Getting to Know the Holy Spirit
“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you.” John 14:16-17
I used to think the Holy Spirit was this magical, ethereal vapor, a thing—a tool of God, a sparkling mist sent to tie us all together in Him. It’s probably because whenever I sensed the Holy Spirit, I felt a physical sensation that filled me with joy and perfect peace.
As I’ve studied Scripture more intensely, I now understand the Spirit is not an “it” but a person. In fact, Jesus uses the pronoun “Him” to describe the Holy Spirit, calling Him the advocate, or companion, God sends to help us.
While the Holy Spirit is with me always, part of the holy trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit, three in one—it's when I pray that I feel the Holy Spirit most strongly. I often sense Him when I’m praying fervently with another person.
Other times I feel the Holy Spirit dancing about me during worship, like His light within me has catapulted outward, igniting a fire of the Lord in the room. Other times it’s a quiet joy, a small moment of pure bliss as I’m driving and I feel His hand settle upon mine as I shift gears.
We don’t all recognize the Holy Spirit the same way. One friend says she notices a certain delicious fragrance in the air as she becomes aware of Him. I’ve heard others say they hear the tinkling of bells.
But the more I pay attention when I notice Him, the more often I can feel Him—like getting a new car and suddenly noticing how many cars like yours are on the road with you, when you never before noticed one.
He’s always there, but now I’m focused. And because of that, I feel Him, and His friendship, more strongly.
Jessica Brodie is an award-winning journalist and a member of the Wholly Loved Ministry team. She’s also an author who currently serves as the editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, the oldest newspaper in Methodism. She is the author of More Like Jesus: A Devotional Journey (2018) and editor of Stories of Racial Awakening: Narratives on Changed Hearts and Lives of South Carolina United Methodists (2018), both from her newspaper’s Advocate Press. She also writes contemporary women’s fiction, represented by Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency. Her novel The Memory Garden won the American Christian Fiction Writers’ 2018 Genesis Contest. She has a faith blog at JessicaBrodie.com.
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Originally published Monday, 10 February 2020.
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