The Astounding, Formidable Holy Spirit

"How can we have revival when we value a book the early Church didn't have over the Holy Spirit they did have?"

Mankind is obsessed with knowing, whether information, revelation or gossip. We climb mountains, cross deserts, explore oceans and reach out to the stars. Whatever we find, we examine, dissect, analyze and commercialize because we feel compelled to know, to understand and to master it all.

But to know fully-unknowable God, to get our heads around the whole creation thing, grasp his timeless existence, or even begin to understand a triune being—well, God is just too big!

We can sort of break him down in our heads, but even then we can go only so far. Jesus was seeable and touchable, but only for thirty-odd years a couple of millennia ago. We don't know today even what he looked like. And the Bible is the only source of the little we know about his Father.

Then, there's the Holy Spirit, often the hardest for us to understand, because he was seen in bodily form only once that we know of.

As a bird.

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.

So, when somebody mentions the Holy Spirit or we think about him or read about him, the first image that pops into our head is probably avian, which can make him difficult to relate to.

Of course, most of us get past that the more we hang out with him. We come to realize that he knows us intimately and infinitely better than we know ourselves, that he loves us even when we loathe ourselves and that he is with us, nurturing and empowering us to grow and mature.

The prophet's principle ministry is to the Holy Spirit, his nearest, dearest Friend—absolutely trustworthy, Revealer of eternal secrets, all-knowing Teacher and, now and again, even a Comedian:

"Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one's regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings."

The Holy Spirit's sense of humor may strike us as a bit wry, but that's probably because we don't know him all that well.

A Personal Testament

My encounter with him began years before I was even told he existed. Back then, the thought of having an ever-present Person to walk through life with me was inconceivable. I was in the military. I wanted to be in the Recces, South Africa's special operations unit and counter-insurgency elite. To even qualify, we had to hike five days through the Namib Desert, with a full pack, rifle and canteen. Four hundred of us set out in 110-degree heat with no shade in sight. About ten miles in, I began to feel exhausted and wanted to drink all the water from my canteen.

"Don't do that," said one of the guys close to me. "Walk with me. I've done this before and have the pace."

Danny was a former Selous Scout from the Rhodesian special forces regiment who had fought in the bush war in the 1970's. Even so, he still had to qualify to join us.

Out of the hundreds who set out into the desert, only five finished and qualified—Danny, me and three others.

Over the years, the two of us were sent on many missions together. We were inseparable.

Once, we were dropped deep behind enemy lines. As we watched movements in the camp, we spotted a sudden shift in behavior. Men started disappearing in groups, and we realized they had probably found our hidden parachutes. They began sector clearance, and we moved to a higher position, but the barking of dogs grew louder as the soldiers closed in.

Danny said we should climb a tree for cover and prayed, "Lord, save us today."

I was still nearly fully exposed when the soldiers came. They were so close I could have reached out and touched their faces. But they couldn't see us.

I didn't know what had happened, since I wasn't a believer. But Danny knew.

Eventually, we both left the military and lost contact.

Five years later, after I had begun my pharmaceutical business, I was walking in downtown Durban and bumped into my old friend. We reconnected, and he came to work for me almost the next day. Danny passed away in 1993.

Years later, when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I realized that God had given me a perfect representation of himself through my friend Danny.

"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever."

"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning."

The Truth About the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is pretty much the only source of truth in our graying world. He listens to and perfectly understands every word we say—including the shallowness and selfishness concealed behind some of our words that we often miss. He's our Sculptor, chipping away everything that doesn't look like, feel like, think like, love like and behave like him, revealing the God-likeness that was born when our old self died.

The Holy Spirit is not a mystical word-giver or future-revealer, speaking through somebody booked by a church to pack pews and fill offering baskets. The Holy Spirit is God. He's not the voice of God; he is as fully God as Jesus and his Father.

After his resurrection, Jesus could not remain on the earth because he is a man as well as God, which limited where he could be and who he could be with at any given moment. So Jesus, Almighty God, returned to his Father, Almighty God, and sent the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, to the world.

Being spirit, he is unrestricted by time and space, so he is able to enjoy intimacy with all of us—fully, constantly, simultaneously—involved in everything that goes on in our home, at our job, in the stop-and-go traffic between home and work and everywhere else.

And at night, when we collapse into bed, he is still standing there, whispering to us in the stillness, enthralled by us, watching over us like first-time parents standing in the glow of a nightlight in their sleeping infant's bedroom—amazed, in love and unwilling to leave.