Experiencing Christianity in a Trinitarian Fashion

One of Christianity's main beliefs is that God is a Trinity. Christians claim that God exists as three Persons in one Being. Many Christians do not understand this claim and simply suggest that it is a mystery. To be sure, we can never fully understand the being of God. However, I think there are substantial resources in Christian theology to help clarify and explain the Trinity.

I believe that the first step that the average Christian should take in trying to understand the Trinity is to learn to experience the Trinity in daily life. Often, Christians experience God, but this experience is undifferentiated and often Christians do not know which person of the Trinity they are experiencing, or how to experience all three Persons simultaneously. If we can learn to distinguish between the three Persons in our daily experience of God, then we can begin to develop an understanding of the Trinity.

In a recent Bible study, I attempted to explain how we experience God as Trinity in the midst of suffering. All Christians know that suffering can be redemptive, but to understand the full degree of suffering's redemptiveness, we need to understand how God is present with us. First, we know that God is present through His sovereign coordination of the events of our lives. Often in suffering God provides circumstances that offer comfort. In temptation, God provides us a way to escape sin. This is the experience of God the Father as Sovereign in the middle of suffering. Simultaneously, we experience God as a comforting presence within us. Often, in times of suffering, we experience our most profound awareness of God, our most intense times of prayer, and our most powerful moments of worship. This is our experience of the Holy Spirit as Comforter. Finally, when we contemplate Christ as our co-sufferer, we recognize that we have a God that has shared our experiences.

Let's explain this another way. In suffering, we find meaning in the events around us. This is the experience of the Father. We find a solidarity with God amid our suffering. In the same way that veterans of different wars immediately feel solidarity, when they meet each other as a result of their similar experiences, we have a solidarity with God through Christ. In suffering, when we feel God's presence and his inexplicable peace, we experience the Holy Spirit.

At the risk of being redundant, I'll phrase things a third way. In suffering, when we experience God above or around us, it is God the Father. When we experience God beside us, it is Jesus Christ. When we experience God as within us, strengthening us, it is God the Spirit.

This is but one example of how we can experience God as Trinity, and through clearly articulating our experience of God in this way, we grow in our understanding of the Trinity.