Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit

Francis Chan, a pastor and bestselling author, opens this nonfiction work with his central argument: The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Christian Trinity (the belief that God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), has been tragically neglected in the American church, and this neglect is the root cause of the church's spiritual ineffectiveness. While no evangelical Christian would deny the Holy Spirit's existence, Chan contends that millions of churchgoers cannot say they have experienced His presence in their lives. He traces part of the problem to the "entertainment" model of church adopted in the 1980s and 1990s, which filled churches with "self-focused consumers rather than self-sacrificing servants attuned to the Holy Spirit" (16). He imagines someone raised on a desert island with only the Bible attending a typical evangelical church, arguing that person would be shocked by the Spirit's apparent absence. Chan rejects the idea of seeking a "healthy balance" of the Holy Spirit, arguing that no one can have too much of God.

Chan establishes his interpretive framework by distinguishing between exegesis, drawing meaning objectively from the biblical text, and eisegesis, importing preconceived meaning into it. He warns that many believers have assembled a distorted understanding of the Holy Spirit by selecting only the verses that suit them. In the opening chapter, he argues that believers must reexamine their assumptions as rigorously as they would challenge other belief systems, lifting up the Bereans, early Christians praised in Acts 17:11 for examining the Scriptures daily, as a model.

Chan then traces the biblical basis for the Holy Spirit's importance, highlighting Jesus' farewell discourse in the Gospel of John, where Jesus told His disciples it was to their "advantage" that He leave so the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, could come. He explains that the Greek word for "another" in this promise means another of the same kind, signifying the Spirit would be just like Jesus Himself. He argues that if Christians discovered the Holy Spirit did not live in them, most of their lives would look no different. Chan cites the apostle Paul's teaching that believers' bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and asks why there is often no visible difference between Christians and non-Christians. He illustrates genuine Spirit-filled living through a sketch of Joni Eareckson Tada, who has been quadriplegic since a diving accident at seventeen. Chan identifies Tada as the most Spirit-filled person he knows, not for her accomplishments but because every personal interaction with her displays the fruit of the Spirit through song, Scripture, and encouragement.

In the second chapter, Chan identifies fears that prevent believers from engaging with the Holy Spirit: fear of rejection, fear that God will not come through, fear that God will demand something difficult, and fear about reputation. He challenges readers to pursue truth with humility rather than retreating into proof-texting, the practice of using isolated verses to defend a predetermined position. He notes how both conservative Christians and charismatic Christians, who emphasize spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and prophecy, fear being associated with the other side. Chan then introduces a legitimate concern: quenching the Holy Spirit, meaning resisting or suppressing the Spirit's work. He argues the biblical response to prophetic claims is not wholesale rejection but communal testing against Scripture and the standard of edification, or building up the church community.

In the third chapter, Chan presents foundational theology, enumerating seven core attributes of the Holy Spirit drawn from Scripture: The Spirit is a Person, not an impersonal force; the Spirit is God; the Spirit is eternal and holy; the Spirit has His own mind and intercedes for believers; the Spirit has emotions and can be grieved; the Spirit distributes spiritual gifts according to His own will; and the Spirit is all-powerful, present everywhere, and all-knowing. He then lists the Spirit's practical works: helping believers speak in difficult situations, teaching and guiding them, giving power to witness, enabling them to overcome sin, providing assurance of adoption as God's children, convicting them of wrongdoing, and filling them with hope, joy, and peace. Each believer, Chan argues, receives a Spirit-given gift, an expression of the Spirit's power meant to serve the common good of the church.

In the fourth chapter, Chan challenges readers' motives for wanting the Holy Spirit, arguing that the Spirit's gifts serve the church's benefit rather than personal boasting. He warns against seeking attention, hunting for miracles as ends in themselves, and trying to direct the Spirit rather than be directed by Him. He stresses that believers in every vocation are vital members of the body of Christ. Chan then discusses the Spirit's role in sanctification, the lifelong process of becoming more holy and Christlike, explaining that walking by the Spirit and gratifying the flesh are mutually exclusive. He transitions to Paul's teaching that without love, even spectacular spiritual gifts amount to nothing, and illustrates radical love through the story of Esther Ahn Kim, a Korean woman imprisoned for six years during World War II under Japanese occupation for refusing to bow at Shinto shrines, traditional Japanese religious sites. In prison, Kim ministered to a convicted murderer, surrendering her own food and warmth, until the woman accepted the gospel before execution.

In the fifth chapter, Chan argues that the Holy Spirit offers believers intimate security as God's children rather than a guilt-driven cycle of performance. He shares that he was raised without unconditional love and describes a recurring pattern: After sinning, he would distance himself from God, trying to earn his way back rather than accepting the Father's embrace. He identifies two obstacles to intimacy with the Spirit: comfort and volume. Regarding comfort, he recounts having dinner with one of twenty-three missionaries held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2007; several missionaries later confessed they wished they were still in captivity because they had experienced a closeness with God they could not recapture in comfortable lives. Regarding volume, Chan calls readers to stillness and solitude as spiritual disciplines.

In the sixth chapter, Chan argues that believers should stop seeking a grand life plan and focus on daily responsiveness to the Spirit, noting that few biblical figures received their plans in advance. He argues that repentance means turning entirely from sin to walk with Jesus, not inviting Jesus to join an unchanged life, and that believers who merely seek a semi-moral life do not need the Spirit. He contends that being filled with the Spirit is an ongoing pursuit, not a one-time event, and uses a treadmill analogy: Buying a treadmill without running on it produces no results, just as praying for freedom from sin without active participation produces no change.

In the final chapter, Chan argues that the church is meant to be a supernatural community empowered by the Holy Spirit, not a human organization sustained by talent and strategy. He states that he does not want his life to be "explainable without the Holy Spirit." He uses the story of the prophet Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal, a false god worshipped in the ancient Near East, from the Old Testament: The prophets of Baal held a loud gathering that produced nothing, while Elijah's prayer brought fire from heaven. Chan applies this to modern churches, arguing many produce energetic activity without God's manifest power. He recounts a former gang member who left Cornerstone Church, Chan's congregation, because the church failed to match a gang's standard of family commitment, prompting the elders to begin living like the early church described in Acts by surrendering resources to one another.

Chan closes by reflecting on the danger of the church suppressing Spirit-led passion. He recounts lying awake weeping after learning about children in the sex-trafficking trade, until the Spirit moved him to love those children as his own. Over subsequent months, well-meaning people calmed him down, and the urgency dissipated. He contrasts this with the early church in Acts, where believers were astonished at the boldness of Peter and John, two of Jesus' apostles, and prayed for even more courage. He reveals that he and his wife gave all royalties from Crazy Love to a fund for the starving, sick, and sex-trafficked, and that people called them foolish. He concludes with a prayer asking the Spirit to forgive believers for grieving and quenching Him, ending with the petition: "Come, Holy Spirit, come."