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.
The Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Trinity, and the confirmand confesses him in the first person with the creed's own words, "the Lord, the giver of life," and 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 Article IV of the Articles of Religion calls the Holy Ghost "very and eternal God."
Lord. The title 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 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.
Giver of life. Jesus taught it himself: "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). That transformation is the Spirit's ordinary work of sanctification.
Every Methodist hope of holiness rests on the Spirit. 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.