Encouragement for Today

February 12, 2025 The Familiar Stranger: The Holy Spirit in You TYLER STATON Lee en español

“… Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:22 (NIV)

The Holy Spirit is not a New Age, mystical teaching introduced after Jesus. The Spirit was present at creation, named in the Bible’s opening lines in Genesis: “And the Spirit [ruakh or breath] of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2, NIV).

In Exodus, God instructed Moses to build a “tabernacle” for Him, which is translated from a Hebrew word meaning “tent.” This was a revolutionary thought in Moses’ Ancient Near Eastern world. The ancients imagined deities bound by location, like a sun god and moon god, the god of the stars or the sea. A tabernacle meant Yahweh was personal — God walking and staying with His people, among His people.

This makes John’s wording in the opening of his Gospel even more remarkable: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14a, NIV). The English “made his dwelling” is a translation of the Greek skenoo, which means “to set up a tabernacle.” Another translation is, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (TLV).

The Old Testament pattern was for people to build a tabernacle, and God would fill it with His glory and presence. John describes Jesus as a tabernacle filled with God’s glory and presence. The glory of God that filled the tabernacle has now filled the body of Jesus. He is the living, breathing, walking, talking tabernacle.

As the rest of John’s Gospel shows us, Jesus got in a lot of trouble with Jewish priests for saying He was the tabernacle. He made an even more provocative claim when He said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19, NIV). Jesus was saying, “What I’ll build in three days through my death and resurrection is the reality to which the temple building was always meant to point.”

And there’s more. After His resurrection, Jesus breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). Just as Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, acted as a living temple, so now He commissioned His disciples to be filled with the Spirit and act in this world as living temples — indwelled with the presence of God. He has made us the containers for God’s presence.

The rest of the Bible is essentially a bunch of ordinary people “tabernacling” — ordinary people filled with the Holy Spirit carrying out the ministry of Jesus. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19a, NIV).

Your individual, physical body is now the dwelling place of God through the Holy Spirit, just as God planned when He breathed His ruakh into the first humans in Genesis.

Every follower of Jesus has been filled with this familiar stranger, the very Spirit who filled Jesus. What does that mean for how you live today?

Lord, thank You for loving me so much that You want to be with me and within me. Empower me by Your Spirit to honor You in every way today. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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Many of us today are hungry for authentic spiritual experiences, yet all too often, we don't have the knowledge of or relationship with the Holy Spirit that is the key. In The Familiar Stranger, Tyler Staton draws on Scripture, tradition and spiritual practices to help us step into a genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit.

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FOR DEEPER STUDY

John 15:26-27, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning” (NIV).

About what (or whom) does this passage say the Holy Spirit teaches?

How might the Holy Spirit empower you to proclaim the good news of Jesus today in your relationships and your world? Share with us in the comments!

© 2025 by Tyler Staton. All rights reserved.

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