{"id":4301,"date":"2023-05-27T03:08:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-27T03:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4301"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:10","slug":"truly-a-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4301","title":{"rendered":"TRULY A GHOST"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t remember ever hearing any teaching on the Holy Spirit in the church I grew up in &#8211; at least not in the years when I was old enough to be paying attention on Sunday mornings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, the Spirit was <i>mentioned<\/i>. We recited the Apostles&#8217; Creed periodically and sang the Doxology weekly:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;<i>Praise God from whom all blessings flow.<br><\/i><i>Praise Him all creatures here below.<br>Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts.<br><\/i><i>Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.<\/i>&#8220;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somehow, referring to the Spirit of God as &#8220;the Holy Ghost&#8221; made Him seem remote, unsubstantial, and inconsequential.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps even unbelievable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After all, everyone knows ghosts aren&#8217;t real.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once I was off to college and started to learn about the Holy Spirit and experience His presence firsthand, I couldn&#8217;t fathom how my church had gotten away with neglecting real talk about the Spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To this day, I can&#8217;t imagine how a church functions without an active theology of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But many do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t remember ever hearing any teaching on the Holy Spirit in the church I grew up in &#8211; at least not in the years when I was old enough to be paying attention on Sunday mornings.\u00a0 Of course, the Spirit was mentioned. We recited the Apostles&#8217; Creed periodically and sang the Doxology weekly: &#8220;Praise [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4302,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions\/4302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}