Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
Yes. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.
Catechism for the Global Methodist Church, question 20
2The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
1The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bear tidings to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to open release to those who are bound.
17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
63The spirit is what makes alive; the flesh helps nothing; the declarations that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
11If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then the one who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.
8Because the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.
With this question the catechism turns to the third article of the Nicene Creed. The answer takes the creed's own words, "the Lord, the giver of life," and puts them on the candidate's lips in the first person. The church confesses the same doctrine in Article III of the Confession of Faith, which begins, "We believe in the Holy Spirit who proceeds from and is one in being with the Father and the Son," and in Article IV of the Articles of Religion, which calls the Holy Ghost "very and eternal God."
The title Lord belongs to the Spirit by right. Paul says so directly: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). The same Spirit who rested on the promised king of Isaiah's prophecy, "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD" (Isaiah 11:2), anointed Jesus of Nazareth to "bear tidings to the poor" and "to proclaim liberty to the captives" (Isaiah 61:1). The Spirit is no impersonal force or feeling. He is the Lord God at work in the world.
The title giver of life is grounded in Jesus' own teaching: "The spirit is what makes alive; the flesh helps nothing" (John 6:63). The life the Spirit gives reaches from the new birth all the way to the resurrection of the body. Paul promises that "the one who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you" (Romans 8:11), and he warns that the harvest depends on the sowing: "the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life" (Galatians 6:8). Believers who behold the glory of the Lord "are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18), which is the Spirit's ordinary work of sanctification.
For a Methodist this confession is the ground of every hope of holiness. Wesley taught that the whole life of grace, from the first stirring of conscience to entire sanctification, is the Spirit's doing in the believer, and ΒΆ102 of the Book of Doctrines and Discipline describes grace as "the active, empowering presence of God, through the Holy Spirit, enabling believers to trust, love, and serve God." To say "I believe in the Holy Spirit" is to expect that presence in prayer, in the sacraments, in scripture, and in the slow transformation of one's own heart.