I wouldn’t even be friends with Him.

I’ve always held to one basic principle when it comes to God. If you wouldn’t be friends with a person like that; you won’t be friends with a God like that.

If you had a friend who followed you around 24 hours a day and pointed out every single sin you committed, you would avoid being around that person like the plague. The Christian mindset today concerning the Holy Spirit is similar. We have convinced ourselves that His job is to “convict” us of all our sins. We think He sits inside us and monitors every move we make and every move we are about to make. If we are considering doing something sinful, we imagine the Holy Spirit inside, saying, “Don’t do it, that’s bad, no no no.” Then we wonder why the average Christian feels a bit uneasy when the Pastor announces, “The Holy Spirit is in this building tonight.”

The Holy Spirit is made to look like a worried, super-sensitive and manipulative mother. He is “grieved” at the drop of a hat. It takes almost nothing for Him to burst out crying, running to the bedroom to lock Himself in because of something we said or did. That gets old after a while. I generally try to avoid people like that because it’s a daunting task to be around them. I must have grieved Him a thousand times a day. I got to the point where every prayer I prayed started with me apologizing to the Holy Spirit for the countless times I’ve hurt His feelings. I felt like an out-of-control abusive husband. After years of this, it was just easier not to pray, because I felt condemned and uncomfortable about the prospects of encountering the Holy Spirit all over again.

It wasn’t until years later that I really began to study what the Scriptures say about the Holy Spirit. I began to take a serious look at everything I had been taught and I started comparing it to what is actually true. I also compared the modern-day Christian perspective on the Holy Spirit with my personal experience of knowing Him. At almost every point, I found that what we were told in Church about Him is not in the least bit true. This is what happens when our knowledge of God’s Spirit is based on teachings and sayings rather than actual personal experience. I found that people would fight to the death for something they had memorized but when push came to shove; they had never personally experienced a single thing that they claim to believe. They only believe it because someone they respect told it to them. Their belief system is only as strong as the person who passed it on to them. This is the case with almost all of the teachings on the Holy Spirit.

Ironically, after reading this, people will comment by quoting Scripture concerning the Holy Spirit in an effort to prove me wrong, but rarely will you have anyone comment based on what they personally know. That’s the problem with modern-day Christianity. It’s not about knowing for yourself. It’s about reading and memorizing.

I have found that the Holy Spirit does NOT convict us of our sins. He also doesn’t whisper “no, no, no” just before we’re about to sin.

That statement alone, if you get it and understand it, can change your entire Christian life forever! The problem is that EVERYTHING we have been taught concerning the Holy Spirit completely contradicts that statement. Sadly, most people will quit reading here and now because they’ll assume they are being led astray by a heretic. What is even more upsetting is that most of us will actually fight for all we are worth to maintain a hideous picture of God’s Spirit within our hearts rather than open ourselves to the possibility that He is something quite different and much more compelling than what we’ve been sold. We do this with the Heart of God, as well. I sit in amazement as I watch an entire generation of people go into an absolute rage over the grace and love message. They’ll fight for all they are worth to prove that God is mean and scary and not loving and gentle. When I suggest to people that God would never, ever leave them, I am flabbergasted at their perverted responses. Rather than take that security and draw closer to His Heart, they’ll purposefully conjure up terrible and wicked scenarios in their minds in an effort to find an exception in which God would ultimately leave them. I believe that this is precisely why Jesus called His generation a “Perverted” one.

The Holy Spirit does not convict Christians of their sins

He does convict the world of sin so they will know they need a Savior. Once we come to the Savior, however, He no longer convicts us of sin. He convicts us of righteousness.

When you are about to do something wrong, or just after you’ve done something wrong, and you hear that little voice from within you telling you how wrong what you just did was, that wasn’t the Holy Spirit. THAT WAS YOU! It was your heart. Remember, God wrote His laws upon our hearts. Your heart knows right from wrong because of that. That voice inside you IS YOU! Think about it for a moment. Why would God write the law on our hearts and then also have the Holy Spirit stand beside us and convict us every time we did something wrong? The truth is, we don’t need the Holy Spirit to convict us because we convict ourselves because we know the truth.

This is HUGELY IMPORTANT! Every time I ask people what their basic feelings are about the Holy Spirit, they almost always tell me that they are uneasy with Him. I’ve stood before audiences of several thousand people and I’ve asked them to close their eyes and raise their hands if they feel intimidation when the subject of the Holy Spirit is brought up, and believe it or not, almost every hand in the building goes up every single time I do this. We feel this way because we have been blaming the Holy Spirit for behavior that is completely contraty to His nature. If you understand that He’s not the one breathing down your back, pointing out your every sin to you, you can actually open your heart to getting to know Him.

He is not interested in pointing out your sin to you. It’s not even how He thinks. He only faces righteous things, so righteousness is all He points you towards. I was watching “Super Nanny” one day and there was this father who was following his child around saying, “No, no no Billy……..don’t do that, Billy……..stop it, Billy……put that down, Billy” over and over. Finally Super Nanny sat him down and explained that when we do this to our children, they have a 30 to 40 percent higher chance of having an inferiority complex when they become adults. She went on to explain a better way to handle Billy when he was about to do something wrong. She taught this man to divert his son’s attention by holding up a toy from across the room so Billy would choose to play with the toy rather than the electrical outlet.

This is exactly what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. He convicts us of righteousness! He inspires us to do good and righteous things. He shows us the better way in life and encourages us to take it. He absolutely does not follow you around nagging and nitpicking your every move. The Holy Spirit is not about getting you to stop sinning. He’s about moving you towards righteousness. When you understand this about His personality, He suddenly becomes likable again. I believe that Christians today suffer from a severe spiritual inferiority complex. This is true because we believe God’s Spirit has followed us around like Billy’s father and pointed out every wrong thing we’ve done in our lives. This is so sad because nothing could be further from the truth.

We come from a generation of Christianity that has taught us that the Holy Spirit always looks at the dark side of everything in our lives. This is defamation of character! It’s the opposite of truth. God’s Spirit always looks at the bright side of your life. In the end, you will ultimately focus your attention on the exact place you believe God is focusing His attention. If you believe it’s sin, then that’s where you’ll always be focused. If you believe it’s righteousness, your focus will be on good things. My children can either learn what NOT to do, or they can be encouraged with what good they can do. I choose the latter and so does the Spirit of God.