By Brother Craig Rippens
I am immensely grateful. Grateful beyond reasoning. Grateful for the Holy Spirit as it flows
through creation. Yeshua, the son of man, provided the gift of Spirit to us. As he says in John
14:16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with
you forever.” During the last two years, the Holy Spirit has been intimately guiding me as I heal
from traumas and events of the past. These traumas had influenced my beliefs and behaviors
resulting in crippling fear and isolation. Happily, I have witnessed the Holy Spirit flow through me with restorative energy.
In prayer, I asked for Divine healing – a way to abandon my fearful reaction to life. A change in
my prayer began when I recognized Yeshua as an intimate, a friend, when I read in John 15:15
his words: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is
doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known
to you.” These words allowed a profound release and a beginning of a healing process. The
Gospels and Epistles often refer to Yeshua as the ultimate judge, but in this moment I felt his
embrace as a friend and brother. He is not the punishing judge of my imagination.
My prayer life assumed a fresh character as I opened up to the flow of the Holy Spirit. I began to
revisit the traumatic events that were impeding my love of the Divine. Memories of these events
and my contemporary reactions were palpably revealed in my consciousness as the Spirit washed her healing energy over my wounds. I felt the flow through the center of my being. The events and environments of my early life appeared as real as when I first experienced them. For
example, I found myself sitting on the living room floor of my childhood home while my young
boy’s body contracted in fear while my parents berated me with anger and disappointment for
my lack of athletic ability and interest. Miraculously, I was able to love and forgive my parents. I
saw that my parents were only manifesting their fear and anxiety. I also was able to heal the guilt
I perceived. The fear began to relax.
Over the last two years, I have deepened my participation in this healing process. My prayer life
continues to expand. I gratefully receive the loving power of the Holy Spirit. My body and mind
have yielded the guilt, shame, and fear that have been stored in my being. I have become aware of my unity with the Sacred Oneness. The spirit of gratitude is overwhelming as I feel my heart open to the divine. My life is less informed by fear. Ron Roth has referred to prayer as Divine Conversation. I have found that this conversation is always appropriate and possible.
Yeshua was born to manifest the Word, or living holy vibration, on earth. As he says to Pontius
Pilate (John 18:37-38) “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”