As children of God, the Holy Spirit is our life. We get identified with the Spirit in many ways throughout the New Testament: sealed with the Spirit, born of the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, to name just a few. There is no Christian life in the church age, without the essential and intimate activity of the Holy Spirit.

We've been peeling some layers back on what it means to relate with God. We say Christianity is relationship over religion, but we often don't really define it farther than that. What that leaves many of us with are assumptions that are informed by other relationships we've experienced - assumptions that are often unhelpful.

Or sometimes flat out wrong.

Our eyes say God is invisible, so he must be inaccessible. But God has made himself accessible through his word to us and our prayer to him through Jesus.

Our formative experiences, traumas, and natural inclinations can make us feel less-than, that God is busy enough with other Christians and doesn't need to get to us. We can feel tolerated, not pursued and embraced. But Jesus did not suffer the cross to leave us in such limbo - he is not ashamed to call us his family and worship the Father with us.

We can assume that if we're not feeling intense excitement and a strong, black-hole-like gravity pull of the Spirit, as the early church did, that we must be fundamentally broken. But the Christian life is not a sprint. Instead, it's a marathon. We can only start from where we are and take the next step.

When we think of relationship with other people, at least for healthy relationships, communication has to go both ways. Because God is invisible, we need to accept some level of indirection here, but there are a few key ideas to consider.

First, our communication to God happens in the form of prayer. We can think that God already knows what we want to say, and he does. Sometimes, we think that's reason enough to not ask, but it's not. God is certainly more concerned about the heart than the words, but ask we must.

Second, communication from God happens in a couple of ways. One is the Bible - the child of God should attempt to read, hear, and understand the word. We all have varying capacity for this. God does not expect us all to go get seminary degrees, as if that would make any of us more godly. But again, our hearts should be submitted here.

We read in the Bible the Spirit brings conviction of sin, convinces us of the truth, and empowers us to live for Christ. So that's the other piece: the Spirit communicates. We're not going to get new scripture out of that, but there is a definite sense that the Spirit will incline our hearts one way or another, point out specific things we ought to focus on, and generally guide our steps.

This is one that's hard to accept if we haven't heard such an inner voice in a while (or ever). We can hide behind the concept of a closed canon (i.e. no more scripture to be revealed), but really there's another explanation for this. We can be hiding behind our assumption that God is tolerating us, not embracing us.

We can be using this perceived lack of communication to validate that assumption. But, as with healthy human relationships, we need to drop our assumptions and let people we relate with be themselves.

So getting back to the relational questions we've considered so far, let's hit the next one on the list:

How will I let go and allow the Spirit to work in my life in the way he wants?

First, let's get one thing straight: true children of God can struggle with letting go. The inability to unclench doesn't make you a second-class Christian. It makes you human. If we want to belong to the Spirit and be led by the Spirit, we can still have blockages in our minds that make us fight against it a bit.

That's a different idea from defiance. If I am calling good things evil and evil things good, if I'm yelling at the Spirit that I don't care, if I'm determined to go on sinning - that's a different conversation.

But that's not where I've found many people I've talked to in this situation. Instead, there is often a psychological block. Not defiance - it's lack of ability. It's like we want to roll the boulder up the hill to get over that hump and let the Spirit do what he wants, but we just can't get it up there.

If that's where we're at, it's not helpful to cast it as a sinful control issue. It's possible there may be sinful elements, but perhaps this would be more damage than sin. Breaking out the scalpel here could lead to slicing at tender areas of the soul that ought not be touched.

Realize, though, if we are at the place where we have awareness that this is going on, the Spirit is indeed at work. I am convinced that people don't get there by themselves. That frustration at being unable to let go of the ways we try to control God - that very angst is evidence of growing relationship and the Spirit's work.

We can get tunnel vision into very specific workings of the Spirit, blinding ourselves to all others. I've heard a number of messages on how the Lord appeared to Elijah after Mount Carmel. When the whirlwind, the fire, the earthquake passed by, God was not in them. But the still, small, voice is where he was.

So, we are told, ignore the big, bombastic things, and listen intently for the still, small voice. And how does it feel to be always yearning after a still, small voice that we can't seem to hear?

But that portrayal is not entirely fair, and it doesn't allow the Spirit to be himself. The fact is yes, God was the small voice in one man's story. For others, like Job, he spoke out of the whirlwind. For still others, like Moses, it was the fire and the earthquake. Others saw the Spirit come as tongues of fire on the children of God.

If we have spent time in the fog, we can be pretty shy about both letting go of control and letting the Spirit be who he is. We know what it is to be swept away by movements that appear to be good, but seem to leave us even more broken than before. We know something of the soul dangers that are lurking in the fog.

We think that by establishing constant vigilance, we can avoid the dangers. Behind our soul wall we use to protect our vulnerable selves, we attempt to work out what we need to better handle that foggy world.

But there is another layer, another dimension to all of this - one that we don't see very well when we have those blinders on. The key truth with the Spirit is, when we get saved and Christ brings a new creation in us, that's born of the Spirit. There is a part of us that is perfectly led by the Spirit, that does not sin, that cannot sin, and that will endure long after all our earthly assumptions disintegrate.

When we set our eyes there, we can be less concerned about our instinct to control. Perhaps in my current psyche, my anxiety is not letting me let go. But there is a real part of me, whether I perceive it or not, that already has let go and is being led by the Spirit.

When I pray, I do not need to be concerned so much for whether each word is a futile attempt to manipulate God. Perhaps in my damaged self, having remnants of sin, I am trying to put my best foot forward to get what I want, even though God is not fooled. But there is a real part of me, whether I perceive it or not, that the Spirit is leading in better prayer.

You see, because God is recreating us, we have that kind of freedom. The fog is real, anxiety is real, depression is real, trauma is real. And our frustrations when it comes to relating with God are real. But they are all bound to this dimension of earthly existence, within a damaged creation.

God can handle the miniscule power struggle I put up in my damaged brokenness. He wants us to see what he's making new.

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