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One of the most important times in my personal life involved a brand new understanding of one of the foggiest ideas of the Christian faith. I'm talking about the notion that there is a Holy Spirit who is not a "thing" or an "it", but rather a person who makes up the Holy Trinity along with God the Father and the Christ. The Christian faith teaches us that this Spirit exists and that he (or she if you even care to give it a gender) is God. He is not a servant of God or even "part" of God, because as Katie said in Monday's blog, God cannot be divided into parts. (By the way, I am only using "he" because God is our Father and Jesus is the Son in Scripture, not because I am trying to make a theological statement about the gender of the Holy Spirit). Outside of the things I have already mentioned, everything else that our faith and even Scripture teaches us about the Holy Spirit is somewhat gray. I believe personal experience is crucial in every person's faith journey and walk with Christ, so I also believe it is crucial in how we understand the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. I'd like to share with you my personal experience.

In April of 2008, just 5 months before I would eventually step out in faith and move my life from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Findlay, Ohio just so I could enroll full-time at Winebrenner Theological Seminary, I had been caught up in some lifestyle choices that were certainly not God-honoring, even though I had been a Christian for 14 years at that point. I won't go into full details, but will just say that these choices involved one particular woman with whom I went to dance clubs, drank alcohol often even though we didn't get drunk, and occasionally spent the night. I would later reflect on just how depressing and unsatisfying that season in my life was, but at the time I was stuck in a rut of constantly chasing fulfillment without ever coming close to finding it. This went on for a few months and I remember that we had plans for me to drive to the town where she lived and spend the entire weekend with her and her friends doing the things that I knew were wrong. As that weekend approached, I began to feel very convicted. I didn't want to break the plans we had, because that of course would mean I'd be home alone all weekend with nothing "fun" to do. But at the same time, I just couldn't ignore the disappointment I felt due to my own choices, even the ones that hadn't happened yet! So, in a very poor effort to reconcile the two conflicting feelings I was having, I tried to talk to this woman on the phone and convince her that we shouldn't be doing the things we had been doing and were planning to continue to do that weekend. Here was the one and only problem with that idea: I was a Christian; she was not. And that, friends, is the first time I can ever remember thinking consciously about the work of the Holy Spirit in the moment.

Needless to say, my attempt to convince her of the sin of what we had been doing didn't go over very well. It was like mixing oil and water. Even though we were both guilty of the same sins, there was such a clear difference between the feelings of the one who has the Holy Spirit in him and the one who does not. And you certainly can't blame the one who doesn't know the error of her ways, especially when such a poor example has been set for her. She couldn't understand, and rightfully so, how a man who supported such activities with his lifestyle for several months was now speaking against them. I'm happy to say that I ended up resisting the temptation to go through with the plans and stayed home that weekend, and that season of gratifying the flesh was over. I never hung out with that woman again and God used that experience that weekend to set me on a straight path that culminated with my huge step of faith 5 months later. However, there were consequences even on that weekend, as I desperately tried to explain to her why I was doing what I was doing, hoping with everything in me that she would somehow see the truth through this one God-honoring action that contradicted everything else I had been doing up to that point. She certainly never came around to it that weekend in talking with me, and only God knows if she ever did. I had to deal with the pain of knowing I was a terrible example to someone else who was searching, but the conviction of that situation served to not only give me clarity on the work of the Holy Spirit, but also keep me focused on the way I represent my Savior.

Just in case I haven't been clear so far, one of the major works of the Spirit that I have experienced in my life is conviction. If you read in Acts 2 and the story of the day of Pentecost, you see that the Holy Spirit descended on the believers. In the Christian faith, we believe that every believer from that point forward is given the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples in John 14:26 that the Holy Spirit would be a "Counselor", and that he would "teach them all things and remind them of everything Jesus had said to them". In John 16, Jesus is still talking to the disciples and tells them that the Spirit will "convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment" and also will "guide his disciples into all truth". These are the things that I experienced in the story I shared above, and I'd be willing to bet that you have probably had similar experiences, whether you recognized them as the work of the Spirit or not (please share your experience in the comment section if you have one). Make no mistake about it. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit convicting, guiding, teaching, reminding, and leading you.

While much of what is studied, taught, and thought about the Holy Spirit in the Christian faith is foggy, there's one simple truth that actually makes perfect sense. The Holy Spirit is Christ in us. Think about it. The first disciples of Jesus didn't need the Holy Spirit to be in them because anytime they had a question about anything, they could just turn and say, "So what should we do here, Jesus?" But Jesus promised the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, to the disciples (which includes anyone who's a Christian even now) because he knew that he could not stay with them in the flesh forever. Jesus' time here on this earth was coming to a close and it was time for him to go be with his Father. But you know, God promises in the Old Testament that he would never leave nor forsake his people. So it's only fitting that Jesus, who was also God, accompanied his followers while on earth, and that he promised the Holy Spirit, who is also God, to accompany believers for all future generations. I'd say we serve a God that does not break his promises! Just remember, the next time you are in a pickle where you are just not sure what the right step is, you have just as much access to Christ as those who physically walked with him. And that access is granted through the work of the Holy Spirit!