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 depart, I will send Him to you.
8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me;
10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more;
11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Jesus described His Spirit as our Helper. Other translations say that He is our Counselor or Comforter. The Spirit resides in the hearts of believers - strengthening us and directing us in the ways of Christ. He walks with us and He will confirm the truth of God - anytime we claim to be led of the Spirit, the certification involves whether or not it lines up with the Word. When we do wrong, it is the Spirit who prompts us to identify and confess our sins. He also reminds us of who we are in Christ.
It is now one week before Christmas Day, and we're continuing to work our way through the Advent guide, 25: A Christmas Advent-ure, with this year's theme, Let's Worship Jesus. There are 5 different categories, with 4 sets of 6 items in each and a final set of Scriptures for Christmas Day. We have discussing worshipping Him for how He has fulfilled prophecy, aspects of His personality, and today, we conclude the third section - worshipping Him for His promises, examining key Scriptures that can be applicable in our lives.
For Day 16, this past Saturday, the Scripture was John 6:37..."All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out." This Scripture speaks to the faithfulness of God. The Day 17 verse is found in John 14:6...we read: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" This is a Scripture that highlights the exclusivity of Christ, and points those who seek to know God in the right direction.
Today's Scripture reminds us of our need for the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus promised to send after He returned to heaven. The Spirit goes with us and provides direction and empowerment. He will convict us and He will remind us of God's truth. John 14:26 says: "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 things that I said to you."
We can rely on God's Spirit to teach us and to take the Word that we have committed to memory and meditation and cause it to rise in our hearts. We can trust the Spirit to prompt us in our inner being, serving as our conscience, to shape our deeply held beliefs.
And, culturally speaking, we need the Spirit of God to teach us in the seemingly huge and even hopeless issues that we face in these times.
One of those areas is race relations. Within the past month, I had Bishop Harry Jackson of The Reconciled Church and High Impact Leadership Coalition - he was one of the slated speakers at a gathering in Charlottesville, VA in early December. Of course, we recognize that Charlottesville was the site of a racially-charged protest, in which a counter-protester lost her life.
Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries, who has been a guest on The Meeting House, wrote a piece that was picked up by the ChristianHeadlines.com website. He wrote about the event:
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It is now one week before Christmas Day, and we're continuing to work our way through the Advent guide, 25: A Christmas Advent-ure, with this year's theme, Let's Worship Jesus. There are 5 different categories, with 4 sets of 6 items in each and a final set of Scriptures for Christmas Day. We have discussing worshipping Him for how He has fulfilled prophecy, aspects of His personality, and today, we conclude the third section - worshipping Him for His promises, examining key Scriptures that can be applicable in our lives.
For Day 16, this past Saturday, the Scripture was John 6:37..."All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out." This Scripture speaks to the faithfulness of God. The Day 17 verse is found in John 14:6...we read: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" This is a Scripture that highlights the exclusivity of Christ, and points those who seek to know God in the right direction.
Today's Scripture reminds us of our need for the Holy Spirit, Whom Jesus promised to send after He returned to heaven. The Spirit goes with us and provides direction and empowerment. He will convict us and He will remind us of God's truth. John 14:26 says: "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 things that I said to you."
We can rely on God's Spirit to teach us and to take the Word that we have committed to memory and meditation and cause it to rise in our hearts. We can trust the Spirit to prompt us in our inner being, serving as our conscience, to shape our deeply held beliefs.
And, culturally speaking, we need the Spirit of God to teach us in the seemingly huge and even hopeless issues that we face in these times.
One of those areas is race relations. Within the past month, I had Bishop Harry Jackson of The Reconciled Church and High Impact Leadership Coalition - he was one of the slated speakers at a gathering in Charlottesville, VA in early December. Of course, we recognize that Charlottesville was the site of a racially-charged protest, in which a counter-protester lost her life.
Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries, who has been a guest on The Meeting House, wrote a piece that was picked up by the ChristianHeadlines.com website. He wrote about the event:
After the tragic riot there, Mark Beliles, as a white minister in Charlottesville, teamed up with a black minister, Dr. Alvin Edwards (a former Charlottesville mayor), to organize the December 1 and 2 event they called “Healing 4 Charlottesville.” By admission, their politics and backgrounds are quite different. Nonetheless, there is too much at stake for them to not join forces together.Newcombe quoted from an op-ed written by Beliles and Edwards for the Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville - they said: “And so, we want to state emphatically, that we both love our city, and even more, we love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and are loyal to His Kingdom even more than to any earthly political party. We are also friends who respect each other and believe that we can find common ground and work together for good of our Lord.”
Newcombe talked to Jackson, who had said at the rally: “Many of us have been looking to politics to fix our problems. The reality is the government cannot fix these problems.…The church has been, in some ways, complicit with the problem, because we never said, ‘On this day, on our watch, the madness stops.’”
Jerry had quoted from the Christian PR firm, A. Larry Ross Communications, in the article. That group's Instagram feed had several pictures and captions of the event. One caption read:
#Healing4Charlottesville continued with a prayer walk that began at ten local churches, passing and praying over landmarks of the City’s past, including recent locales that have become national symbols of racial tension and violence, including the shrouded #RobertELee statue in #emancipationpark; #jeffersoncommunitycenter, the town’s first all-black school; the 4th Street crossing where #HeatherHeyers was killed; City Hall, where last night the official report was released about mistakes made leading to violence on August 12; and ending in the #CharlottesvillePavilion on the downtown mall.We are at a juncture in our nation when things seem out of control in so many areas. Not only do we have racial tensions that continue to divide us, but we are also confronted with a gross departure from God's view of sexuality. The rejection of His principles in the way that men and women respond to one another has resulted in a perversion of male-female relationships, as we see in the frequent revelations of sexual misconduct. This departure also manifests itself in the widespread use of pornography, as well as the proliferation of LGBT behavior.
We live in a world at war, and there are issues that can only be solved by the Prince of Peace. This applies not only to nation against nation, but conflict within our nation. The polarization of citizens of this great nation threatens to tear us apart. We need the Holy Spirit to show us how we can find solutions, and we can depend on Him to empower us as we communicate that the gospel holds the answers to the sources of consternation and conflict by which we are challenged.
We have to reckon with questions surrounding who's in control. As believers, we have to reason whether or not the Holy Spirit is in control of us - that's the starting point; for every individual. Do we allow Him to have control - do we seek the help of the One who is described by Jesus as the "Helper?" God sent His Son to redeem us and has sent the Holy Spirit to seal us in Him and to teach us His truth and empower us to walk in it.
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