Come, Holy Spirit 1: The Helper
For Meditation
Towards the end of his life on earth Jesus made a bold statement about his leaving his disciples and how that was to their advantage. I’m sure they were confused and unsettled. How could Jesus, God incarnate, leaving us be to our advantage?!? Jesus, of course, was right in his saying this because when he ascended he sent the Holy Spirit to be among his people.
If you’re a Christian, or even if you’re just checking things out, the Holy Spirit has been and is at work in your life. The Holy Spirit is essential to faith and is in fact a full member of the Trinity, but for many people, including Christians, the Holy Spirit is often overlooked or at the very least not thought about as much as God the Father and Jesus the Son. We do ourselves a disservice in our faith when we overlook the Holy Spirit, even if we do it unintentionally.
Over the next five weeks we’ll be exploring in more depth the person of the Holy Spirit, who the Spirit is, and what the Spirit does. As we kick off this new series this week we’ll be looking at those things more broadly by reading from John 15:26 and 16:7-15.
The Holy Spirit is at work in our church, in our communities and in our everyday lives. This is true but we must ask ourselves how attuned to the Spirit are we? Do we hear or see the Holy Spirit moving among us? How is the Spirit at work in your life?
God desires to powerful things in and through Third church and in and through you, and all of it will be by the work of the Holy Spirit!
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John 15:26
26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
John 16:7-15
7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
