It is easy for most of us to identify with Jesus of Nazareth since he came in a body just like ours. He was and is the God man or the word made flesh. He ate just like us and slept and worked just like any normal person would. Others identify with the Father who is God also and has been taught by every major religion in one form or another. Since we are made in the image of God, it is quite easy to see the Father in each other, or just imagine an Almighty God from the Old Testament. Either way these two divine beings are easy to understand and identify with, they are also taught every Sunday, even in the most remote places in the world.
Because salvation is the work of the son of God for all of humanity it leaves little room in the human heart for any other spiritual relationship. The average Christian loves his savior and could spend a life time trying to please him and know him. This leaves little time to invest in knowing who the Holy Spirit really is. He is mentioned and taught in Sunday Schools as the third person of the trinity which he is. But they stop short of really seeing him and especially of getting to know him as that truly special person that he is. Religious teaching has kept him in the back ground of Christianity for centuries, and yet he was with God in Genesis when the earth was formed.
Without him Jesus could not have done the miracles he performed on earth and the early church would have died of without his power. In the Old Testament he gave the people power to achieve great works, but never stayed with them. In the New Testament age he comes to live in your heart by faith and to empower you to do miracles just like the ones Jesus did. After his resurrection Jesus would leave to go with the Father and sit at his right hand. But he would leave us his friend the Holy Spirit to guide and comfort us. Because it is a work of salvation for mankind the spirit speaks only of what Jesus did and said so as not to infringe on the Saviors ministry. Because the three are one if you have one you have the other, for the Lord is the Spirit.
This person the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God the Father and also God the Son while still being a person in his own right. How this could be we will never know, some mysteries are beyond human comprehension we just accept them as being true because God said so. The Spirit has his own mind and personality apart from the other two. As a man Jesus lived on earth and understands man's ways but the Holy Spirit has never lived as a man or been in the natural realm. I once showed him a picture of a hot rod and he kept asking me to turn it this way or that because he could not understand what it was. To him all cars were the same, just hunks of metal used for transportation; if you made too much of it he considered it idolatry.
The church teaching that he comes to lay dormant in your mind or spirit is nonsense, since he is a very active person, he is God and always creative. You might think or believe he is there, but remember he came in the form of a dove and a dove has wings. In the restaurant in which I worked there were a few flies and some morning I would spend time killing them. One morning as I swatted the flies I looked over and saw some dead on the floor where I had not been. In a very fragile voice the Holy Spirit said, "I helped you with the flies". Another time I felt like eating a piece of apple pie and I had none, I never spoke this out I just thought of it. A few moments later a neighbor knocked on the door with a huge apple pie which she gave me. This time he said, "I like apple pie to." Once I stood by a juice machine just looking at the different brands when I heard him say "I bought you a juice" and sure enough an orange juice came tumbling down without me putting any money in the machine.
He was always there always just waiting to help, just wanting to have fellowship and be a friend. Another time I went to the doctor's office for my yearly examine, as the doctor took my blood pressure I could see his shoe laces come undone. He saw me looking down and looked down to see his shoes untied. He tied them back up and went back to work on my blood test, as I looked down again I could see them being untied for a second time. I could hear the Holy Spirit laughing in my mind as he untied both shoes. This time the doctor didn't think it was so funny and got away from me as if I had been doing it. He quickly signed all the papers and saw me out the door with a weird look on his face. As I stood ten or fifteen feet from the door the Holy Spirit opened the door which really shook up the doctor. I tried not to laugh and just walked of down the street.
Why you might ask would he do this? I believe he likes being in a playful mood and likes to share moments of fun with his host. I have a friend by the name of Ricardo Nuñez who I told this story to. He told me that as he went to bed he asked God if what I said was true and that if it was he wanted to have fun with the Holy Spirit to. That night he said the Holy Spirit came to him at about two in the morning, lifted up his legs and started to swing him back and forth as if he were a little child. All he could do was laugh and laugh as the Spirit played with his legs and then stretched his fingers as if they were rubber bands. From all of this I learned that He the Holy Spirit loves to interact with us, much as a father would with his children.
He is attentive, fragile, moody, jealousy, and very romantic. He can be grumpy at times and very secretive, he is picky as to whom to be around since he knows the thoughts of all men. Though many claim to know him or have him, few indeed have been privileged enough to have spent time with him. In faith everyone claims a part of him and yet he is controlled by no man. Even those who claim him have no idea who he is and what he does. He is seen as a wind, light, energy, a force, and tongues of fire as in the book of acts. Since no man knows what his own spirit looks like, we also don't know what the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of the Father looks like either. What we do know is that He too is love as God is love; He is a person of Love.
Because he is pure spirit he has no body, we could see Jesus as a man in a dream since he has his own body, or we could see the Father or an image of him as a natural father to help us identify with who God is. But the Holy Spirit never came in a body and has never been taught as living in a body. We accept this person by faith without any natural image. This makes it the highest type of faith and the purest spiritual journey.
About Author / Additional Info:
After writing this story I was blessed to see a small text I had sent to Forbes magazine nine years ago.It was published in the January 17 edition on the last page. Only God Almighty could have permitted this after so long. My thanks to him.