7 gifts of the Holy Spirit: (5) Counsel

When you have at least a moderate receptivity to having received and understood the use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit of Fear of the Lord, Piety, Knowledge and Fortitude, you can now anticipate and understand use of the gift of Counsel. Counsel is not the giving of advice in and of itself, although receiving advice is part of receiving counsel. True counsel, however, is having an ongoing relationship with a colleague who has wisdom that he or she imparts to you. So you can think of Counsel as having access to the transmission to you of Wisdom. So to have the gift of the Holy Spirit of Counsel means that you have an ongoing relationship with God where, through the Holy Spirit, you benefit from consultation with his Wisdom.

This is the difference between obtaining true “advice” from God and false “advice” through the use of occult means. When you read in the Bible and the Qur’an about the ancient Prophets, they did not receive Counsel from God without first having: Fear of the Lord, Piety, Knowledge and Fortitude. Pagans believe that they can “skip” right to the obtaining of “advice” without first having a relationship with the one true God as evidenced by accepting and understanding the first gifts of the Holy Spirit: Fear of the Lord, Piety, Knowledge and Fortitude. Pagans believe that they can personally invoke and “interpret” the advice or the prognostication of supernatural powers or some of the divinities by performing occult rituals, and that only they have access through their arcane knowledge or “gifts” of advice or fortunetelling. It is one of the hallmarks of false prophets, and one sure way to “spot” them, that they believe that only those inducted into their methods receive Counsel from God. In other words, it never occurs to them that the Bible reading “simpleton” who not only reads the Bible but has cultivated a humble relationship with God is receiving more true Counsel that they are, through the Holy Spirit, who loves and guides all people, particularly the pious and the humble in the eyes of God.

To understand Counsel, look at the great Kings of the Israelites, such as David. David had a personal and direct relationship with God, one that is totally unique, yet he understood that he had to surround himself with wise counselors of the government, military and priesthood. To have Counsel in the earthly setting means that you have a circle of wise friends, family and colleagues who have an ongoing relationship with you, where you can discuss all that is going on. When one receives the gift of the Holy Spirit of Counsel, you are “adding to your counselors” the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not replace human counsel, and is not “summoned” to “answer questions” anymore than your valued counselors are kept far away, only to be summoned to answer “yes or no” to your problems. Through the gift of Counsel the Holy Spirit is a quiet and gentle continuing presence that brings the Wisdom of God as a contribution to your overall living of your life and your quiet consultations of God.

Counsel from the Holy Spirit is not dramatic, and does not provide “new” revelation. Nothing that truly comes from God contradicts or changes what has gone before and is in the scripture. Counsel from the Holy Spirit is, in fact, very rarely prophecy at all. Counsel from the Holy Spirit can be likened to the wisest and quietest counselor of the King, who sits while the other counselors debate alternative courses of action in front of the King. Once in a while the King will glance at the wise old counselor, who is observing silently, and notice that he will convey in a look what he thinks of the person now speaking. When one prays for Counsel from the Holy Spirit, that is often what you receive, a slight “eye roll” when you think about one of your courses of action, a slight nod of approval when you think of another, but not in a prognosticating way. Rather, the Holy Spirit Counsels you to understand what you are hearing with your own ears, and seeing with your own eyes, and see the evidence of results in your own hands, and thus understand how to discern a situation within the context of God’s ongoing will. By God’s “ongoing will” I mean, again, that God is not prophesying or making a decision for you, but you are making your own decision while firmly grounded and comprehending God’s ongoing will and greater plan, for not only you but also the community of the faithful and the entire world. This is why the gifts of Knowledge and Fortitude are prerequisite to actually receiving the gift of Counsel. One must have the facts of God, how to worship and serve him, through Knowledge, and one must have trust and the ability to endure through Fortitude, before one can receive and comprehend God’s Counsel.

Impatience, which is lack of Fortitude, tempts one to seek Counsel as I’ve described above, an occult tool, to answer “What will happen” and “What should I do?” That is why Fortitude that is grounded in Fear of the Lord, Piety and Knowledge is a prerequisite to receiving the genuine gift of Counsel from the Holy Spirit. Trust in God, which is the basis of Fortitude, allows one to understand that the Counsel of the Holy Spirit walks with you at all times, rather than having to be “summoned” as an “advice giver” or “fortune teller.” Genuine patience and trust in God prevents one huge temptation, which is to start to think of life as a string of supernatural “yes and no” decisions and occurrences. That is a mistake of pagan and now “New Age” “thinking.” The Bible is about a book of living, of ongoing life, not a “how to” of a string of decisions, with life being meaningless filler in between supernatural or “destined” events.

The true and genuine Counsel of the Holy Spirit is always with you, although obviously, when in quiet prayer, you might be more conscious of the Holy Spirit’s presence. That does not mean that the Counsel of the Holy Spirit “works” only when you pray, far from it. Like the wise and quiet counselor in the analogy of the King’s circle, the Holy Spirit’s Counsel is quietly there, and is reassurance that there is no part of life that has a monopoly on God’s benevolent attention. The Counsel of the Holy Spirit is just as available and present to the poor person as he or she works in the rice paddy as it is to you when you have to make a difficult decision regarding an investment, or how to deal with a parental situation. Be clear in understanding, though, that the Counsel of the Holy Spirit does not make you wise. The Counsel of the Holy Spirit allows you to benefit from God’s Wisdom. The actual gift of the Holy Spirit of Wisdom comes only to those who have received, acknowledged and comprehended all of the previous six gifts, one of which will be the topic of the next blog post on this subject. You see, this is another problem with occult thinking, where they believe that their prognostications and receipt of “answers” makes them personally wise, or that they are “tapping” or “channeling” some universal databank of supposed wisdom. That is not true. Genuine Counsel of the Holy Spirit is always received only in the context of living a true one God centered normal life. True Counsel of the Holy Spirit is not about “what will happen” but how to live in the present, with a mind to the future of eternal life, a good life, in other words, a life that is filled with goodness and seeks the goodness of God for self and neighbor.

For example, as a friend, an intimate, a confident, a colleague and a boss, many people in my personal and professional life have noticed that sometimes when they pitch an idea to me I respond with a neutral “Mmmm.” That is sometimes very frustrating to them, LOL! I have never done it consciously; that is my genuine response to hearing what is being said. They have asked me, is that an “Mmmm” or an “mmmM,” trying to discern even a tendency toward approval or disapproval! At those times it is genuinely neither, and even an atomic scale would not detect a trend either way, ha. That is because the best I can translate my “Mmmm” is that it means “keep on going.” It means I’ve heard what you’ve said, but a point of sufficient information has not yet been reached to make a decision or to change course. That is often how the Counsel of the Holy Spirit “sounds,” because genuine Counsel is received as an ongoing presence throughout an ongoing coherent life, not one that is parceled into decisions, “destiny” and prognostications. Sometimes the Counsel of the Holy Spirit is, simply, to “keep on going,” (another reason why Fortitude is a prerequisite to comprehending the gift of Counsel). Think of that wise and quiet counselor of the King. If he continues to sit there, with an occasional nod, significant look to you, or a sigh and a look up to heaven, you know that you should “keep on going” and use your own skills of discernment to continue gaining information. That means he is neither agreeing with nor condemning what he hears your other counselors tell you.

How is one way to hear the Counsel of the Holy Spirit in a real situation? A guilty conscience is one way. It is the Counsel of the Holy Spirit when you feel a pang of guilty conscience when you contemplate a course of action that is contrary to the goodness that God has taught one to always pursue. You might say, well, why do some evil people not feel a guilty conscience? Precisely; that answers one’s own question. They no longer have the gift of the Holy Spirit of Counsel. The evaporation of shame or the lack of a guilty conscience when contemplating what is bad and wrong is a warning sign that one either never had or has lost the gift of Counsel of the Holy Spirit. Behind many jokes there is a kernel of truth, and the joke of “Catholic childhood guilt trip” or the “Jewish mother making her child feel guilty” is a sign of genuine and serious contact with the Counsel of the Holy Spirit. Parents, nuns or priests who teach children during their spiritual formation to feel some sense of guilt or shame are, in moderation, doing good work, because it is countering the tendency of society to shut down the amber warning lights that guilt or shame provide. When one does not feel some honest guilt or shame in appropriate circumstances this is an example of the wise counselor of the king no longer being in the room. A voice of Counsel of the Holy Spirit is silent when one can contemplate what is wrong without having warning feelings of guilt and/or shame. It is ironic that the freak show society teaches spiritual experimentation to have illusions, revelations and listen to every random narcissistic firing of one’s brain cell on one hand, but teaches silencing and rejection of the loudest and continuous warning of the wise counselor, which are appropriate feelings of guilt and shame.

What is another way that one feels the Counsel of the Holy Spirit in a real situation? Having feelings of interest and affection for fellow humans and one’s “neighbor” is another way one feels the Counsel of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit seeks to constantly intertwine humans in a benevolent way with one another, so that one’s own human circle of counselors is widened, and not narrowed. Genuine Counsel of the Holy Spirit teaches humans not to constantly “divine God’s every instruction for every situation,” but to live godly and God based lives among benevolent and wise fellow companions. This is, sadly, another way that “New Age” has ruined genuine Counsel from God. “New Age” “teaches” that people “enter your life” “for a reason,” related to “learning lessons” or “karma.” That is so manipulative, wrong and anti-God and anti-humanity. Everyone is equal companions in the journey of life, and people are supposed to have normal relationships with everyone, not impugn self important motives to people who enter “your” life. Love of neighbor means loving those of your community, whether the literal local community or the broader community of fellow mankind and womankind, the way God loves them, which is as an equal person created in God’s image, and not as a “tool” for occult thinking. So when one feels genuine interest and affection for a neighbor, friend, acquaintance, work colleague or hobby sharer, one is responding to the Counsel of the Holy Spirit, broadening one’s connectivity in a pure and motiveless way among one’s fellow humans who are loved by God.

I know that if I were speaking to a group, this question would be asked, so I will answer it. No, it is not the Counsel of the Holy Spirit if you imagine that the Holy Spirit is “giving you a message” for someone else. That is hubris and lack of understanding of God’s ways. If the Holy Spirit had a “message for someone else” the Holy Spirit would give the message to that someone else directly. However, the Counsel of the Holy Spirit will stir you to compassion and intervention when a fellow human is suffering, is in need or is misguided into sin. The Counsel of the Holy Spirit is felt not through “incoming messages” but through the stirring of compassion and ongoing concern for another, where one is encouraged to have a truthful ongoing relationship with that person and to be an ongoing helping hand, not to deliver an “oracle.” There is a world of difference between those two scenarios.

A traditional saying, said in admiration of people who have been remarkably kind, pious, and/or wise is that he or she “walks with God.” This is a folk saying that recognizes someone who emanates through their attitude toward life and their fellow humans that they are walking with the Counsel of the Holy Spirit from God. Again, this is something that “New Age” has ruined, trying to get people to feel that they have “spirit guides” of dead people or so called “angels” and, of course, this is all about their ego rather than being about God and his goodness, and normal human life. A person who “walks with God” is not “channeling spirits,” but is someone who through their receipt, acknowledgement and cultivation of Fear of the Lord, Piety, Knowledge and Fortitude has opened themselves to the continual gift of Counsel from the Holy Spirit. Their Counsel is not in world shaking matters, but as I said, well developed and serene understanding of guilt and shame as a trip wire to warn of bad behavior, and the ability to turn to the Wisdom of God for encouragement and solutions throughout life. Their Counsel is also a genuine egalitarian spirit toward their fellow humans that can only come from God and is rooted in the understanding that all are equal and loved in the eyes of God, even when they seriously stray.

Again, one needs to look no further for the example of walking with God than Jesus Christ, who was constantly with the Counsel of the Holy Spirit. This is why people constantly commented on the “authority” with which Jesus spoke. No human can ever hope to have the authority of Jesus, who could and did speak for God the Father, but one can see no better role model for how the Counsel of the Holy Spirit “works.” Jesus did not deliver “messages” and “oracles” to individuals. Rather, when challenged by his detractors and sinners he rebuked, but always with the tone of explaining with authority their error and allowing them to view the option of changing themselves.

Jesus always knew “the right thing to say,” to use a modern expression, because of his continual gift of the Counsel of the Holy Spirit. This not only means that Jesus spoke correctly, with the authority of God the Father, but also that Jesus always knew what to say, or not say, and when to say it. Jesus would ask a question and then sit in companionable silence when that was best for the situation, or he spoke a parable that moves the hearts and enlightened about God the thousands who listened to him. Jesus was the human embodiment of a man who walked with the visible and continuous Counsel of the Holy Spirit. This is why he continually astonished those who knew that he had not attended years of religious study, starting when he as a child amazed the scholars and holy men in the very Temple of Jerusalem. Jesus was already “role modeling” what a person who walks with the genuine Counsel of the Holy Spirit looks and sounds like.

And while no one can ever hope to be as Jesus, for that is impossible, one can understand how to strive to be a role model in his footsteps by looking at the Apostles and disciples as they received, as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and, in the case of St. Paul, directly from the resurrected Jesus Christ. It is the Counsel of the Holy Spirit who is the helper and consoler when the Apostles and disciples preached and pled their cases in persecution, often providing them with the words with which to speak. (This is another reason that historical-critical Biblical scholars totally miss the point when they analyze the “writing styles” of the New Testament authors, questioning how they could be so literate and erudite, and why they seem to write in a style that is “popular” only “later.” I mean, duh. The Holy Spirit is nothing if not erudite, in every language, in every time, and in every heart and head.) The Holy Spirit knows what they could not know, which are what eyes would someday read their Biblical authorship, and which souls would depend on belief in what they said. That is why the Bible was written “then,” but for all times, and what being “inspired by the Holy Spirit” truly means. The Counsel of the Holy Spirit does not move the pen on scroll like pagan belief in “automatic writing,” but the Counsel of the Holy Spirit provides access to the Wisdom of God, allowing the Bible authors to write the truth of what transpired in a way that future generations can all understand, follow, and find their faith and belief.

Once you understand this, dear readers, you no longer fall for false prophets and their writings, because the ego and delusion of their speech and script become to your ears like the grating of finger nails on a chalk board. Likewise, you can identify right away those authors through the ages (I’m speaking now of literature, not the Bible) who have the Counsel of the Holy Spirit, not because they prophesy and “reveal,” but because they manifest the obvious benefits of having the Counsel of the Holy Spirit. They demonstrate love and fear of God, genuine love of neighbor, and flashes of quiet wisdom and comfort that “hit the spot” (an American expression for a food or beverage that directly and perfectly addresses a hunger or a thirst). When one reads what a person who truly writes with the Counsel of the Holy Spirit writes, you may leave with greater Fear of the Lord (in the way that I have explained, which is not terror) but you also leave with greater love of and confidence in life and humanity itself. That is how it was for those who listened to Jesus. Jesus woke them up and pricked them with genuine concern that they better do what is right and get their souls in shape for God’s final judgment of them, and so Jesus helped those who listened and believed to have the gift of Fear of the Lord, in a time of much complacency and the blaming of sin on the poor, widowed, orphaned and crippled. Do not skip over the parts of the Gospel where Jesus “put the fear of God” into people; that would be most unwise. However, equally Jesus spoke with authority about the goodness of life and how a life lived for God prepares one to receive the blessing of eternal life in God’s presence. Those who truly, therefore, walk with the Counsel of God manifest to all who read and listen the Fear of the Lord and the Knowledge of God.

I’ll conclude this blogging with this thought. The Counsel of the Holy Spirit is far more common than people realize, but it is hidden among the every day lives of the humble, and it is rarer than people think, for many of the so-called “wise” have pyrite in their hands and not the genuine gold of Counsel of the Holy Spirit. I hope that you have found this useful. I love this subject as I love God.