Seen the Holy Spirit, Lately?

I participate in a Bible study at work each Wednesday at noon.  It’s a diverse group and one of our newer members with little church background has asked for a study on the Holy Spirit.  He’s confused why he heard little about the Holy Spirit growing up in a conservative church and why one of his friends describes the Spirit using much talk about charismatic activities related to the Spirit in his life.  The new guy wants to know how to connect and what the Spirit is going to do within him and through him when he does connect.

He may be asking the wrong question.

I have heard so many questions about what the Holy Spirit does and how he does it.  Usually these questions relate more to some grand things the people asking the question want to experience.  Speaking in tongues, healing and whatever else they can come up with and it most often trends to something that is very visible and very powerful.

I suggested to my friend that the answer might be much simpler and easier to find than he thinks and can be found much quicker than the three weeks we have invested in laying a foundation for the study.  Mimic Jesus.  Live like Jesus.  Do what Jesus did.  

While everyone else wants to know about speaking in tongues, healing what ails you and much more, I suggest that to really know the Holy Spirit, all I have to do is live a life of a disciple by simply opening my eyes to see people who need to know love, who need to experience love, who need someone to believe in them and endure the mess with them.  I propose all I and others need to do to experience the power of the Spirit is to simply live each day dedicated to loving others the way Christ loves me.  It may not be glamorous and it might even be hard and very ugly but Jesus didn’t come to heal and to speak in tongues.  He came to save a lost and dying world, every day, in the trenches, hanging out with the wounded and the hurting and the hungry and the naked and the homeless, both physically and spiritually.

As each day passes, I grow more and more convinced I won’t come to know the Holy Spirit in the comfort of my padded seat in the climate controlled comfort of the beautiful sanctuary I call the church building.  Instead, I will meet the Spirit in the streets, in the gutters, in homes and in hearts of people who are struggling and hurting and grasping for a handhold to pull out of the hole they are in.  

I’ll really know and understand the Holy Spirit when I mimic, live like and do what Jesus did.  I believe this is true because I know Jesus was full of the Spirit.  The Bible says so.

Can it be that simple?

Grace and  peace.

Jeff Jones

Decatur, Texas