Tree of Life Church, Portland OR

Welcome to Tree Of Life Church's Website

Jesus came almost two thousand years ago. If we could have only been there! But what if everyone wanted to talk to Jesus? Can you imagine the long lines? You think Disneyland is bad! If we were lucky maybe we could get a chance to talk with him once in our whole life, and then for less than a minute. This would be a big problem. Jesus said it is good for us that He went back into heaven. Why was it good for us? Because, Jesus said, if He went away, He would send to us someone just like him - the Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the invisible active presence of God Himself. Like Jesus is God, so the Holy Spirit is God. When God reveals himself, we see Jesus. When God wants to do something, we see the Holy Spirit in action. The Holy Spirit is like the wind in the leaves of trees. In the case of the wind, we can’t see the wind but only the evidence of the moving leaves. Likewise we can’t see the Holy Spirit, but only the evidence of the Spirit's activity in people’s lives. When we know and experience Jesus, it is Jesus through the Holy Spirit that we encounter. If God came to us as an angel, or a huge visible billboard in the sky, we might be able to understand what He said, but we would not be able to get to know Him. Only through a relationship with the Holy Spirit within ourselves and among one another, as taught in the Bible, can we really get to know the God who is love.