Knowing the voice of the Holy Spirit is essential for the role of the spiritual director. It is the director’s job to listen to the directee’s story while also listening to the Spirit for promptings to help the directee see where God may be working in his/her life. In God the Spirit: Introducing Pneumatology in Wesleyan and Ecumenical Perspective, Beth Felker Jones provides a powerful introduction to the Holy Spirit and His work in individual persons, the church, and the world.
Jones writes that the “Christian spiritual life is founded on the intimate presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit is not aloof, one who might dispense a few rare favors if summoned in times of need. The Holy Spirit is with us every day, at every hour, in our joy and in our sorrow” (page 51).
While Jones is writing a pneumatology from her Wesleyan tradition, she engages with other Christian traditions in such a way that highlights the distinctives of a Wesleyan understanding of the Holy Spirit and how it also is, in many ways, ecumenical. Her writing helped me to clarify some of my beliefs about the Holy Spirit and to discover ways in which Wesleyan pneumatology overlaps with my own Pentecostal heritage. Jones’ book provides an excellent introduction to the Spirit who is with us “every day, at every hour, in our joy and in our sorrow.”
Joshua Strickler 