10-05-23-ENG.

"[The Father] will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever. "

John 14:16 
ANOTHER HELPER

Read It: John 14:15-18; Acts 1:1-5
You can't talk about power in the spiritual realm without talking about the Holy Spirit. I wanted to get to the bottom line real quick as we spend this week talking about the empowering ministry of the Holy Spirit. The first truth we want to look at is this: The Holy Spirit provides Christians with a very powerful, indwelling presence. In Acts 1:4 Jesus commanded the disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they had received the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was saying don't leave home without the Spirit, because the power He promised (v. 8) would only be realized when the presence of the Spirit was realized. Jesus had promised earlier to come to His disciples ples after His death and resurrection (John 14:18). The way Jesus was going to come to them-and the way He comes to us today-was through the indwelling Person of the Holy Spirit. In other words, you do not have to go back in time in order to be with Jesus. There is no such thing as wishing that Jesus were here. He is. That is why the Holy Spirit is called so often in Scripture the Spirit of Christ.

It is the Holy Spirit who brings you the reality of the power of the resurrected rected and ascended Christ. If you want to be close to Christ, you must be close to the Spirit, because He is the Spirit of Christ. Don't spend too much time trying to figure out how He is Spirit and Christ at the same time, and how the two relate, or you will probably jump out of a window The mystery of the Trinity is beyond our ability to comprehend. prehend. Someone has said that if you try to explain the Trinity, you will lose your mind. But deny it, and you will lose your soul. I like to picture the Trinity as a pretzel, all interlocked and intertwined. twined. As I tell the people at my church, don't try to figure the "Trinity pretzel" out. Just enjoy it while you chew on it! The point is, when you have the Holy Spirit, you have all the power you will ever need to live the Christian life. Think About It You have no less of Jesus than those first disciples did. You just have Him in the Person of the Holy Spirit.