02/05/2024
So, as an addendum to my recent post regarding the Holy Spirit... to trust anyone, we must know them personally. Very few people we really trust without our spending time to know them. We trust someone more completely because over time we have become convinced that they can be trusted.
Trust is sewn into the woven fabric of every lasting and true relationship.
So this is the case with the Holy Spirit. if we expect to trust Him to heal, and carry out the ministry of Christ thru us, we must be familiar with how He communicates. We must be intimately aware of what His presence feels like and what His voice in us sounds like. As with anyone we trust, knowing someone so intimately starts with familiarity.
Q. but how do we become familiar with someone who is not physical? �A. Through physical acts of faith. ��Q. What is an example of a physical act of faith? �A. Prayer is a physical act of faith.
When we pray, we use our mouth, part of our physical body, to declare that we have become convinced to believe(faith) that God is there and listening.
Faith means that we(the part of us capable of choosing) have become convinced that believing in something or someone is the right choice to make.
It is odd living by faith because it is so contrary to our natural physical state. We're used to relying on sensation, but interacting w someone we can't feel or audibly hear or physically see or touch requires “intentional” faith.
And that's just what it is... faith is intentional. It has to be because it is against what is natural to verbally acknowledge the presence of someone not physically there. When we VERBALLY acknowledge the Holy Spirit, it is an intentional act of faith.
When we verbally acknowledge the Holy Spirit, we bring our mind under the authority of our faith. We confirm to our minds of that which our heart has become convinced.
It feels to us at first, when we start doing this, so weak and ineffective, as though nothing is really happening in us, however as we continue to verbally acknowledge the Holy Spirit’s presence, we begin to notice that we are willing to give Him our consideration.
Just as we do when we acknowledge anyone in a room, if only for a moment, we focus our attention on what they are doing or what they may have to say. We become aware of that person…
…and depending on who is in the room, we respond accordingly. If it’s someone w whom we know well, are very familiar, and love much, we may sense that they just want to sit for a while and be quiet, or we may sense from a tiny gesture that they want to talk, but if we love them we give them, not only our attention, but our consideration.
If we acknowledge someone in a room w us, on the other hand, with whom we are UN-familiar, we may feel a bit uneasy, we may be polite, but not interested in engagement, or we may feel completely disinterested in them altogether. ��So once we give verbal acknowledgment to the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, then HOW we respond to His presence, will be in relation to how well we know him, how much consideration we are willing to give Him, and how much we care about what concerns His purpose, and so on.
My point being that without first using our faith to verbally acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is present in and with us, we cannot use our faith to interact with Him, or allow Him to interact with us.
There are several reasons the Holy Spirit is present.
