There are three main parts the mission of the Holy Spirit is typically broken into. And most Bible-believing Christians would be aware of all three, connecting, becoming and doing. Yet apart from the head knowledge agreement with this teaching, how much do people really “believe” in actions?
First, let’s talk about becoming. The question is becoming what? and how to reach that goal? it depends on what view of salvation one takes. Most modern churches believe in a sort of “simple gospel”, meaning that at some point one chooses to believe some certain facts and to repent and “receive” Christ, then he is saved, period. Even though, among them, many promote that one needs to grow after that, but the after story is not a must. Hence, under this gospel’s theology, there is no concrete goal of becoming and no specific method. When people don’t see reaching holiness and Christlikeness as a real goal of salvation from God, people won’t desperately seek help from Holy Spirit, the very helper God sends to us to help to accomplish our salvation to the end. In the modern church, we seldom meet people who have specific time bound plans for major parts of their sanctification and mission. We seldom meet people who passionately share about how the Spirit helped them in being more holy in one specific area in the last month.
In terms of connecting, under this same theology’s influence (the simple gospel), people would think what’s the difference if you connect more or less. I have seldom heard an evangelical Christian verbalize it (not one who fits into a church atmosphere anyway). But this is the natural logical conclusion. And people’s practice often is more honest than their lips. Although there are other motivations for pursuing God more, without this fundamental one, the effect is that the passionate Spirit-filled believers become the minority. The practice of connecting to God more through Holy Spirit becomes a “hobby”, not a requirement. It means the passionate believer has no base according to this theology to tell left-behind believers “you should seek to connect to God passionately, otherwise,…”.
The third mission of the Spirit has also been stifled for at least hundreds of years. Jesus has only given his disciples one mission to do before He comes back, which is evangelism and disciple-making. And he set an example to show the principles and methods of his great commission. To make disciples of all nations is a very challenging task. The Spirit was sent to help disciples accomplish this thing, Together with function 1&2, this is the mission of God for saving the whole world, function 1&2 is the Spirit coupling with you in your salvation (justification, sanctification and glorification), function 3 is you with the Spirit accomplishing salvation with others. But when the church lost her clear vision of this mission, the Spirit has often been begged to cooperate in various Christian-seeming projects that the Spirit is not even interested in, not the main mission He was given to us to accomplish. And people are not really desperately wanting His help when the vision of Great Commission is lost.
In summary, it won’t work we just resort to emotional appeal “Don’t forget about Holy Spirit! Seek him, you will gain more power, or your life will experience more God.” The root issue is the simple gospel.