Thursday, 01 October 2009
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Jesus' Words on the Holy Spirit (Part 2)
So far we have looked at the Spirit of God being our Helper in times of great trial and even in our daily life; we have looked at its origins (from God, not the world), and we see that in our life it plays a specific roles in bringing us eternal life.
We started out looking at John 14 as the foundation of understanding how the Spirit is distributed.
Building off of that foundation we are going to once again reinforce that the Spirit is a good and precious gift from God. We’re going to see how the Spirit, as a precious gift, functions in many different ways.
Jesus was once approached by his disciples; they asked him to teach them to pray, just as John was doing. So Jesus began to teach them to pray;
“It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples."
And He said to them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
'Give us each day our daily bread.
'And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.'"Then He said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him';and from inside he answers and says, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'"I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs”. "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened."Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?"Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" Luke 11:1-13
Jesus does not stop teaching his disciples to pray with verse four as many suppose. He provides his disciples an example of prayer including praise, request, repentance, a pledge, and a plea for protection, but verses 5-13 are spent showing his disciples the attitude of prayer. Then in v13 we are given one of the greatest and most reassuring pledges of Christ; that if we ask of the Father we will receive the Spirit!
You have to come to grips with this aspect of Christianity—God gives, we do not earn or take. I fear too many Christians have never asked for the Spirit from God! I’m not saying that the Christian does nothing—“do nothing” Christianity is as far from the truth as the pharisaic “merit salvation” Christianity. The Christian does a lot—a Christian who does not do the will of his father simply is not a Christian. But you are a Christian, and remain a Christian, because of the gifts of God ranging from grace and mercy all the way to the distribution of the Holy Spirit—and this comes to you not because God needs you and can’t function without you (i.e. you’re so great) but because you have submissively asked God and waited for His answer.
So then the Spirit is Holy, it is the Spirit of Truth, it is the Helper, and it is now also our most precious gift! Jesus could have chosen any array of gifts to bestow upon those who ask the Father in His name; knowledge, wisdom, authority, power, insight, healing, love, prophecy, etc. Above all, He offers the Holy Spirit.
We’ve already mentioned the Spirit of God as our Helper. He is that indeed! He is also our Teacher. Briefly it is necessary to look at these words spoken by Jesus;
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (John 14:26)
One of the most important functions of the Spirit is as our Teacher (as we have mentioned before); with him as our instructor we will learn to testify in the name of Christ properly!
Before you nod your head and continue you, I want you to stop and see how horribly we have failed to implement this into our Faith.
Where do your preachers and biblical teachers come from? They come from Universities; they no longer come from the Church itself. In protestant circles we depend 100% upon the schools to produce our seminary students. This should not be! I myself attended schools and studied under professors and I learned from men. Yet all of the knowledge that I gained during this venture proved worthless once I had received the Spirit of God!
No, I did not learn about the Holy Spirit—in fact you will find very few “scholarly” works on the Spirit in print by modern scholars today. I learned about the Holy Spirit of God when my mentor, an untrained man, taught me.
I hope you realize that the Spirit of God is to be our teacher. Meditation cannot be replaced by scholarly books; oh indeed these books have their uses! I spend a great deal of time looking through these books in study, but those days of relying upon them are gone for me! My priority, reflected by time spent, is upon prayer and meditation!
I realize that I am moving off topic slightly again, but this is a much needed topic to be addressed; one of the reasons why people have stopped depending upon the Holy Spirit to guide them is because it is painful. If you are constantly spending time in the Holy Spirit, praying, meditating, and reflecting, He will reveal to you things that are inhibiting you and He will require you to remove things from your life! A great many pastors and teachers have taken the easier route of books because they are frustrated and tired of persevering in the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God will, indeed, be heavy to bear so long as you hold onto the world—and James warns that God will remove His Holy Spirit from those who keep holding onto the world (James 4:5). But, for the one who purifies himself in the Blood of Christ, and lets go of the world (perhaps continually as this is certainly a process), the Spirit of God is also our Keeper!
What would happen to us apart from Jesus? His ascension into heaven would certainly be a terrifying and dreadful event for all those staking their lives upon faith in Him, would it not? Our leader, our Lord and supposed Savior, gone?
“he must leave but that he has not left us as orphans but has given us the Holy Spirit forever and will return to us soon.” John 14:16-19
Fear not! For we have a keeper! We are not lost and abandoned like orphans but a keeper has been given unto us, forever! What greater joy could we have than to know that our Savior, Lord, and Master will be compassionately with us forever? There can be none!
We can end our study on a the Spirit of Worship!
In this point we find another stumbling block for the Christian believer. Unfortunately many “worship” pastors have lost faith in the Spirit to create true and sincere worship. The trust of many has been place in light-shows, and finely tuned instruments! A cheap trade indeed!
Jesus tells us that the time has now come for Gods true worshipers will worship him, not from a mountain or temple, but in the Spirit and in Truth; from the soul of man he will worship God in truth! (John 4:21-24)
The words spoken by Jesus the Christ regarding the Holy Spirit are quite numerous, and often overlooked; I have by no means captured the entirety of Jesus’ teaching on the precious gift but I have outlined a foundation by which I hope to launch into the Epistles and Old Testament letters and complete our study upon the Spirit.
As I have mentioned in this study, intellectual study will not gain you the Holy Spirit, but it can and does point us in the direction that we are most certainly in need of going!
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Comments (4)
@naphtali_deer@xanga - Thank you! I have been praying that this message would be taken up by all Gods Children (not neccessarily this specific post, but the idea which should be the same from everyone if they're getting their message from the Holy Spirit)!
I know you have been praying, and I encourage everyone to join in on praying that God would cleanse and purify a dwelling place for His Holy Spirit within the hearts of our Brothers, His Children!
Sorry, I have not read your post, this is merely a reply to your comment at my ReveLife post "Satanic Deception in the Church: Is your Jesus Real".
I appreciate your candor and frankness. I also appreciate your response. I do have to say up front though that many of the prophets came across as disrespectful and rude to those they preached to. John the Baptist was despised by some. Jesus, well --- we all know his story.
Nevertheless, you do speak truth I need to hear, and I will reflect upon it. Thanks for your comment --- it was well timed and spoken.
My own reply to the Catholic issue has been posted at my own Xanga site... you can visit and check it out if you desire.
wayne
@JulieMillerFan@xanga -
haha, that's quite alright! I think it's a good idea to continue these kinds of conversations off the main post!
And again, brother, I applaud you for your courage in your post; we’re in need of more messages similar to that. I've reflected upon the attitude of the Prophets towards the men whom they had been given the difficult (and often unpleasant) task of rebuking and I have to say that I disagree with the idea that they were rude. I’ll clarify my definition of “rude” first, though; I would consider "rude" to be any action or expression that includes hurtful intent. Ex) You might think of teenagers who will exclude one another in order to destroy social standing—they may even speak some element of truth about one of their peers, but it was shared in hopes of diminishing that person or groups standing with others.
Now, those receiving the words may have thought them to be rude; and their words were almost certainly offensive at times- however the offensive words were given with purpose, and that purpose was usually intended for their benefit.
We will find two distinct qualities in the words that we have exampled by the Prophets:
1) The message they carried had been entrusted to them specifically through the Holy Spirit.
2) Their message was given to them to be delivered to a specific person or group intended for the benefit of the receiving party. Ex) Jonah; even though he hated the people of Nineveh God still sent him with a message for their repentance—they happened to receive the message and thus were saved. *Note: not all messages are received by the audience and therefore not all audiences are positively benefited by the message.
For this reason I would consider the words spoken by the Prophets to be words of compassion.
Its here that I come to my point: when you have a message as bold as the one that you have you must realize that you’re not simply toying around with people and neither are you in a debate contest. You should have a specific purpose and goal—always. With this goal in mind you can then bring very powerful messages of repentance, of grace, and sometimes of Gods impending wrath.
God’s word is sharper than a double edged sword and a sword without a target is very dangerous to the one wielding it.
So I encourage you to continue writing posts—keep on being firm in your spirit and faith as you continually allow Gods word to convict you, but refine your posts. Give every single word a purpose so that not one word can discredit what you have to say.