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As we already discussed in our last lesson, there are at least four aspects of the Holy Spirit's character that become very real and personal to us as we enter into a deeper relationship with Him. These include:
We already discussed the first two in lesson 7. Now we will look at the remaining two.
TRUTH
Jesus calls the Holy Spirit "the Spirit of truth" in many verses, such as John 14:17, John 15:26, John 16:13. He is truth and He embodies truth. Jesus also said, in John 4:24, that "God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." In other words, God requires truth from us as we approach Him, as we worship Him. So this should not be a big surprise: the closer you draw to the Holy Spirit, the more He will require truth from you.
If you are prone to lie or exaggerate, He will begin convicting you to give truthful reports. Satan is the father of liars and the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. As you come under His control, He will transform your speech -- and even your thinking -- to conform more to God's truth.
In addition to that, the Holy Spirit will begin to put God's testimony into your mouth, and cause you to speak forth His truth. You will find that at times you open your mouth and what comes out is so excellent that it had to come from God. When that happens to me, I find myself wishing that I had a tape recorder so I could record what I was saying and transcribe it.
The Holy Spirit will speak His truth through us as we are willing and yielded vessels. Jesus described it this way in John 16:26-27, "When the Counselor 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."
And there is another aspect where the Spirit Of Truth works in your life. It is in the area of denial and repressing of memories. If you are in denial, lying to yourself about something, He will require you to take a good hard honest look at it. He is truth and He is light and He will reveal the truth to you. You may have areas of your past that you have buried and repressed and keep hidden and secret, until your conscious mind forgets -- yet these things can drive you and effect how you react. The Spirit Of Truth will cause you to face them and to bring them under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You may want to forget how that person in your past hurt you so deeply, because remembering is too painful. But as you begin to give the Holy Spirit control, He begins to expose and deal with these dark buried "truths" until they have no more power over you. He does not allow you to bury your past and hide your dark secrets. Instead, He exposes them and brings them into the light of Christ. He forces you to deal with them and He sets you free from them.
WARMTH AND HUMOR
The Holy Spirit can be serious at times. He can be stern at times. He can be urgent at times. But there is a side of Him that you only get to know when you actually begin to develop intimate relationship with Him. He has a very rich sense of humor and He often has a lot of warmth in His dealings with us.
As I mentioned earlier, I am in the habit of spending 1/2 hour a day as intimacy time with the Holy Spirit. One day I began praying even before we formally started our time, inviting Him to be in charge of it and to have His way. As I set the timer on my oven for 1/2 hour, I told Him, in all seriousness, "Holy Spirit, I want more of You!" Then I walked to the stereo to turn on the worship music. The Holy Spirit answered me en route from the kitchen to the family room. He said, "Teresa, if I answered your prayer and gave you more, what would you do with Me?"
That struck me as funny and I started laughing so hard that I almost could not stand up to turn on the stereo. What would I do with the Holy Spirit? At first I interpreted that question in the same light as, "Teresa, if I gave you a million dollars, what would you do with it?" I pondered it for a few minutes and I could not come up with an answer. "I .. uh.. well... um ... can you please help me out with that question, Holy Spirit?"
Suddenly I had a sense of His pleasure and amusement and I strongly suspected He was grinning. Then the interpretation of the question changed to mean something more along the lines of, "Teresa, if you and I were to do something together, what would you do with Me?" That question made a lot more sense. I had a chance of answering that... what would I like the Holy Spirit to allow me to do with Him if I had more of His presence and more of His anointing? I started to formulate an answer and then I told Him, "You might have phrased it that way in the first place. When you first asked the question, I thought You meant something entirely different."
"I know," He replied. "I did it that way on purpose, because I had so much fun watching you try and figure out a response to Me on that."
He can be a tease at times, but always in a gentle and loving way. Let me share one more thing with you on the same topic, which happened on the same day. We had one of those "power" ministry times at church one day. Just before ministry time started, the Holy Spirit told me, "Teresa, don't be afraid of what I am going to do to you today during the ministry time." I began to ponder what He might mean. Would it be something so powerful that I would wonder if I were going to survive it? Or would the Lord do something so deep that I would have to face repressed issues of the past? Or would I be caught up into the heavenlies in a vision and come into His very presence and experience the fear of the Lord. What could He mean?
I found out about 10 minutes later. Two of our youth, Shandy and Jason, prayed for me. Shandy felt led to move me to stand in a specific spot before he started to pray. I obliged, thinking I was humoring him. But after he prayed, this great weight came on the top of my feet and they were pressed into the floor with so much pressure that I could not move them. The Holy Spirit was all over me. I wanted to fall to the ground but I could not fall because my feet were glued to the floor. After a little while the guys left me to go pray for someone else. I remained glued to the floor. After a while, all of the activity moved down to the other side of the altar and I was pretty much the only one standing in that portion of the room. People were getting drunk in the spirit and I wanted to move over there to where the action was, but I could not because my feet were still stuck to the floor. There was so much weight on them that they hurt under the pressure, though the rest of me was light and flexible. I started wishing God would let me go because 1) I was getting left out of all the good action and 2) my feet were getting sore from the feeling of a great weight on them. The Holy Spirit left me glued to the floor for just over one and a half hours.
When He finally released me and I could move my feet, there was this huge impression in the carpet where my feet had planted for the past 1.5 hours. It was very deep as though something much heavier than me had been standing there. Five minutes after I sat down, you could still see the impressions on the carpet. I got Fred, our church photographer, to take a picture of the imprint. Another fifteen minutes passed and you could still see the imprint pressed into the carpet where I had been stuck to the floor. So as I was leaving the service, I asked the Holy Spirit what that was all about. I suspect He will give me more of an explanation later, but all He said at that time was, "Well, Teresa, did I make an impression on you?"
The Holy Spirit definitely has a sense of humor and He loves to use it when He interacts with us.