Tom Wright gives his resoponse to a reader’s question
Q: Are Christians allowed to pray to the Holy Spirit?
Christians are comfortable praying to the Father or to Jesus. But praying to the Holy Spirit can seem more mysterious and somehow harder to speak about. And that’s partly because the Holy Spirit is mysterious. This is because, when the Holy Spirit comes upon someone, even if it’s quiet and doesn’t involve any great drama, there is a sense of fusion between God’s Spirit and ours.
Many Christians today think about the Holy Spirit as some sort of spiritual atmosphere; a divine force or an energy field. But that is not how the New Testament describes the Holy Spirit. Firstly, the Spirit is not an “it”. The Spirit is the personal presence of God Himself.
The Spirit teaches, guides, convicts, comforts and intercedes. In Romans 8, Paul says the Spirit prays within us “with groanings too deep for words” (v26, ESV). The Spirit is not merely the mechanism through which God works, rather the Spirit is God at work.
One of the oldest Christian prayers is the famous Pentecost hymn ‘Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire’. The ancient Latin version, Veni Creator Spiritus, has been prayed and sung by Christians for centuries. It is explicitly addressed to the Holy Spirit.
Christians have long prayed to the Spirit before worship, preaching, reading scripture and major moments of discernment. Such prayers recognise that unless the Spirit opens our hearts and minds, we cannot truly know, worship or grow in God at all.
It is entirely appropriate for a Christian to pray: “Come, Holy Spirit. Illuminate my mind. Guide my thoughts. Shape my life.” That is not strange or improper. It is deeply Christian. If the Spirit of God is part of the Trinity, then of course Christians should pray to the Holy Spirit.
We must resist the temptation to become too tidy in our explanations. The doctrine of the Trinity was never meant to turn God into a theological puzzle to be solved. Instead, we come to it as the Church’s true attempt to speak faithfully about the God revealed in Jesus and experienced through the Spirit. That reality remains wonderfully mysterious.
When Christians pray, they are drawn into the life of the triune God Himself. Sometimes we become very aware of the Father’s love. Sometimes we sense the nearness of Jesus. Sometimes we feel the Spirit’s prompting, challenge or comfort. Often, all three are at work together in ways we cannot fully untangle.
One of the best analogies for this is music. When listening to a symphony, you do not pause every few seconds to isolate precisely what each instrument is doing. Instead, you are carried along by the beauty, power and mystery of the whole. So, too, with Christian prayer.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not rivals competing for our attention. They are the one God who draws us into divine life and love itself.
And when we pray – whether to the Father, through the Son or by invoking the Spirit – we are already participating in that great mystery, that great symphony, in full.
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