Her candor was surprising, but it reflects reality. In my my pastor’s sermon on Sunday, she spoke of occasions over the years when she questioned her faith in the Bible, and in God. It served as a reminder that pastors are human. We all have times of doubt. How can we apply the unseen and unknown and speak it into reality? The answer is: The Holy Spirit.
On my part, I came to God as a skeptic. I questioned long held beliefs that seemed to come out of tradition and repetition. If you say the same thing or hear it several times, you can begin to believe it. Regardless of how it is heard, faith in God and the Bible comes about through the critical act of FACT-checking. The incidents and people in the BIBLE are consistent and historical. As a person of integrity and consistency, it helps me identify with the Bible. I am part of a dynasty of believers who demand that the right thing needs to be done, and we follow through in such a way as to make the good come through, sometimes at great cost. But then, we realize this is not just a focus on the ‘right thing’ to do. It is a focus on letting the world see the power of the Holy Spirit coming through, and making change.
As Jesus expressed: you cannot see the wind blow, but you see its affect. The same applies to the Holy Spirit. I cannot see Him, but I can feel and know — His affect.
Can we see the wind blow all the time? No. Can 
we see the impact of the Holy Spirit all the time? No. What we can know is – the Spirit will have an impact in His own time. Can I deny a wind blown tree on a hill might only have branches on one side, because of the wind? Did it just grow that way as an accident?
Nature is symmetrical. Something unseen changed the tree. It is a simple concept, but, it really strengthens my faith. I will never see God until I die. I will never actually see ‘wind’. But the concept of wind and Holy Spirit are closely aligned: I can neither deny the impact nor the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life, and in the world around me.
