It is a strange experience when you realize that you don’t really know someone who has been around in your life for a while. Somehow, familiarity substitutes for intimacy. Because the person is around, you don’t feel the need to get to know him/her well or to spend effort to understand his/her psyche. The name is familiar, your friends are friends with the same person, and so you kind of just know him/her through the network and not have a genuine personal connection with the said person.
This happens to me recently (or at least, this one particular case is recent). I’m realizing that I have been familiar with someone for a long time, but largely ignorant about his personality, work, preferences, and everything pertaining to his personhood. In fact, I think some of my conceptions of him are simply misguided. His name is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead.
I’ve seen glimpses of the Holy Spirit’s work; I’ve experienced His presence. But if someone were to ask me to describe who the Holy Spirit is, I wouldn’t know what to say. As a follow up to GYC, which was all about the Holy Spirit, I started reading The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit
The author first introduces the Holy Spirit, much like introducing a friend, by simply stating a simple fact that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not an inanimate power, who has a will, reason, emotions, and all the attributes of a Divine Being. Just this point alone changes the way one relates to the Holy Spirit.
It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of worship that we decide whether the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person, worthy to receive our adoration, our faith, our love, and our entire surrender to Himself, or whether it is simply an influence emanating from God or a power or an illumination that God imparts to us. If the Holy Spirit is a person, and a Divine Person, and we do not know Him as such, then we are robbing a Divine Being of the worship and the faith and the love and the surrender to Himself which are His due.
In the past, I think my conception of the Holy Spirit has been somewhere between an inanimate power and a Person. Of course theoretically I would say the Holy Spirit is a Person, but experientially, I don’t really understand what that means. For most times, I probably don’t even think He’s around!
If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,” but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?”
Ever since GYC, regarding the Holy Spirit, I found myself asking the question, “Who are You, Lord?”
So I’ve embarked on a personal journey to get to know the Holy Spirit better. I think I’ve missed out a lot in my relationship with God due to my ignorance of the Holy Spirit and what He can do in my life, and as the quote says, I’ve robbed Him of the worship, adoration, and love that is due to Him.
