There are people who are gifted with the Holy Spirit and are able to speak in tongues. Paul says in I Corinthians 13: 1 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Receiving the power of the Holy Spirit and having the Spirit in you are two different things. Jesus told the disciples in Acts 1:5,8 “For John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit….But you will receive power and when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Being baptized in the Holy Spirit is another whole level of understanding, where I believe one needs to be ready and set for God’s will. Their minds need to be ready as well as their physical bodies, to withstand that power and recognize it. If one is in doubt, then that doubt becomes a wall that blocks them from receiving the Holy Spirit. I am not an expert in this, but I do understand myself. However, having the Spirit of God in you is different.

Jesus said in John 16:7-9 “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that i am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me.”  The Holy Spirit lives within each and everyone of us. I believe that when God said in Genesis 1:26 “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…”, He (God) was speaking to the Son and the Holy Spirit, because Jesus said “I and the Father are one”. How are we created in God’s image? God made man out of the dust of the earth, but He (God) breathe life into him. We carry within us a likeness to who God is, but because of sin inherited from our ancestors, we struggle to understand God. Due to our insufficient knowledge and understanding of who God is and our limited abilities to know his character, Jesus promised the Counselor (Holy Spirit), who was there from the beginning to gently lead us to a greater understanding of God. The Holy Spirit awakes within us, when we realize our need for God and it teaches us God’s character, His wisdom, knowledge and understanding of how we should live in God’s likeness. The Holy Spirit that lives within us, convicts us as Jesus said, for things we are doing that are wrong, of things that we ought to do, yet we do not do them and the spirit also guides us to what God wants us to know and understand. The work of the Holy Spirit within us enables us to understand the desires of the sinful nature as well as the desires of God, which sets us apart from those who live for the world. Romans 8:5-8 “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s laws, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”

When I became a new found Christian, I asked my friend’s mom how one one can continue to read the Bible even when they do not feel like reading it. She helped me understand that we all struggle with those moments, where we loose motivation. However, she said one thing that stuck with me; “When I pick up my Bible everyday, I ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me to where I should read and to open my heart to what it has to teach.”

Right after Christmas, a heaviness came over my heart, making God seem so far, causing my body and spirit to have no motivation for reading and praying. I have had these moments a hundred times over, and it never ceases to amaze me that I loose all happiness when these gloomy moods come on. Not a song interested me, or a book or a movie. I just wanted to understand why and what I had done wrong. My friend’s mom’s words reminded me to seek the Holy Spirit. I sat down and prayed, asking the Holy Spirit to lead me to the missing puzzle, because I wanted to enter the new year with an open mind, no regrets and to have every unforgiveness in my heart erased. I wanted a new chapter in my life. As days made it into two weeks, I found myself talking way too much about someone in my life who had just given up without so much of an explanation. I found myself getting upset with every thought of them, recollecting the memories of the times we spent together. Some of those memories brought sadness and I could not make heads or tails. While in church on January 4th, one of the elders stood up and spoke about unforgiveness. He mentioned that some of us may have memories from 2014, in the past that are painful, people in our lives that have hurt us, and we are wondering if we can ever move on. He said we should write them down and leave them behind and move on to the new year, expecting new adventures. Images of my year flashed through my mind, and an inexplicable heaviness fell on my chest and my knees, and every limp in my body went weak. The room seemed to spin and I had to hold unto the chair in-front of me, to avoid passing out. When he asked those who needed prayer to put their hands up, I told my hand to go up, but it would not budge. I plumped down on my chair because my knees could no longer hold me up. I bowed my head to pray, and I felt my friends hand on my shoulders. A warm feeling of recognition flowed through me as reality hit me.

I had been holding back some anger towards  the person that gave up. The spirit all this time had been trying to help me understand that I needed to forgive this one person and move on with my life. After the service, I was way too quiet, trying to be my normal self. This wasn’t going too well, so I started reflecting on my feelings and thoughts. As I spoke to my friend, I had to admit that I was struggling with unforgiveness, and God had been trying to help me see it all. When I entered my house and had lunch, I had a good cry, praying and asking God to forgive me for not forgiving this person. I realized, that I had closed myself from the pain and had not allowed it to bother me, but deep down, I had been hurting. While allowing myself to feel the pain, I realized that I needed to forgive. That was the whole reason why I had such a heaviness on my heart. I prayed some more and asked for forgiveness for not being able to forgive, and I forgave my friend. I was so relieved when the weight on my chest lifted. I slept for a good two hours and watched a sermon on anger and forgiveness (follow link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3wptoGIchw) after I woke up.

Dr. Charles Stanley defined anger as a strong feeling of intense displeasure, hostility or indignation as a result of a real or imagined threat, insult, frustration or injustice towards yourself or others important to you. Forgiveness however is the giving up resentment against someone and our right to get even no matter what has been done to us(It is surrendering up my right to hurt you back). Unforgiveness is the deliberate willful refusal to give up one’s resentment and the right to get even based on the wrongful thought that somebody needs to pay. These are definitions that I could identify with, which I had unconsciously carried out. There are a lot more things that Dr. Charles focused on, but that day, I realized that I had been struggling with this on my heart, and the Holy Spirit pointed it out to me. From that time on, I have been seeking the Holy Spirit’s counsel in my daily routines, walks and friendships. When we seek God with all our heart and with an open honest heart, he reveals himself to us through the works of the Holy Spirit that lives in us. Living a life through the Spirit enables us to understand the rights and wrongs, the Spirit’s desires as well as the world’s desires. “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” Romans 8:10-11.