Our Help In Weakness October 7, 2015

John 14:16-17     16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

John 6:40     For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day."

John 15:26     "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father--the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father--he will testify about me.

John 16:13     But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

Romans 8:9     You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:14     The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

Following the Last Supper, Jesus took time to teach the disciples more about His mission and what would happen after He left the earth. He knew their darkest times lay ahead. They would experience despair at the death of their beloved Teacher, great joy at His resurrection, and sorrow at His departure. He was also aware that bearing witness to His life would challenge their faith. So, in John 14:16-31, He promised a Helper who would stand alongside them in the coming trials.

We often face life with a stiff upper lip, trusting our own ingenuity and skills to get us through. In choosing to follow the Lord, however, we agree to adopt a totally different mindset: We’re weaker than we could have imagined, but through the Holy Spirit, we are stronger than we dared to hope.

Whether our struggle is spiritual, emotional, or physical, we can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us.

Paul gives us an example of what this looks like. When dealing with pain from a physical condition, the apostle prayed that the Lord would take away what he referred to as a “thorn in the flesh.” Instead, God said His power would be “perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Too many Christians operate under the misconception that God helps us only when we have gone as far as we can go. In reality, His Spirit doesn’t add to our strength, like some kind of spiritual steroid. Instead, when we admit we are powerless to help ourselves, the Holy Spirit gives us the strength we need to face any challenge with absolute confidence in God.