Your Spirit and the Anointing

The meaning of the word anoint is “to pour oil over.” Oil is a symbol for the Holy Spirit. We discussed wind and fire, two elements God uses to represent the Holy Spirit, but why did God choose oil to represent the Holy Spirit? Have you ever asked yourself that question?

The answer is simple: oil soothes.

God uses oil to represent the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit smoothens out a believer’s life. The Holy Spirit lubricates our lives. The Spirit moisturizes our heart. He brings healing relief to our souls.

The Holy Spirit takes the dryness out of our lives the same way hand lotion frees your skin from dryness. He has the uncanny ability to make even the toughest, spiniest, most disagreeable experiences manageable. For example, The Spirit of God can give joy to a Christian who is being tortured. Isn't that remarkable?

Also, the Spirit can console a righteous man in a hellish prison. That's the Spirit's anointing at work.

A Spiritual Interface

The Spirit's ability to anoint is great news, but let's ask ourselves, what part of our being does the Holy Spirit anoint exactly? Does he, for example, anoint our head? Does he anoint our mind? What part of our being does he touch, bless, and fill?

Well, it all depends on his objective, his purpose. The Holy Spirit is sent to each person with a clear purpose, a goal. He may be sent to you to heal your body from illness. In that case, he will anoint your body.

The Holy Spirit may decide to anoint your body. However, that will not be his overarching goal. If he anoints your body, it's a step towards something greater. The Spirit will anoint your body because your body is the vessel of your spirit. His actual goal is to anoint your spirit.

Sprit Being

You are a spirit-being. The essence of your life is your spirit. Your existence depends on your spirit.

Your spirit is the interface between you and the Holy Spirit much like a charging cable is the interface between a cell phone and an electrical outlet. Your body and soul are the cell phone in this illustration, filled with potential.

You have unlimited applications!

Expanding this illustration, the Holy Spirit is the socket in the wall. He is the electrical outlet. The Spirit possesses unlimited power. He invites anyone to come to him and to connect to him, as long as they come repentant and trusting in Jesus.

Your spirit is the cable that connects your body to the Holy Spirit. Power from the Holy Spirit--we'll call it anointing--is transmitted to your body and soul through your spirit.

Praying in the Spirit

You should pray to God in the spirit. In other words, you should pray in a spiritual way. You should pray from the heart. You should sing from the heart too!

Do not repeat your prayers or always sing the same songs. Rather, let them well up from the innermost part of your being. The Scriptures command us to pray in the spirit. They encourage us to sing in the spirit.

... praying at all times in spirit with all prayer and supplication (The original Greek Ephesians 6:18 has no article [the] in front of the word spirit)

... if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my understanding; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding (1 Corinthians 14:14-15).

If you pray with your spirit, you are alive, authentic, and activated. But you need something else. You are only alive, authentic, and activated if you are getting prayer anointing from the Holy Spirit. That's why Jude tells us:

... you, dear friends, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God (Jude 1:20; LEB).

What's the advantage of praying with help from the anointing of the Spirit of God? For one thing, it gives us strength in our weakness. Have you noticed how difficult it is to muster up the spiritual power to pray?

The Spirit emits deep groans which put meaning to our prayers. Through that groaning, he makes sure our prayers are properly understood by God. That's how the Holy Spirit's intercession works.

... the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26-27; NASB).

Charge Me Up!

The Holy Spirit welcomes you to plug into him. But you can only connect with him through your spirit, so make use of your spirit. How can you make use of your spirit. Just as the owner of a cell phone makes use of their charging cable, you have to connect.

Remember: Your spirit is like that cable without which a cell phone will not charge or function. You receive power from the Holy Spirit through your spirit. He wants to anoint all of you. He wants to anoint your mind, your soul, your body, and your spirit. But his main intent is to interface with you through your spirit.

The Man Jesus Christ

Do you understand yourself better now? You've come to understand that you are a spirit being, and that’s good. But an even higher goal is to know Jesus better. We can do that by applying the same spiritual truths that govern our lives to him--well, at least they applied to him when he came to us in the flesh.

Because Jesus came to us as a man--just as human as we are--he went through everything we go through. Just as we do, Jesus also had the nature of sin. Jesus had a spirit within a body of flesh. So Jesus' spiritual needs were the same you and I experience today.

Jesus came into his human existence with a purpose. He lived with a mission. Jesus became what we are so that we might become what he is. His goal was to save us. Has he completed that purpose in you yet? Has he by his blood shed at Calvary and his example of obedience to God saved you from the power of sin?

The Privilege of Fullness

We're examining the life of Jesus. To do so, we have to ask ourselves "What part of Jesus’ being did the Holy Spirit anoint?" The answer is that the Spirit of God anointed Jesus’ spirit. And the Spirit did this in the same manner the Spirit anoints us, and the same way the Spirit has anointed other people’s spirits throughout human history.

Think of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Job, Melchizedek, and Abraham. Weren't they all anointed by the Holy Spirit? Yes, just like you and I must be anointed, they were anointed. Think of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Deborah, and Samson. They each got their own unique anointings. You need your own as well.

Consider the anointing God gave to Samuel, then Saul, David, Daniel and the other prophets. Wow! What power they had from the Holy Spirit! Could we experience power like they did? Yes, and much more, much more consistently.

Let's also reflect upon the lives of the Christian apostles, evangelists, and pastors who have served God throughout the centuries. What was the source of their power? For example, how did Patrick get the power to take the Gospel to the Irish? And how did Ulfilas qualify as missionary to the Germans?

Maybe you know nothing of Ulfilas. No problem! You know about Jesus, God's Son. And you know that Jesus received the anointing of the Spirit as an example to demonstrate the way we must receive the anointing. Jesus got the anointing through the same interface the Holy Spirit uses today: through his spirit.

Exceptions to the Rule

Now, on rare occasions the Spirit has anointed animals (like Balaam’s donkey in Numbers 22:21-39) or even material objects (like Paul’s handkerchiefs in Acts 19:11-12)—but those are the exception, not the rule.

The rule is that the Holy Spirit anoints the human spirit. Will he anoint a human body too? Sure. He can do anything, but that's not his goal. The Holy Spirit's goal is to anoint the human spirit.

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit left his anointing on the bones of Elisha, and the anointing was enough to resurrect a dead man who accidentally came into contact with Elisha's bones. The Bible says:

Elisha died and was buried.

Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb.

When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet (2 Kings 13:20-21).

So, the Spirit can place his anointing on anything: animals, handkerchiefs, bones, or other objects. That’s because he is omnipotent. There’s nothing he cannot do. It's not because bones, handkerchiefs, or oil itself have power.

When it comes to the Spirit of God filling people with his power—an anointing called "the fullness of the Holy Spirit"—he focuses his ministry exclusively on people. The Holy Spirit will only fill human beings. He will fill no other created thing. He will not even fill angels.

Human beings alone get this special treatment from the Spirit of God.