On the Day of Pentecost, 2022, I would reflect on what it means to real Christianity. Many merely imagine what the Holy Spirit visitation on the famous original New Testament Day of Pentecost was like and what a similar visitation might be like today. Yet it is not every believer in Christ who needs to use imagination: Many have memories and ongoing experiences of what happens when the Holy Spirit helps believers and their church circles. For me the first experience I was fully persuaded was this kind of visitation happened as a private, prayerful vision like a movie in my mind after I had pleaded with God for the Holy Spirit - like a waking dream and yet with subtitles - a visual depiction of builder's bucket of sand tipped out in front of me and the words going across this vision "BUILD THE TEMPLE". I asked for threefold confirmation and this was given soon afterwards. Second experience was in a church service months later when a preacher took the microphone and spoke angelic words but in my ears I heard them inspiring English words inside my head telling of the power of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ within Nature. The speaker then gave those same English words at the microphone, confirming what I had received by way of interpretation of the angelic tongue. Years later in private ("What is whispered in your ear proclaim from the rooftops" said Jesus) a voice told me to look at a chapter in the Bible "Daniel 3" in answer to a question about angels which I had been pondering. The invisible speaker not only knew my thoughts and the mind of God about the answer to my question but also knew the version of the Bible I would use to look up that chapter - where the answer was a note in the margin in a Bible version edition I had never read before. Yet now on Pentecost Sunday 2022 the simple experience I received was more ordinary but no less helpful. A terribly painful condition hasn't been healed though I have prayed about it for months. I went to a service online on my TV and just felt confident that advice about this would be given me from the Holy Spirit. Sure enough, as soon as I tuned in, one leader interrupted the other to say "You must always persevere in your prayer and not give up". It helped so much that I almost turned off the TV and left it at that. I kept watching and further articles and interviews said the same thing, that healing sometimes requires that we pray for months, and that Jesus taught this. I remembered the lesson in which Jesus had taught it. The Holy Spirit, said Jesus, will remind of all that Jesus said. We can read it in the gospels and then forget it after years, but the Holy Spirit brings it back when we need it. The ministry of Jesus continues with the Holy Spirit bringing us not only things Jesus said long ago but what Jesus receives from the Father in out times today. Pentecost can even become quite normal. But is always the ministry of the Wonderful Counsellor.
A week later an interesting dream taught me why we are sometimes keep praying before receiving an answer. The dream was like a parable of Jesus. Perhaps it was a parable of resurrected Jesus given by the Holy Spirit, coming as instruction ultimately from the Father. In the dream I was newly employed as a personal servant to the patriarchal father of a very rich and powerful family. Many others were employed as servants too and had some pretty tough jobs to do, as you would expect in such a situation. I was just starting. This father came to me and requested in procure a nice-looking box of a certain size. It seemed an easier task than other servants had to do. I got a bit distracted procuring this box, mainly when a child in the family was demanding something. As I was helping get what the child wanted a party was starting in this huge family mansion and guests were arriving and the father arrived too. Another servant told me I had better put on a suit. I still hadn't got the box. I had no idea why getting this box was important. Time had gone by and the father came up to me with some items which he dumped in my hands and walked away hurriedly. I realised it was a gift for me. I suddenly understood that the box had been for these items so he could present them to me nicely. Now, because I had failed to procure the box and take it to him at the party he had unhappily been forced to give me the gift without a wrapping gift-box. He was not happy but he had given it to me anyway. As I woke from the dream I suddenly understood that the command to pray persistently for what we ask from God is like this gift box. God wants us to do the task of creating the gift box into which He will place the answer to our prayer.
