The Gift of the Holy Spirit

As I consider the wondrous gifts of Pentecost, I am humbled by God’s amazing compassion towards us, but I’m also reminded of recent loss. During the second year of the pandemic, I lost three close friends, all Christian women who ended our connection in terribly damaging ways. How grievous it is to lose a friend—as heartrending as losing a lover, a parent, or a beloved pet.

How can followers of Christ act this way? Don’t we have the Holy Spirit? Of course, I know I have spoken harsh, angry and hurtful words when my feelings overwhelmed my ability to listen to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. So how can we practice our faith in compassionate ways, even when someone has prompted strong emotions within us?

The beauty of God coming to us in Acts shows us the way forward: the Holy Spirit comes to us through Christ, who unites us with God! At Pentecost, we celebrate this marvelous gift as the birth of the Christian church, a new way of life for all, “pouring out my Spirit upon every kind of people,” to share and unite around a new community rooted in love and belonging. (Acts 2:1-21 MSG). We have access to God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who longs for us to seek solace, rest, and companionship in him (1 Cor. 3:16-17). God’s divine breath lives through us, and as we focus on following his will for our lives, we allow peace, goodness, and love to naturally arise (Gal. 5:22).

We practice this new way of being rooted in God’s love by accessing the wondrous Holy Spirit through meditation.

Meditation helped me respond mindfully the last time I spoke with my former friends. The final conversations occurred by phone, and their unkind accusations hurt me deeply. Amid these last talks, I touched an ancient wound gifted to me in childhood, my parents’ ’envy of my love of life and their unconscious but real desire to break my spirit and extinguish my God-light.

During each call, rather than freeze in fear as I had done in the past, I sat unmoved, like a harbor battered by the strong winds and heavy rains of their bitter condemnation. Normally, this would have triggered me to react in anger and defensiveness, making the situation worse, but this time I did something extraordinarily different. With God’s help, I used meditation to connect with the Holy Spirit and spoke to my friends with fierce compassion.

As Christians, we know that the ethical framework our faith ascribes to is clear: practicing violence in any form is not the way of Christ, which is why practicing meditation can help us stay mindfully present with others. Violence in communication includes both punishing words and raised voices, but it can also include more subtle signs like sighs of disgust, rolling eyes, contemptuous expressions, and disapproving looks. This is where prayer and meditation with mindful awareness helps us connect with Christ through the Holy Spirit, who longs for us to stay grounded in his love so we might extend that love to others.

Countless stories from Jesus, Paul, and the epistles (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 10:5; 2 Cor. 6:16; Matt. 5:21-26) encourage us to act mindfully with the Holy Spirit rather than acting on our own emotional impulses, and this is where modern brain science and theology beautifully converge. Meditating for the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom through breath awareness can help us reset our nervous system for peace and allow us to rest in God as we await direction (Jude 1:20-21).

Deep breathing allows our bodies to move from a state of sympathetic mobilizing energy to a resting state, known as the parasympathetic nervous system. Using a sacred word such as “Jesus” or “God” or “mercy” in centering prayer offers us clarity on how to proceed with wise action toward others. Engaging in harsh words and mean looks stimulates the threat response in other people’s nervous systems, as modern brain science has discovered. God would rather have us bless and build others up, not curse and condemn them.

Perhaps the best practice we can engage in with God and the Holy Spirit is to practice mindful meditation. In the midst of strong emotions sweeping over us, we can pause and notice our body sensations kindly, as serving a dual purpose. Mindfully noticing our emotions gives the Holy Spirit the space to stretch our capacity to bear witness to the pain of others, but it also gives us inner strength to notice our emotions with warmth, acceptance, and love (Phil. 8-9). After all, the God of the universe lives inside each one of us, and longs for our communion and company. As James Finley wrote in Christian Meditation, “God is waiting for you to open [the door] and come walking through to experience that oneness with God that is the fullness of life itself.”^[1]

God cares desperately about us, so much that he gave us the Holy Spirit to encourage, bless, and embolden us to extend that love to others. Our meditation practice serves us well, helping us turn towards our bodies and welcome all our feelings with warm curiosity because God dwells inside us. Do you know what that means, dear reader? It means our bodies are safe places in which to dwell! We meditate and ask for Divine guidance as we pause mindfully to breathe and practice his presence with us right now, just as we are. We acknowledge our inner landscape because befriending our emotions leads us directly into true intimacy with God, if we allow ourselves to be known.

As we affirm our oneness with God, we participate in a new way of being in the world, of being firmly anchored in the One who longs for us to enjoy this marvelous gift called life.

^[1]  Finley, James. Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 2005, p. 39.

Jenn Zatopek is a recovering perfectionist, writer, and psychotherapist from Texas. Her work has been featured in magazines such as FATHOM, Ruminate, SheLoves Magazine, and The Glorious Table. Jenn studied theology at Brite Divinity School. When not writing, you can find her planting flowers and herbs in her tiny porch garden. Find her at theholyabsurd.com and on social media at @theholyabsurd.

Photograph © Alaric Duan, used with permission