Libertarian, are you saying that the Spirit indwelling us elevates us to God status?
(This is a sincere question, I’m making sure that I understand you correctly.)
Jesus is God.
Amulet
The Spirit indwelling us (I like that term!) IS God. We are separated ablatively, not genitively. That’s why our bodies are temples.
JeninsFan
“Before Abraham was, I am.” 
I and my Father are one. John 10:30
Libertarian, picture the words above in red, pleas.
First, I want to thank everybody for their responses. There is one specific one that I think highlights the question for me.
Jenkinsfan said:
So, if Jesus is God, why pray to Jesus and do everything in Jesus’ name? That’s the heart of my question. If one equals the other, why so much emphasis on one over the other.
I know a number of you have already answered this, and I do understand those answers. Maybe this is one for Jenkinsfan, since he’s the one who specifically posted that. But others can feel free to join in as well.
JenkinsFan
Stop arguing with me. I’m agreeing with you! 
David
For one thing, I think it helps clarify to which God you are praying. As Satan said, God is Whoever you want Him to be. We are praying to the God that is Jesus, the God Who saved us.
Yeah, but doesn’t God know who you’re praying to? I mean, he is omniscient and all that…
Unless it’s done strictly for advertising purposes – to clarify that a given church is a Christian church, for example, or that a given person is a Christian person.
David, Please read John 6:44. John 6:57 may help as well. I’m not going to pretend to understand God completely because if I could He wouldn’t be much of a God. I do know that to reach God according to John 6:65 we must go through Jesus. Yes, the Two are One and the same but God deals with us, His Creation, as He chooses and this is the process He chose.
It is just a noun, akin to a mantra in that it helps us (our natural us) to focus. God hears all prayer that is to Him, whatever nouns are used. Prayer that He hears comes from the heart, not the brain.
Ya know, I was really hoping for a well-thought-out answer, not just a standard, “Go read this part of the Bible and you will understand.” < sigh >
Ah well. It was a good discussion…
I’m sorry to let you down, David, but I base my entire beliefs on what the Bible says. I wouldn’t be able to reply to your question without it.
I’m so relieved to here that “jmullaney is God” is not a Christian doctine. That would be way too much pressure – I thought maybe I missed something. Although it would be fun to hack a bible website and put that in there somewhere.
But, Libertarian, I think I finally understand you. You are a gnostic, right?
Heck if I know.
I am simply what I am, a Libertarian Objectivist Christian — told by the Christians that I cannot be Objectivist and told by the Objectivists that I cannot be either Christian or Libertarian. Thank God for the Libertarian part: they are the only ones who will allow me to peacefully and honestly pursue my own happiness in my own way.
David B, what Jesus meant was, if you are a follower of his (i.e. his teachings), God will answer your prayers. This is his “guarantee” clause, if you will. So, it is like saying “I’m asking this of you, per the guarantee of your son, as I am his follower.” Give us bread, forgive our sins, and lead us / deliver us from evil – this is the perfect prayer with the hubbub removed.
Oh c’mon. That whole “I’m God, your God, we’re all God” coupled with the amoral context of atoms – I’ve heard this all before. Gnosticism is just about the oldest heresy in Christendom. I forget why it is wrong, just because I never expected to meet one so didn’t pay much attention. But I’m looking into it.
David, what Libertarian has been saying in his own, uh, inimitable style is nothing but orthodox Catholic doctrine restated in a rather metaphysical Libertarinesque format. As our resident atheist who insists on strict Catholic doctrine in religious posts, JMullaney, will attest.
Consider this: by your own fun metaphor, you are the God of this message board. But you do have a life beyond this board, which includes, you have noted, small children. You often post from home, which means that you are simultaneously functioning as Father (to them) and Moderator (to us).
One does not pray to Jesus rather than God; one prays to Jesus as God. He is, for orthodox Christians, the Second Person of the Trinity, God functioning in incarnate human form, raised to Heaven after his sojourn in Palestine c.2,004-1,970 years ago. Without getting into a whole lot of scholastic nitpicking (and Thomistic metaphysics makes the deepest of Talmudic study look like “See Dick run”!!), let’s summarize:
One God. Simultaneously three persons. Has been from all eternity. For a brief period in time, one of these took on a human body and soul, and, as Amulet so ably pointed out, has “been there, done that” for anything we might have or want to go through.
Now, the Third Person in this whole conglomeration is the Holy Spirit – who indwells each Christian, giving strength and guidance (when we bother listening). By the fact that it is One Spirit in all of us, we are mystically part of the Body of Christ, individual organs (“members” in the KJV terminology, but that’s in the sense that your penis is your “virile member” in older writings, and no, Gaudere, I still haven’t found where you left yours! Next time, keep better track of it!:)) in His spiritual body. This metaphor can be taken to obnoxious lengths, but represents for Christians a convenient way to speak of a true reality. Whereby, following a logical sequence, we are each small pieces of what goes to make up God. (For any good Christian, the logical next step is to try to understand how to live up to the job description – and far too many seem to think it’s the Angry Lord on the Great White Throne part they’re supposed to be doing.)
Okay, so what about prayer. Jesus’s instructions were, effectively, to pray to the Father in His name, and most liturgical prayers are so phrased. But since Jesus and the Holy Spirit are both equally God, prayers addressed to them individually are equally “good” prayers. The “Jesus Prayer” of the Greek Church (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, be merciful to me, a sinner”) is a classic example of these, as are many classic “personal” prayers. The Prayer of St. Francis (“Grant that I may not seek to be consoled so much as to console, to be loved as to love…”) is addressed to Jesus. Prayers specifically to the Holy Spirit are rare, for much the same reason as most phone calls are not to the phone company, but do exist. And the occasional prayer is addressed to all three persons of the Trinity in one.
I think we want to stay strictly away from discussing the invocation of saints, Mariology, and the rest of that stuff.
JMullaney
Well, let that be a lesson to us all. Let us learn how to solve ax[sup]2[/sup] + bx + c = 0 for x, rather than memorizing the solution.
Poly
Dammit, you’re so good at that!
I have an inimitable style? You’re the third person (after Gaudere and someone else) to imply that I have a posting “style”. What are its identifiable attributes? If someone posed as me, would you spot it?
I rather think so, because the language of the posts would be ablative rather than genitive. They would not have the L.O.C. signature that casts your posts as Absolute. They could, in general, not forge the proper degree of ire at what from a libertarian view is clearly the tyrannical seizure of private property and from a republicrat point of view is taxes properly leveled for necessary government functions. They could not speak from that Johannine height where “I am in the Father and the Father in me, just as I abide in you through the Spirit” that only you and Tris. can use and be believable. And they cannot show your ineffable union with abstract Love and Spirit without falling short in ways that are obvious to the reader. (A small portion of this post was a gentle parody of your posting style, not to make fun of you, but to show how distinct it it and how easily one could identify someone attempting to fake “Lib-speak.”)
Peace, my brother. As far as I am concerned, and I think most regulars would concur, you bring a beauty to this board that it would miss without you.
That would not be possbile, as it would imply a syllogism transliterated as an anology in an amoral context post propter hoc, in so much as binomial equations are concerned. 
Hmmm. Well, only the shadow knows what lurks in the hearts of men – but I think Libertarian has stumbled into the gnostic heresy.
Not that I’m big on that whole “heresy and orthodoxy” game – and I don’t insist on strict Catholic doctrine, although the Free Spirit Church did go around claiming to be the “high” Catholic Church (while calling the Roman autorities the “lesser” Catholic Church) after the French Inquisition, they learned their lesson. Don’t mess with people with rope, stakes, tinder, and matches! But, while I disagree with the Benedictine heresy maintained by the RCC, outside of these disagreements, as I am a Free Spirit sympathizer, I don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel and the two churches do agree on most other matters.
Well, I guess you can stick a fork in me. So far, we have established that I am a heretic possessed by demons. Thank God I was at least associated with Tris, whose posts I always anticipate like a hungry babe anticipating its mother’s breast. Cool parodies, Poly and J. Thanks.