The Holy Spirit Makes Jesus Real to Us

"That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ." 2Thessalonians 1:12 (KJV)

by Alexandra Copeland

The Sanders were by all accounts a family always gripped by financial struggle. They were one of the poorest in my little town, but their love and unity was notorious. The children were resourceful and advanced in ways that most other kids couldn’t begin to know; with a father, the sole provider whose health wasn’t the best, and a mother who had very little above a grade school education, they had to be. As a little girl I played with the children often, and knew them as very loving people who were always willing to share what little they had. Growing up alongside them, the thing I admired most was the love they had for their father. He was very kind to them, and they to him. When you contrasted this against the relationship I had with my own father, the difference was huge. 

My father was not one for showing emotion, and I don’t ever remember hearing the words “I love you” from his lips. The one thing that he did do was instill in my sisters and me the value of being detail-oriented and tough. He wouldn’t have allowed anyone to take advantage of us, and he made sure that we wouldn’t allow it either. Me being the oldest, I think he was a lot harder on me. If I completed a chore or something that wasn’t up to his standards, I’d have to do it again until it was. I had a tough time with noticing details that he thought I should, and as I grew to be a teenager he found this particularly frustrating.

One day, he noticed that one of the Sander’s girls, she was ten at the time, had gone in the grocery store to purchase grocery for her family. Her dad had given her $20, which was plenty back then, and he waited in the car; not feeling up to going in the store himself. She purchased everything she was told to buy, and when she had returned to the car she gave her dad the change. My dad marveled at the detail and maturity with which this ten-year-old little girl had handled her dad’s instruction. At dinner one night, he recounted the story and ended it by saying that I, as a fifteen-year-old, would not have been able to handle myself so well.

Needless to say, I was crushed by the comment he made, and although today I so appreciate the discipline and strength that my dad tried to instill in us girls, his comment that day demolished my self-esteem. He was my dad; he was supposed to believe in me and help me believe in myself, but he didn’t know how to do that. For many years I was pitiful indeed. Every undertaking was scary for me because I didn’t think I was savvy or strong enough to make anything work out for myself.

I made mistake after mistake until one day the Holy Spirit came into my life in a way that was absolutely indescribable. Through the indwelling Holy Spirit, God parented me. He showed me that I wasn’t pitiful at all, but through Him I had all the strength in the world. The indwelling Holy Spirit made the reality of Jesus Christ so real to me. I understood Jesus in a way that even the disciples couldn’t understand before Pentecost. I had been in the church all my life, and often felt the presence of someone hovering over me, but I never heard anyone teach or speak about the indwelling Holy Spirit, so I didn’t know him.

I knew of the Holy Trinity, I knew about Jesus and often talked to God, but I did not live with power back then, and looked at my life as a disappointment waiting to happen. One of the greatest tragedies in the church today is that so many ignore the person of the Holy Spirit, and he is so grieved by this. He is on the inside of us when we become born again, and is more real than our bodies and souls. This temple (our bodies) will one day return to the earth from whence it came, it will be dust, and a great many souls will not make it into heaven, but the spirit that indwells the born-again believer is the real deal.

John 6:63(KJV) tells us, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” The spirit makes us alive in ways that we couldn’t begin to articulate. The words of my biological father had killed something in me many years ago, but the indwelling Holy Spirit quickens—he makes us alive through the living Word of God, and we are never the same! Praise the Lord!

John 16:13 says that the spirit leads, guides, and directs us into all truth. I had believed a lie about myself, just as you might be believing some things about yourself that are not true. God doesn’t want us to be arrogant or to brag and boast about ourselves, but He very definitely wants us to know that we are spiritual beings with a soul that is housed in a body. We are the closest thing to God’s image in the earth, and He created us as His masterpieces. It isn’t our strength, love, and power that we’re using; it’s His. If it were ours, then we couldn’t really have all that much confidence in it. But because we’re utilizing the spiritual resources that God has gifted to us, we can have every assurance that we’re using the best. And the most wonderful thing about this is that we have the best within; it's an inside job!

In the Old Testament, before the indwelling Holy Spirit became available, God told His people, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” Part of what this Old Testament scripture in Isaiah 64:4 referred to is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This same scripture is repeated in the New Testament in 1Corinthians 2:11. It was part of God’s plan all along to have the spirit reside on the inside of us, and folks, let me tell you, it’s just beyond the reality of anything we could have ever imagined.

In John 16:7, Jesus Christ told the disciples that it was better for them that he goes away, because if he didn’t the Holy Spirit could not come to dwell inside of us. It’s hard to imagine that it was best that Christ not physically dwell among us, but he knew that there would be millions upon millions of us, each of us empowered to the carry forth the work that he started, all because of the indwelling Holy Spirit that he, Jesus Christ, made available.

1Corinthians 2:10-12 (NLT) tells us, “For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. 11 No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. 12 And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.” This is too wonderful for words! The spirit helps us in our relationship with Jesus Christ. He teaches us, and he will help us get to a place where all our past hurts and wounds are a thing of the past. He will lead us down the path of purpose, so that we can turn our lives around and walk in confidence with the fullness of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. ■

---

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.