John 14:16-17 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you.” Today's episode talks about why Jesus sent the Advocate to us. It also talks about the power of the Advocate and why we should call upon the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit more often! Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Advocate!
John 14:16-17 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you.”
Jesus is talking in this verse. He is telling us that when He goes to be with the Father, He will ask His Father, and God will send us another Advocate to be with us always. Jesus’ plan wasn’t to come and walk among us, teach us all about the new covenant, and then leave us alone to figure out what to do with all that we were taught. Jesus came to set us free from our sins. He came to sacrifice Himself so that we may live. However, when He left, He did not leave us alone.
I love how He refers to the Holy Spirit as our Advocate. Here is the definition I got for an advocate, “one who pleads another's cause, who helps another by defending or comforting him.” Our advocate pleads our cause to the Heavenly Father. Romans 8:26 says, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” The Holy Spirit intercedes for us because we don’t even know what to ask for sometimes. I was talking to a woman in my Encounter Ministries class on Monday, and she was saying that she doesn’t even know what to pray for right now with her family situation. My friend is not the only one who doesn’t know what to pray for. I am sure there have been times in each of our lives when we have encountered a situation where we didn’t even know what we wanted or we didn’t see a way out, so we didn’t know exactly what to ask the Lord.
When this happens, it is okay to ask the Holy Spirit to intercede on your behalf. The Holy Spirit knows what is deep down inside your heart, and He takes our deepest desires, even if we don’t know what they are, and He presents them to the Lord in the perfect way. This is why I love the gift of tongues. When you are speaking in tongues, you do not know what you are saying, but the Holy Spirit is speaking directly from your heart to the Lord’s heart/ears. It is a direct communication that no one can intercept. It is between the Holy Spirit and the Lord. Even the enemy doesn’t know what is said when we are speaking in tongues. If you do not have the gift of tongues, it is not too late to begin praying for that gift. If you want me to pray for you for the release of that gift, reach out, and I will definitely do that. If you would like me to pray over you for the release of that gift, reach out, and we will set up a time when I can either do it over the phone, via Zoom, or in person if you are somewhat local.
Jesus calls the Advocate the Spirit of truth. This reminds us that the Holy Spirit speaks the truth. In John 14:26b, Jesus says, "—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. The Holy Spirit not only speaks the truth, but He can teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus told us. It is important that we realize that the Holy Spirit we have living inside of us isn’t just something that sounds nice and yet doesn't really mean anything. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit, the one living inside of you, is powerful, and it is capable of helping you do incredible things. This is why it is important to work with the Holy Spirit. It is important to consult the Holy Spirit and to invite the Holy Spirit into whatever you are doing. Did you ever wish you knew what God wanted you to do in a particular circumstance?
Have you ever asked someone to pray for discernment for you because you really didn’t know what to do? I have too! When we are in this situation, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is discernment. The Holy Spirit knows what we should do and can tell us if we make the time to ask and then listen for an answer. Sometimes there is not just one thing we can do. It is important to pray and ask the Lord what the best option is. However, sometimes the Lord doesn’t tell us because He is ok with either option. Sometimes there are multiple paths that would all lead to the same place. It is not necessarily which path we choose, it is more what we do on that path or with that path that matters.
When I actually sit and think about how incredible it is that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, it just boggles my mind. I am just in awe. I mean, we have the same Holy Spirit inside of us that Jesus had inside of Him. Can you even imagine that? I also struggle to understand how everyone is not blown away by this information. It says right in the verse above that the world cannot accept the advocate because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you. I guess if you don’t really believe in Jesus, then it would be hard to believe in the Holy Spirit, especially since Jesus walked the Earth. There is definitely proof that Jesus lived. There are so many people who don’t believe in Jesus or even God. I can see how they would now know the Advocate. The verse says that we know it because it remains with us and will be in us.
So, what about those of us who do know Jesus? We do know God. Do we know the Holy Spirit? Do we know the power and love that we have inside of us? Are we calling on that power? Are we talking with and praying to the Holy Spirit? Are we asking the Holy Spirit to pray for us and intercede on our behalf? The Holy Spirit was a gift from the Lord to help us stay on the straight and narrow path. The Holy Spirit was a gift to help us remember all that Jesus taught us. It was a gift to help us do the right thing. Why are we not using that gift? Why are we not calling on the power of that gift? There are so many gifts of the Holy Spirit, and Truth is only one of them.
I wonder how amazing our lives would be if we called on the Holy Spirit more often. I wonder what it would be like if we prayed to receive all the gifts of the Spirit and then we stepped out in Faith and used those gifts. There are so many gifts, and so many of us are just letting them go to waste or just lie dormant. Imagine how different this world would be if we all started leaning into the gifts of the Holy Spirit more. If we had more people spreading peace, love & joy. If we had more people being willing to be an instrument of God in healing the sick and spreading the Word of God. What if we all took a minute today and asked the Lord what gifts He wanted to reveal to us, and then we took those gifts and practiced them? This is a big part of my Encounter Ministries class. We learn about the gifts, but then we practice them in class, and we have homework to practice them outside of class as well. You can do the same. The Holy Spirit will help you. I am happy to help, too, if you want to reach out to me. Your life will never be the same when you start to discover the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to call on the Holy Spirit more. Please show us how! Please help us to have the courage to ask for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Help us grow in these gifts. Help us to understand why you sent us the Holy Spirit. Help us to pray with and learn from the Holy Spirit. We love you, Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited about the group coaching program starting up in January. It is a great opportunity to grow closer to the Lord, learn more about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and how to walk more boldly with Jesus. It will be a time to get to know others on this same journey. It will be a great opportunity for growth. And the best part is, it is only $30 a month. That is $1 a day. We definitely spend more than that on things that are not nearly as important as our faith journey. I hope you will join me in this new program so we can get to know each other and grow closer to the Lord together. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
The word from my prayer group for this weekend is one of my favorite ones. It is, “If you move more in trust each day, all can be. Trust in the secret. Trust in me, trust in my love, trust that I will give you the grace to meet whatever there is in life. As you move forward in trust, you will see things that you never thought were possible. All can be as you trust me more and more.”