Holy Spirit
For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to the same podcast by Jonathan David & Melissa Helser called “Leaning into the Holy Spirit”. Really, I love the way Melissa speaks about the Holy Spirit. I won’t give away too much, but I loved these two things she speaks about:
1. The tone of the Holy Spirit. Whenever people speak to her, she listens for the tone of the Father. A lot of times people project what they think God wants to say in a moment, but instead of it sounding like the Father, it sounds like pressure.
2. The importance of backing into Him. She tells a story of homeschooling her daughter & her daughter having an issue with phonics. Melissa suggests that they ask Holy Spirit for help, but her daughter says no. Melissa presses for a little while, but realizes that she’s getting nowhere. So, she does what she knows to do: She asks Holy Spirit for help, takes a few steps back and backs into Him while He says, “Wait.” A few moments later, her daughter starts crying, saying that she does need the Holy Spirit. All is well, and she zooms through the rest of her phonics lesson!
I truly believe that the most radical thing that we can do as Christians is to live all-in in fellowship with Holy Spirit. All of the giant leaps of faith are just byproducts of that relationship. Giant leaps of faith/big ministries/heavy followings with a poor attitude towards the Beatitudes indicates that we may desire the fame of being close to the Holy Spirit more than we actually desire being with the Holy Spirit.
We don’t have to live lives where we’re always afraid of the next step God is going to ask us to take. Friendship with the Holy Spirit always prepares us for the big steps. His friendship is not one sided, only getting to know Him. As much as He desires for us to know His heart, He wants to know ours. He wants to hear us express what we like. He wants to watch an episode of your favorite show with you. Invite Him into your real life.
This is the type of fellowship + Christian life that we’re called to.