Tag Archives: Advocate

The Testimony Within

Bible Study, , ,

THE TESTIMONY WITHIN 

“‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will sent to you from the Father — the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father — He will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.'” John 15:26-27 NIV.

The Holy Spirit, beautiful, gentle, powerful, mysterious, third Person of the Trinity, How was Jesus to explain Him to His disciples?

He would gently lead them into a new realm that they could only know and understand by experience. Although the Holy Spirit has many titles and functions, Jesus chose to call Him the Spirit of truth because truth is what sums up everything that He is and does.

He is not the Spirit of spiritual “goose bumps” or the Spirit of spiritual gifts or even the Spirit of out-of-this-world experiences like being “slain” in the Spirit or being sprinkled with gold dust or travelling “in the Spirit” to other realms. He is the Spirit of truth.

Truth, above everything else, characterises the three-in-one God who calls human beings to worship Him “in spirit and in truth”. Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’ not because he wanted to know but because he cynically dismissed truth as too mysterious and elusive to know. But the Bible gives us the answer — God is truth. Everything He is, says and does is the truth and truth is the essence of who He is in His three-in-one being.

Jesus often began an important teaching with the declaration, ‘I tell you the truth…!’ Not because everything else He said was not true but because of the importance of the truth He was about to communicate.

The Holy Spirit’s primary role and the one for which He was sent to indwell believers is to reveal Jesus to the inner being so that His followers can be true witnesses to who He is. It was impossible, at that stage, for the disciples to know everything there was to know about their Messiah. Their minds were still closed to many things, their understanding darkened by prejudice, religion and often stubborn resistance to the truth.

It would take the powerful witness of the Holy Spirit within them to awaken a new perception of their Messiah and a broader perspective of the life they were called to live “in Him”. All the other functions of the Holy Spirit have to fall into place within the scope of truth.

What is the truth that should govern the outflow of our lives as disciples of Jesus? The Apostle Paul called the Holy Spirit the one who “brought about your adoption to sonship” (Romans 8:15b NIV). Until we deal with the issues in our personal lives that block our understanding and experience of God as our true Father, our unfinished business with our earthly fathers, we will never enter into the fullness of Jesus’ life as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus came to reveal the Father and to reconcile us to the Father so that we might receive the life that permits us to be sons and daughters in fellowship with the Father, just like He was. His final audible plea to the Father before He left them was  that the Father and His disciples, present and future, would be one just as He and the Father were one.

“”My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me…I in you and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.” John 17:20-21; 23 NIV.

It is not tongues, or gifts, or goose bumps that unites us but the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth He reveals about our Messiah and the faith we have in Him that binds our hearts into one.

“Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 5:11-13 NIV.

In that unity, created by the Holy Spirit who reveals the truth that we are to treasure and guard because through our unity in Christ, we testify to the truth about Jesus to the world as the Holy Spirit testifies to the truth about Jesus in us.

Peace That Makes No Sense

Bible Study, , ,

PEACE THAT MAKES NO SENSE

“‘All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.'” John 14:25-27 NIV.

It’s no wonder Jesus did not give up on His disciples! He knew that the Holy Spirit would do the job when the time came.

Everything He taught them was in seed form. The Word of God is seed. When it is sown in the soil of the heart, it will grow when the conditions are right. There was so much Jesus had to teach them but it would be a progression of experiences and understanding through the Holy Spirit’s ministry that would bring them to maturity as time went on.

God is never in a hurry. It takes time for an oak tree to grow. It was His determined purpose to cultivate “oak trees”, people who were strong and stable so that they would be witnesses to Jesus, putting Him on display as their lives were progressively made whole through His grace at work in them.

“(He will) provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendour.” Isaiah 61:3 NIV.

The word Jesus used for the Holy Spirit, translated Advocate or Helper is an interesting one — in the Greek, parakletos, meaning one who is called alongside. The Christian life is viewed in Scripture as a journey — hence it was originally called “The Way” (Acts 9:2). As one walks, the burdens of life cause one to totter and lean to one side or the other, making one’s walk unstable and often pushing one off the path.

The Holy Spirit is “called alongside” to help shoulder the burden so that one can walk upright instead of leaning over and losing one’s footing or leaving the path. A beautiful picture of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in the believer! He does not judge or accuse — that is the Accuser’s disposition because that is all he knows. The Holy Spirit is the strength and support God has provided to enable us to walk a straight path of righteousness and truth as He gets under the burden with us and guides us along our journey.

Apart from the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ greatest gift to His people is the gift of His peace. The disciples had watched Him through the years when He was insulted, maligned and falsely accused by His opponents, without ever seeing in Him a glimmer of revenge or retaliation. He spoke the truth to them and allowed the truth to be their judge. They had seen Him live a life of serenity and peace in the midst of every kind of storm. And now He was assuring them that they would experience His peace — not the kind of “peace” offered by the world.

What kind of peace does the world give? The best that comes from the world is the “peace” that happens when there is a temporary lull in our unpredictable circumstances. We enjoy it while we can because we know it will not last. We know that our circumstances can change at the drop of a hat, plunging us once again into worry, anxiety, fear and frustration.

Jesus’ peace is not dependent on circumstances but rather on our standing in God. His death for us removes the reason for our alienation from the Father and we are now able to rest in His love for us, knowing that we are completely in His care. His peace provides sure footing for us because it stands on two feet: peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1) and the peace of God that surpassed understanding as we commit our circumstances to Him (Philippians 4:6, 7). It is the peace of one who knows he is not an orphan but a son.

In the midst of the turmoil they were about to be plunged into, His disciples had His promise that His peace would be their strength and support no matter what happened. Whether they experienced it right then or not is uncertain but the days were coming when they would face their own “Calvary”. By that time they would have made their acquaintance with the Holy Spirit and learned to rest in Him in the storms and experience the unearthly peace that makes no sense outside of Jesus but is real anyway.

And how much they needed it, and so do we!