The outpouring of the Spirit flooded the room as women of every age made their way to the altar to pray, repent, receive grace upon grace. Each woman going forward shared a common trauma and tragedy. Each held deep wounds, regrets, shame. Yet in that holy space, they removed their masks and revealed their truest selves with hope.
And all of this was happening because of love.
Because one woman bravely followed the Spirit’s lead to step up to the microphone and share her story, Holy Spirit moved. When this woman invited others to name their pain and to step into wholeness, Holy Spirit poured out love. Wave after wave of love flowed and filled, lifted and healed.
I sat in the back of the room in total awe. This hadn’t been on the retreat agenda. No one planned for this. But when Holy Spirit showed up, everyone responded. If we weren’t going forward for prayer, then we were stepping up to pray. Love-soaked, Spirit-filled, every heart in the room was undone – in the best of ways.
Years later, I found myself in another room where Holy Spirit saturated the space and all who were in it with His love. Our little circle of seven huddled together, praying for each other with total abandon, words flowing without actual thought. As we laid hands on one another and anointed foreheads with oil, love splashed and filled and moved – our love for one another and God, the love of God for us, ebbing and flowing.
As the cross of oil was traced onto my skin, I felt a breaking-open in the deepest parts of my inner being – like a dam finally releasing all the pent up pressure. And love poured in so powerfully that my body shook in relief and tears of utter joy ran down my face.
What I had watched all those years ago, so much supernatural love doing a new work in all those women, was happening to me. Barriers broke. Spiritual eyes opened. And Love held me so close that I knew I was safe in those arms.
But what I didn’t know…was what was coming – and the way such love would sustain me.
Bonds of Love
We know God is love because John told us so (1 John 4:8). And because of the way the Father gave His only Son for the world – for love’s sake (John 3:16). We know God is love by watching the way Jesus moved through the world for three years, full of compassion, moving toward the lost and lonely, the outcasts and the hurting. By taking on all our sin – and dying for us.
But how does Holy Spirit help us know this love?
Theologians have wrestled with this very question for about as long as the Church has been around. And as the centuries have gone by, respected leaders such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and CS Lewis have helped give imagery and language to our struggle in understanding Holy Spirit – His person, His role, His part in holy love.
For example, consider God as being able to know and love Himself1 – which we can see Him demonstrate throughout Scripture, as well as in ourselves because we are made in His image (ie: we can know and love ourselves). God the Father knows Himself eternally in such a way as to beget an image of Himself: God the Son.2 And as God the Father eternally loves Himself, God the Spirit issues forth from Him.1 As love!
John Piper elaborates, “Holy Spirit is the eternal love that flows between the Father and the Son as they delight in each other.”1 Tyler Staton edifies, “Holy Spirit is the personified love between the Father and the Son.”3 Both of these more modern ways of explaining this mystery help us see Holy Spirit both as a Person and as Love.
Augustine went on to describe Holy Spirit as the ‘eternal bond of love’ shared between Father and Son. A bond that unifies and brings joy. A bond that is then passed on, shared with those who unite themselves with the Father and the Son, with those who are filled with the Spirit – and love (ie: John 17).
Such love binds us to God.
That’s why Paul spends so many words on this topic of God’s love, teaching that there is nothing we can do on this earth, no matter how gifted we are, that will count for a farthing if we don’t do it in love (1 Corinthians 13). And after describing so many spiritual gifts, Paul points to love as the greatest gift of all, the gift that will last forever (v.13).
Paul wants us to know, without any hesitation or doubt, that we can actually “know how dearly God loves us” (Romans 5:5a) – because this ‘greatest gift’ has been given with evidence. We have proof for just how much God loves each of us individually and all of us corporately: “He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (5:5b NLT).
Even as Holy Spirit pours God’s love into our hearts, He is that love. And to experience this Love is to know God’s Spirit as “an intensification of Jesus’ presence and a deepening of His love.”3
Such love also binds us to each other.
Three times in His prayer to the Father on the night of His arrest, Jesus asks His Father that His followers “may be one” just and He and the Father are one (John 17:11,21,22). Listen for the language of the bond of love:
Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
John 17:22-23 NIV
Oneness of heart and mind and spirit happens spiritually and because of love. The Trinity demonstrates the truth of this and desires that all believers would live in such unity, bound together by love. The love between God the Father and God the Son knits them together and flows among them and to us by way of God the Spirit.
Paul often drew on this very imagery as he encouraged the churches he had planted. Hear his words to the church in Ephesus:
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
Ephesians 4:2-3 NIV
Paul knows the binding quality of Holy Spirit because he understands the way the Spirit “is the essence and presence of the Father and the Son with us.”4 And the love shared by them is the Spirit, who eternally springs “from their perfect union and communion,” bringing us into the fold of such perfect love.4
Experiencing True Love
It’s one thing to wrap our minds around the unseen, mysterious Third Person of the Trinity. It’s another thing altogether to experience Him and the love that He is. And yet, that is a big part of His job description. He has been given to us so that “we can know, experientially and relationally, the true life of everything Jesus taught!”3 And that includes Love.
All that love I felt coursing through me as I stood in that circle on that beautiful September day turned out to be a work of awakening and a work of preparation. Because the very next spring the world shut down. The pandemic brought worldwide chaos – and fear. And in the middle of it all, my husband and I got the call to move to another state.
Once we got our three adult sons settled in their new place and ourselves moved and unpacked, the grief set in. Never had I ever felt so wrecked, so lonely and lost. But if the work of Holy Spirit and His love in me had taught me anything in the previous eleven months, it was that God was with me. All my feelings were real and valid and expected, but the actual truth remained – I was not actually alone. I was not actually lost. I was held and beloved.
So I did everything I could to keep myself anchored in those truths. I had Bible verses sticky-noted all over the house. I constantly listened to worship songs. I sat at the kitchen table every single morning, praying, studying the Bible, journaling – with conviction and desperation. And hope. Through it all, Love sustained me. Grew me. Healed me.
To this day, I can pull out the journal I used that first year after our move and be absolutely WOWED at the way God spoke and showed up in that season. I can see now what I couldn’t have put words to at the time – the bond of holy love held me close and held me together. And about the time I began to get my bearings, one of our sons confessed he was in his own horrible head-space. In fact, over the next few years, each of our sons would know their own crisis and grief.
And Love held them too. Together, united by Spirit and Love, our little family found our way. What once broke me wide-open, over the course of time, strengthened and stretched, healed and made whole. We experienced Love by acknowledging our need for it and by giving space for the Spirit to do His work in us.
My friend, all of this – the love and grace, the wholeness and hope – is yours. Because of Love.
Today we will pray along with the lyrics of “Here As in Heaven” and “Fullness.”5 Let us pray:
Overflow in this place,
Fill our hearts with Your love.
Your love surrounds us!
You’re the reason we came –
To encounter Your love.
Your love surrounds us!
Spirit of God fall fresh on us.
We need Your presence.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done
Here as in heaven
Fullness of eternal promise
Stirring in Your sons and daughters
Earth revealing Heaven’s wonders
Spirit come, Spirit come
What You spoke is now unfolding
All Your children shall behold it
Dreams awaken in this moment
Spirit come, Spirit come
Pour it out, let Your love run over
Here and now, let Your glory fill this house
Pour it out, let Your love run over
Overflow in this place – Holy Spirit,
Fill our hearts with Your love!
In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
[Please remember that throughout this series, we want to move through information gathering to Holy Spirit experiencing. As such, I will be adding an ‘experience’ of Holy Spirit each week in our “Rhythms” section below. I hope you’ll jump down there to see how you might stretch yourself in the way of experiencing more of the Spirit in your life. You can trust I’m doing the same!!]
Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.
- 1 – In this article, Pastor John Piper does a good job of simplifying what Augustine and Aquinas originally said about how Holy Spirit flows from the Father as love. He also includes a great quote from CS Lewis that uses other imagery to help understand the Spirit.
- 2 – In this post I do more unpacking of the Trinity connections – all the begetting and proceeding.
- 3 – Quoted from Tyler Staton’s book The Familiar Stranger.^
- 4 – This article: “Holy Spirit: The Bond of Love,” by Eric Wilding
- 5 – Both songs quoted as our prayer today, “Here As in Heaven” and “Fullness” are from Elevation Worship. And both can be found on our Holy Spirit Playlist on Spotify.
- Many of you have found me on Substack. Thank you so much! And, if you’d like to listen to (rather than read) these weekly posts, you can do so on Substack. It’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.
- My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes the first week of each month to those who have subscribed on my website. I also post them on Substack. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.
Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.
- The rhythm we are employing for our summer Holy Spirit series falls in the category of a weekly experience. I suspect that there’s some connection between the communal, eternal love of the Trinity and the love Holy Spirit then shares with us — while we are in community! While it’s very true that we can sense His love and know His love when we’re quite alone, there is something bigger, weightier, and altogether more powerful when that Love is shared among a group of gathered believers. It’s my sincere prayer that you will know this freeing, strengthening, healing love whether you’re on your own or in a group. Pray the prayer, inviting Holy Spirit to pour the love of God into your heart (Romans 5:5). Wait expectantly for such love to overflow your being.
If love doesn’t seem to fill you immediately, let that be an invitation to lean further in, to wait more patiently, to ask more fervently. Putting our hope in God and His love will not disappoint us (see Romans 5:1-5). And asking Holy Spirit for a fresh outpouring of love everyday, again and again, will build your faith and holy expectancy. Worship Him. Talk to Him. And be ready to receive love like never before.
And if you can do all this in a group — even better! May each of us experience the love of God in the depths of our hearts and souls by the filling of the Spirit of Love. XOXO
- We’re all called to share the truth about who Jesus is. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. May we use our whole selves to tell others about our holy God!!
Featured Photo is a stained glass by Helen Russell, called ‘Birds and Pomegranates’ — which I selected for this week because historically pomegranates often symbolized love. Even God employed such imagery in the tapestries and robes of the Tabernacle and its priests as a sign of His presence and love with the Israelites — just as He had been in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Fruitful, unending love.
“All the Bits and Pieces” Photo by Zrng N Gharib on Unsplash.
^These are affiliate links, with which this ministry earns a wee little bit. XOXO