“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." (John 14:15-17)
"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. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged." (John 16:7-11)
Here, Jesus promised His disciples that, upon His exit from them, the Father would send to them "another Helper" ('parakletos'). This Helper would draw close to them. As a matter of fact, closer than close. Jesus said this Helper "will be in you". IN you! Can you fathom it?
This new Spiritual reality, according to Jesus, would be more advantageous to His followers than their current situation. And what was their situation? God was WITH them in human form. But now, God was to be IN them in the form of His Spirit. And, when His Spirit comes to dwell in them, He comes to work. What is this work that He comes to do? The deep spiritual work of: conviction.
This conviction was to begin with His disciples and then emanate from them, having effects on the entire world. People of the world, people who did not follow Jesus, would begin to understand the realities of sin, righteousness and judgment because of the Holy Spirit's presence flowing out from the people of God. We see the beginnings of this work of the Spirit in Acts 2.
With this in mind, and knowing that Jesus did make good on this promise, I ask this question, why do we have such difficulty embracing this reality day-by-day and living accordingly? What I mean is, why do we Christians persist in pragmatics and methods and processes and diagnostics and overthinking and on and on? Why do we refuse to trust the work of the Helper in our lives and the lives of others? Why do we do the aforementioned things while neglecting the basics of simple obedience and prayer? Why, why, why? Why do we have such a hard time believing that the Paraclete is accomplishing His work?
It is my belief that the answer is simple and it is this: we tend to walk by sight, not by faith. This is the antithesis of II Corinthians 5:7, which says, "for we walk by faith, not by sight". Dear brother or sister, we must learn to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. We must learn to rest in the words of Jesus and the work of the Spirit. We must learn to love the fact that we are unable to control anything, but that our God is sovereign. We must learn to embrace His definition of love and not our own. We must learn faith.
How do we learn faith? Romans 10:17 tells us that "...faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ". We learn faith by taking in more of the words of Jesus and applying them to life. Will we do this perfectly? Absolutely not. Will we even do it decently? Probably not. To be honest, we may fail more than we succeed. But this failure teaches us faith because as we fall repeatedly, our eyes ought to turn away from ourselves and toward "Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us" (Ephesians 3:20). It is then that we will be skilled to "walk by faith, not by sight".
God, will you please, by your Spirit, do in and through us "far more abundantly than all that we can ask or think"?
Pastor Jeremy
