The Trinity is a mysterious thing. I don’t understand what it is or how it works. I know it is a description of God, encompassing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are somehow both three Beings and also one Being. So, is it a multiple personality situation or a family or something else I have no way of relating to or comprehending?
It’s most definitely the latter. God is way beyond my ability to comprehend.
If I could fully understand God, He really wouldn’t be much of a God. In fact, even limiting Him to the pronouns available to me seems like a failure. God is beyond He, She, It, and even They. He is none of those things. God is just God, or as He likes to say, He is I AM.
So when today’s Bible verse talks about the Holy Spirit “coming on me” as a follower of Jesus, I’m flummoxed. Is it God, or part of God? Is it Jesus, or part of Jesus? What is the Holy Spirit?
Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit quite a bit at the end of His ministry. He wanted to assure His disciples that His departure wouldn’t mean He was gone from their lives. His Spirit would come and live with them, inside them. This Spirit would remind them of everything Jesus had taught them and give them the power and wisdom to fulfill His commands, namely the great commission — to go and make disciples of all nations.
And when I read the Bible I can see the change in Jesus’s disciples very starkly. During Jesus’s life, they seem so thick-skulled. They witnessed miracle after miracle, but were still confused and doubtful. (I’m sure I would have been just as slow, but it’s a little frustrating to read.) Then Jesus dies, is resurrected, and leaves, promising to send the Holy Spirit. And after the Holy Spirit comes, those same men are suddenly bold, confident, and authoritative. They preach and teach and lead the world to Jesus. And it’s clearly not the men who changed, but the Holy Spirit who arrived with power, as today’s verse says.
That same Spirit and same power is in me. And available for anyone who accepts Jesus’s gift of salvation.
I’m just some dummy muddling about in the world, but because of the Holy Spirit living in me, giving me power and wisdom, maybe I have something worthwhile to say about God. If anyone learns anything from my writing, it’s surely not coming from me but from that Spirit.
Dear God,
Thank you for sending your Holy Spirit into the world to comfort, teach, encourage, and empower me and the rest of your children. Thank you for sending Him to the disciples originally so they could write the Gospel that I can read today. Remind me to trust your Spirit and to speak boldly about you — to be your witness to the end of the earth where I live.
CamDevo 