NOTES for Luk 11:13
What can God give a person? At first glance, a strange question: obviously, everything He wants to give. But what does a person really need from God? No less obvious: what he cannot receive anywhere else, ever, in any way, or from anyone. As for earthly goods, a person receives them in an earthly way, from this world and with regard to its laws.
Of course, God can help a person in this and often does, showing him where he can find what he needs and how to receive it. But in the fallen world such things are often obtained without God's direct involvement. The Holy Spirit, that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated and which is present in the world, can be received only from God. It would seem that if God's breath is spread throughout creation, why can it be received only from Him?
But that is the point: it is revealed to a person only in the context of his relationship with God and in connection with it. God's breath does not exist by itself, apart from the Divine Person in all the fullness of His existence, and one can experience its reality only when firm and conscious relationships have been established with this Person.
Strictly speaking, without such relationships no spiritual life at all is possible, and life in general will be quite meager without them. Indeed, from the beginning God conceived the human being as one who was to be in a state of continual communion with Him. It is precisely God's "breath of life" that makes a person human. And breath, meanwhile, presupposes a continual process. One cannot get by with a single inhale and exhale.
But the person is free, and in the fallen state he has often used his freedom to ignore God's presence in his life, including His breath. Yet this did not lessen God's love for the person, and He is always ready to meet the one who returns to Him. And then, after conversion, after a person's relationship with God again becomes firm and conscious, he will receive what he will never receive anywhere, at any time, or from anyone in this world: God's breath in all the fullness accessible to a person. And life too, in all accessible fullness.