My Relationship with the Holy Spirit

”These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.  Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give it to you.  Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (RSV).

 

Before I started writing this, I did some research on “relationship with the Holy Spirit.”  God soon stopped me and told me that no one knows more about my relationship with the Holy Spirit than I do,  “You don’t need their input.  There are two people who intimately know your relationship with the Holy Spirit, you and the Holy Spirit.  So, speak from your heart and ask the Holy Spirit to help you.”  That’s what I am doing, so if it doesn’t match your relationship with Him, that’s okay.  After all, the title of this blog is “My Relationship with the Holy Spirit.”

 

Just as Jesus said He would do, He sent me the Holy Spirit the moment I accepted Jesus as my Savior.  He has been my companion, my guide, and my helper ever since—ever present—always available.  I seem to be most open to the ministering of the Holy Spirit at two different times—after I go to bed and when I am alone in the outdoors, particularly when I am in a quiet wooded area with a stream flowing by.  Those seem to be the times of least distractions from the world.  I think I need to put a pen and paper near my bed at night because the concepts and words He gives me at night seem more focused, to the point, and spoken in beautiful words and phrases that I sometimes forget by the time I wake up in the morning.  In the times I am alone with Him in nature, He directs my thoughts and my heart to the magnificence of creation and the glory of the Creator.   My heart grows in the presence of God.   These times are some of the best and most peaceful moments of my life.

 

Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would “bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”  That applies to me in the way that the Holy Spirit brings to my mind appropriate Scripture verses that apply to the concept He is teaching me.  Often He then opens my mind to things I had not previously noticed in the Scripture, even though I may have read it many times before.  He gives me a fresh perspective, applicable to what I may be thinking or writing about.  Those times feel like the newness and promise of spring.

 

There are times when I just can’t find the correct words in my prayers, and those are the times that the Holy Spirit supplies them in a language that I cannot write or even normally speak.  It’s a time when my spirit speaks to the Holy Spirit from deep in my heart in words and concepts beyond my current understanding.  This is commonly known as “speaking in tongues.”   For me it is a time when I know that the inner thoughts that I don’t know how to express through my mind are expressed by my spirit under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.