Make Way for a Surprise Guest

I continue to learn more about the Holy Spirit.

Last night I watched a video by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. They send these things out to people who are affiliated with the charity, and you can get them on the IFCJ website. Probably.

He used the word “shekhina.” Christians sometimes refer to this, pronouncing it “shuh KYE nuh.” They talk about “the shekinah glory of God.” Sorry for the mixed spellings. I’ve also seen “shechinah.”

I have always thought this was an impersonal thing. A sort of glow that has appeared to people in God’s presence. But it looks like I was wrong. I felt something telling me to get up and turn on the PC last night and Google it, and I learned a few things.

Shekhina refers to the presence of God, when he is perceptible to the mind and senses. So it’s not just a shiny light or something similar. It means God has shown up in a way that makes his presence undeniable. It used to hit the prophets and cause them to prophesy, and Moses’s encounter with the burning bush is believed to be an example.

Here is what I believe. I believe Jesus himself came to me on two occasions. Once I was in a car, and the other time, I was in bed trying to sleep. In the car, he sat next to me and reassured me. I felt love and peace and confidence about the future, radiating from his location like heat from a lamp. On the other occasion, he appeared as an invisible warm beam that played across my bed like a spotlight, and wherever it touched me, I felt the same sensation I felt in the car.

He didn’t speak or tell me he was Jesus, but I was sure it was him. I did not think it was the Holy Spirit.

As for the Holy Spirit, I perceive his presence every day. It’s not the same. It’s less intense, and I don’t always feel the emotional components of the his nature, the way I felt them when Jesus appeared. It’s somewhat more businesslike. I do feel peace and comfort, but it’s less aggressive.

Having read up on the shekhina, I believe the term applies to what I’ve been experiencing. It’s generally applied to the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I would guess that it applies to any manifestation of God’s presence.

That’s pretty exciting. I had always thought the shekhina was something that turned up on rare occasions, for major events. Parting the Red Sea, or maybe the Transfiguration. Evidently I was mistaken. It is something that can happen to you several times a week.

I know the Holy Spirit lives inside charismatics, but I have been taught that you shouldn’t expect to feel his presence all the time. It’s a strange idea. God is so powerful he can speak galaxies into existence, so it’s strange that he can be inside you and not keep you in a constant state of amazement and awe. It’s surprising that we can entertain it and not be consumed.

We are taught not to wait to feel his presence. We should have faith regardless of how we feel. I think that’s right, but on the other hand, it can give you the impression that you should not expect to feel anything, ever. That appears to be wrong. From my own experience, I would say that you should strive to feel God’s presence as much as you can. Surely he will help you when you can’t feel him near, but it also seems likely that the more strongly you can perceive him, the more his power will flow through you.

I’ve seen bumper stickers saying something like “Practice God’s Presence.” I have a feeling the people who wrote that don’t really know what God’s presence is. I would be willing to bet that they think concentrating hard on God will do the trick. That would be a carnal approach. Much better than nothing, but not the best way. I have found that copious prayer in tongues, on a daily basis, is the key. Over time, it gets everything aligned so the presence will appear, and the result is that God becomes perceptible more and more often.

Lately I’ve been feeling that love is a big part of the equation. God’s two big priorities are faith and love. Without faith, you are not going to get anything from God. Once faith is in place, you should use it to get God to fill you with the Holy Spirit’s love, for God and for other people. Once love is at work, your motivations will line up better with God’s, and that means you will get more power.

Love is a good thing to have.

We build walls around ourselves because outside of God’s path, love is dangerous. It will allow people to use you up and destroy you, and you can count on them to do it. That’s their nature. But God intended for us to love without fear. It helps us to do the things we should do. It takes stress and combativeness out of us. It helps us to quit squabbling over idiotic conflicts. It allows us to do good. Just about everyone has a deep-seated thirst to do good, and with love, there is some hope of satisfying that thirst. I believe that when the Holy Spirit transforms you, he makes it safe to love.

These are the things I believe God is telling me, and if they are true, then love has great power. That, in and of itself, makes it worth pursuing.

It’s a tremendous honor to be able to perceive God. It’s great to read about him and to pray to him, but how can anything compare to having him show up on the scene? If a President or a celebrity knocked on your door, you’d tell people about it for the rest of your life. God makes those people, from dirt. How much greater, then, is the honor when he comes to your house?

The Psalms tell us God will honor us if we set our love upon him. I think now I know what that means. There is no greater honor than having God come to see you.

The ancients understood this. When God or his angels showed up, they tried to prepare feasts for them, to show how honored they were.

Last night I read that many Jews think of the shekhinah as the feminine side of God. I would not say that. I have never felt any hint of femininity in God’s presence. I would say that when he shows up, you feel things that are commonly associated with femininity. You feel nurtured and comforted and safe. But it’s not the same as being held by a mother. So maybe femininity is one thing on earth and another thing in the supernatural realm, or maybe “feminine” is a term that applies to God in some ways but not in others.

I can only speak from experience. I haven’t read the Talmud, and even if I had, I would not trust it. I haven’t studied the old Christian scholars. I believe the Bible, and I believe what I have witnessed. I also believe what I have heard from other credible witnesses.

Human beings have a bad habit of turning unqualified people into authorities. You can see it in the wrong beliefs that have worked their way into Christianity. People pray to saints. They pray for the dead, who are beyond our reach. We have ended up with a lot of counterproductive traditions because we listened to people who did not have firsthand knowledge. So I think there are great advantages to my way of approaching God. Whatever I witness personally has to be true. I’m not going to make things up in order to deceive myself.

Abraham didn’t have teachers and books to tell him about God. When God wanted him to know things, he showed up and taught him. Like Moses, Abraham knew him personally, so it would not have worried him had his doctrine disagreed with something coming out of the Vatican or the Temple. I always say it’s better to know God than to know about God.

Abraham was called “the friend of God.” What do friends do? They visit each other.

The Bible uses the words “testimony” and “witness” a lot. That’s significant. In a court of law, a witness is not allowed to speak of things he did not witness personally. That’s the general rule. There are exceptions for certain types of hearsay, and for expert witnesses, but an ordinary witness can’t take the stand and say his next door neighbor saw Lee Harvey Oswald shoot John Kennedy. Ideally, knowledge of God should come from firsthand witnesses.

Our wrongheaded traditions are so strong, if Jesus showed up in the flesh, we would apply them to him and reject him. Christians would be trampling each other to be first to drive a nail into him.

I have good confidence in what I am writing. What I’m doing is working. I believe it comes from God, not from me. I would encourage other people to give it a shot. So far, the people who have listened to me have gotten big dividends from it. Pray in tongues. Ask for faith and love. Go from there. You will probably make progress a lot faster than I have.