The New Testament encourages us that we can receive the Holy Spirit's help through an attitude of asking. God as Trinity is the supreme theme of Christian theology. For all the mysteries, the New Testament consistently leads us to God as the one known to us through his self-revelation in Jesus and the empowering activity of the Holy Spirit.
The second-century theologian Irenaeus used a simple but meaningful picture when he spoke of Jesus and the Spirit as the two hands of God with which he works in the world. There is some distinctness but also constant co-operative working.
Speaking of parents who know how to give good gifts to their children Jesus says, 'How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him'. At least that is Luke's version (11.13). Matthew's version is simply that the Father will give good things to those who ask him (7.11). Either way Jesus promises his disciples that on a basis of asking there is resource available for us which is beyond our own resource.
This particular passage of Jesus' teaching addresses two sorts of fears which can affect us when summoned to open ourselves to God's Spirit, the fear that nothing is going to happen or the fear that something will happen and we won't like it. It also contains an encouragement to perseverance because the processes which God is working in us may well take time and patience.
In a church which I was leading we spent a Saturday afternoon with a large group of people, taking as our main theme the work of the Holy Spirit. We started with a lunch and followed a varied programme for the afternoon which ended with a time of quietness giving people space for their own prayers. For those who wished we offered that one or two of us would come and stand with them, put an individual blessing on them and pray simply for the continuing activity of God's Spirit in their lives.
No stress was placed on the expectation of any one particular outcome of this prayer. Our emphasis was on trusting God to show in his own time and way that he acknowledges our seeking him.
Afterwards a young woman, already a church member, shared privately that in these moments of being prayed for she spontaneously felt the same sense of peaceful excitement taht she had felt when she first became a Christian seven years before.
A while later I asked her if she would speak in a meeting and say something personal about her own journey in faith. For a short time she struggled with the invitation, because her natural response would have been to say that she couldn't do things like that. But she now knew that she was meant to do it and she did. The capacity to talk openly about her faith was a new development in her life. Something in this area had been unlocked.
Not publicly but privately she spoke of a profound increase of love within her marriage. She also showed a special kind of energy and dedication in helping another couple as they passed througha testing time. It seemed like a particular thing prepared for her to do.
She remained the same person as before. But the changes and developments were distinct and they surprised her. All such changes belong to what the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas called the 'innovationes' of the Holy Spirit, the unexpected new things.
Quietly or dramatically, the Spirit leads to new hope in human life. In the Church the Spirit brings God's constant fresh touch on inherited things.
Christian basics > The work of the Spirit