Tuesday With Teri

          The other day I got out of my car after a shopping trip and began to look for my cell phone.  Calm digging through my purse soon escalated to panicked thoughts of the possible places I could have left it.  I was upside down in the car, craning my neck to see into the dark crevice beneath my seat  when the person I was talking to on my cell phone asked what I was doing.  I’ll give you a minute to figure that out…..Yep, I had the phone to my ear all the while I was searching for it!  I know you’re laughing, but I also know you have probably done something like it yourself.  I have numerous friends who make a habit of placing their reading glasses atop  their head so they will have easy access to them.  Inevitably they will spend considerable time searching  for them until someone points out they have them on their head.  I once had a coworker who approached me one day looking very frazzled.  She had a pair of reading glasses on her head and one set  hung around her neck on chain.  She had a habit of using her tightly rolled hair bun as a pencil holder and she had at least 4 writing utensils radiating from the top of her hair this day.  “What’s wrong?” I asked.  “I can’t find my pen or glasses and I have so much work to do!”  she replied.  It’s easy to find ourselves looking for things not lost!         

           We’ve been learning about the Holy Spirit in Sunday school.  It is startling to think how much I did not know about something so important to believers.  Oh sure,  I have always known it was part of the “Trinity”….Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  Funny though, in my southern Baptist upbringing I tended to think of the trinity as a listing in order of importance.  I heard so much about God and Jesus and very little about the Holy Spirit.  I knew the scriptures told that God sent the Holy Spirit to be with us after Christ (God in the flesh) was taken up to heaven following his resurrection.   Jesus tells us in John 16:7  “…., it is to your advantage that I go away;  if I do not go away,  the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”   I also got that the Holy Spirit was not tangible/physical.  But even with this understanding I was missing some key aspects.  I think the biggest gap in my understanding was that I thought the Holy Spirit came and went in our lives depending on us.

          I used to think that we became “filled” with the Holy Spirit when we read the Bible faithfully, obeyed God, did our best, really sought Him or needed Him.   But the Holy Spirit is a part of every believer’s life. 

1 Corinthians 6:19 “Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God…”

Ephesians 1:13 “…Having believed, you were marked with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.”

          Scripture after scripture revealed a new truth to me…the Holy Spirit I had desired to be filled with WAS filling me!  I was just not recognizing His presence.  I was too busy seeking Him to realize He was with me, enabling and empowering me, waiting for me to rely on His strength in my weakness, wanting me to rest in His peace.  I was looking for something not lost!

                  When we discover our reading glasses are not lost, we stop searching and start using.  We simply move them into position and everything before us changes.