John 14:15-26 - I’m Sending Help

Main Idea: God’s own Presence lives in you to help you learn and live His way.

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD LIVING IN YOU

• He is Jesus’ eternal gift to you.

• He teaches and reminds you about His Word.

• He is the Guarantee of your relationship with God.

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD LOVING THROUGH YOU

• You experience the Trinity’s love through the Spirit.

• Spirit-empowered believers love Jesus by obeying His commands.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Well, we are today in John 14, John 14, and we are in a sermon series entitled, The Last Words of Jesus. We are looking at the last hours of Jesus' life before His arrest, trial, beating, and crucifixion.

And I want you to think about, as I've been mentioning each week, what would your last words be?

You have the opportunity to say one last thing to your closest friends, those on earth who have spent hours and hours and days and months and even years with you at this point in time.

Jesus had been with these disciples, these apostles, these men, for the last three years of His life. And now, counting down the hours till He would be crucified for our sins, Jesus gave them some last words.

And we saw last week that Jesus said, Don't let your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me, in my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, what I have told you, that I am going to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And we looked at the wonderful promise of heaven that Jesus gives to us.

And we also saw that that then influences the way that we are called to live. That we are called to live in the here and now for the kingdom that Jesus is putting together, the kingdom that will never end.

And so today, we pick up on the tail end of that in verses 15 through 26. John 14 verses 15 through 26.

And what we'll see in today's passage of scripture is that Jesus says, Yes, I'm going, I'm preparing a place for you, but I'm not leaving you all on your own. I'm sending help. I'm sending help.

I don't know about you guys. There have been times in my life where I desperately needed assistance. The cold and ice that's out there right now reminds me of, I think it was three years ago, because I believe it was January of 23.

We had had Evelyn just a few weeks, or just a couple of months, about three months prior. And so we were taking her to one of her follow up appointments at the doctors.

And to go from our house, you basically always had to go down this very, very steep hill. And during the winter time, when there was a lot of ice, it could be a little freaky. And so I tried to go very slow.

I was going like 15 to 20 miles an hour during, down a road that was normally like a 30 mile an hour speed zone. And so I was going, I thought about half the speed that I would should be totally safe.

And unfortunately, as we got to the bottom of that hill, the hill itself wasn't the problem, but I went forward a little bit and then I have to make just a slight right curve in the road before I get to a stop sign.

And so I did my slight right curve and the car just kept on going and sliding. And my front left tire hit the curb and just totally like dented it, messed it up. And I was like, oh my goodness.

And thankfully, I had some friends that were in the area. We had our children's pastor that was there. And I called Carlos.

I was like, Carlos, I need help. And thankfully, he was able to come, pick up the kids and bring them home. And it was just not fun.

But I was very glad in that moment that I had help that came.

More recently and more embarrassing, sometimes when I'm working at the church, I sometimes forget because I have my keys, that after I unlock a door sometimes, that I have to actually unlock the door.

Like me just opening the door doesn't mean that it's unlocked. And so I have at least on two or three occasions locked my keys inside one of the rooms at the church.

And I remember one of the first times it happened, my office door was locked and the office door was locked. And I was like, how in the world am I gonna get my stuff? I can't grab my car keys.

Like I can't leave. I'm just stuck here. And I remember Bob and Carol were here and I forget what you guys were picking up or something at the church and they were downstairs.

And I was like, I am saved because Bob and Carol have been sent by the Lord to help me out of this jam. And here in this passage, Jesus says, I have hope for you in your everyday life. I don't know if you guys know this, life is not idyllic.

It's not perfect. I doubt that there is a single week of our lives that has happened that we go, everything has gone exactly according to plan. I am so thrilled with the way that this week has turned out.

Now we thankfully have some good times, but so much of life is spent waiting through the muck of disappointments and harm and trouble from other people or difficult things that we see or hear on the news.

And I'm so thankful that this help that Jesus sent was not just for disciples 2,000 years ago. It is help that indwells each and every believer in Jesus. And so I'm super excited to look at that with you today.

The main thought for today that I want us to consider is that God's own presence lives in you, in the person of the Holy Spirit, to help you learn and live his way. God's own presence lives in you to help you learn and live his way.

Would you pray with me? And then we'll dive into the passage for today. Dear Jesus, thank you for your goodness to us.

Lord, thank you for the fact that we are not alone.

That, Lord, into every difficulty that we encounter, into every grief that we have, there is a God who sees, who knows, who cares, who is not indifferent to us, who is not so far above us that he will not reach down and care for us.

Lord, I pray for any person here today that does not know you as their Savior. They do not know that the Holy Spirit lives in them.

God, I pray that today would be the day that they repent of their sin, that they choose to believe in you as their Lord and Savior. And Lord, thank you for the promise that those that believe in you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God.

We love you and we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. If you have your Bible or your handout today, I believe all the verses are on the flip side of the handout as well for today.

But beginning in verse number 15 of the passage, we read this. If you love me, you will keep my commands. That is, those that are followers of Jesus are not just believers.

We are called to be behaviors. That what we believe is true about God in our head actually translates into the way that we live our life. If we love Jesus, we will keep his commands.

7:21

The Counselor Spirit

Then Jesus says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever. Here, a counselor. I don't know what kind of trouble some of y'all have been in.

I am sure some of you have seen a school counselor before. Maybe you have had to have a counselor in the law. But here, the counselor that Jesus promises, this would be the Greek word, it's the paraclete.

You'll hear sometimes the Holy Spirit referred to by that Greek term. It means one who comes alongside to help you.

It's not someone that's just, you know, kitty, it's not me just shouting like suggestions to you or even good advice from across the room and be like, hey, you got this.

No, it's someone that is side by side with you in the journey walking you through, and he is there for you. Scripture would also use the word the comforter is another way that you could translate this word.

It is one who comes alongside to encourage, to help, to give you advice in the right way. And Jesus says that he is going to ask the father to send the Holy Spirit to these disciples. He says he is the Spirit of truth.

The world is unable to receive him because it doesn't see him or know him. If you talk to most, you know, the regular Joe Schmo's all across the world today. And you said, hey, do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

Well, many people would go, the who? Or they would say, no, I can't see it. And so I don't believe that he is there.

I don't believe that it is there. But here Jesus says, for those that do believe in God, those that believe the words of Jesus, that we are able to know him, to experience a relationship with him, because he is the Spirit of Truth.

He says, but you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you. That Jesus did all of his earthly ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. There was no moment in which God's presence was not with Jesus.

And you can think even of Jesus' baptism that we looked at all the way back in John 1, that would have been my first year here at Tabernacle.

We were in that portion of scripture and where the Father declares that he is well pleased with the Son and where the Holy Spirit came down and, if you will, anointed Jesus, that he rested on Jesus.

And here Jesus says, Disciples, even though I am going away, my presence is not going away. That the Holy Spirit, God's own presence that has been with you, you will still experience God's presence.

And it's not that there is, as I mentioned last week, there's not a hierarchy of God's. It's not like, God the Father is super great, and Jesus is great, and the Spirit's okay. No.

These three are co-eternal, co-equal, co-splendorous in their majesty. And so Jesus says, you do know the Holy Spirit because he remains with you and will be in you. Think of that.

Though these disciples walked with Jesus for years, this did not mean that God's presence was inside of them as of yet. God's presence was near them. It spoke to them, but he did not indwell them.

And Jesus says, when I send this counselor, he's not just going to be, you know, in pop culture, you've got the shoulder angel and the shoulder devil, or you have Jiminy Cricket or something that's sitting on the outside of you.

And if you're Pinocchio, you know, maybe you ignore Jiminy Cricket. No, the Holy Spirit is inside of you as you accept the Lord. We'll talk more about that later.

Verse number 18 in the passage, Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans. I am coming to you. Now, I'm certain as they were hearing this for the very first time, they say, well, why do you have to come to us?

You're already here.

But this is the wonderful truth of the Trinity, that where the Father is, the Spirit is, and where the Spirit is, the Son is, and where the Son is, the Father is, so that to experience God's presence in you is not to experience one third of who God

is. You are able to experience the fullness of God through His presence living in your life. In verse number 20, he says, on that day, you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you.

That is, that there is a merging of our spirit with the Spirit of Christ, with the Spirit of God.

So much so, Paul talks a lot about this in his letters, that we have now been identified with Jesus, the Messiah, so that what is coming for Jesus is coming for all of us.

The relationship that Jesus possesses with God is the relationship that we have with God. The future that Jesus has is our future.

And so, there was a wonderful quote that I read yesterday or the day before, that there was an old man, I'll call him Old Man Steve, and Old Man Steve didn't know a whole lot about the Bible, but he got this truth.

He got the truth of God's Spirit dwelling in him, that he is united with God himself. He is united with Christ. And he once said, if there ever came a day where God said, listen, Old Steve, because of your sin, I have to send you to hell.

He would say, all right, God, but if you send me, you have to send Jesus too, because I am in him. And what God has joined together in salvation can never be undone.

And what a joyous truth that our future is bright, because we have been united with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Paul would tell us in 1 Corinthians 12, that this happens because at salvation, the Holy Spirit is the one that places us, immerses us into the body of Christ. That we are united with God's own essence through the Holy Spirit.

You might go, listen, my brain is blowing up a little bit. Don't worry, Jesus gets to some very helpful and very practical things here, and you can ruminate on the rest of that a good bit.

13:35

Love and Obedience

He says, the one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. If we profess to love God, it means that we follow him. We love what he loves.

We value what he values. We hate what he hates. Think about this even within your relationships and within your marriage.

If, husbands, here we go. Easy, you know, softball pitch for you. If your wife hates when you do something, do you show love for your wife when you do the thing she hates or when you don't do the thing she hates?

What's the right answer? When you don't do the thing she hates, you're showing that you love your wife. And Jesus says it is the same way.

That as we love the Lord, we follow what he has for us. We follow the commands that God has given to us because God's commands, they are not random.

They are not just a list of do's and don'ts that God put together that he said, all right, if anyone can keep these, they'll be good to go. No, they are reflections of his character, of his loyalty, of his love, of his justice.

And so those that have God's commands and keep them are the ones that love God. He says, and the one who loves me will be loved by my father. I also will love him and will reveal myself to him.

If you want to get to know God better, love the Lord, follow his way, and you will see him more and more in your life. Those of you that have walked with the Lord for decades, I am certain that you would testify that you know the Lord better today.

You know the character of Jesus more today than you did day one or day two of you being a Christian. I haven't been a Christian all that long. It'll be 20 years this coming, yeah, it should be 20 years this coming December.

But I know Jesus in a deeper, in a realer way now than I did when I accepted him 19 years ago. I'm so thankful for that truth. You want to get to know God better.

You want to experience more of Jesus. Follow his way, act in love towards him, continue pursuing him in his word, and you will find a deeper and deeper walk with Jesus. Or in the words of the old hymn, Oh, for a closer walk with thee.

And then in verse number 22, I left a little addendum John puts in here. He says, Judas, not a scarriot, said to him, Lord, how is it you're going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?

So, there were two disciples that were both named Judas or kind of in Hebrew, Yehuda would be the name. One was Judas, a scarriot. That was the bad guy.

We don't like him. He's already gone. But here, the other Judas says to Jesus, how is it that you're going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?

Why does Jesus have a special relationship with those that are his disciples, his followers, a type of relationship that he doesn't have with the world? Jesus answered, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Okay, notice there that word.

Does it say, if righteous people love me? Does it say, if those with the perfect pedigree love me? Does it say that?

No. Does it say, if those that grew up in a religious home love me? What's the word there?

If anyone loves me. Jesus says, the door is wide open. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.

My father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. This is the wonderful truth of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is not just a guest.

He's not an inspector that will come, you know, check out the living situation, and if he likes what you've done with the place, he'll give you the all good, and then he'll leave.

No, the Holy Spirit puts up residence inside of your heart and my heart, metaphorically, not your literal pumping heart. But he takes up residence inside your life when you turn in faith to Jesus. Think about that.

Think about all the world religions, think about all of the things that you have to do or not do, all the things you have to avoid, or the things you have to regularly do.

On my street corner, there's a very nice gentleman that just opened up a corner store maybe about a year or so ago. And five different times a day, he locks the shop door and he prays for ten minutes to his God.

And that's one of the things that in his religion that they are supposed to regularly do. And he follows it dutifully every single day. But for us, our God is not just out there somewhere expecting us to fall in line.

Our God goes, listen, I know Zach, I know Bryon, I know John. On their own, this thing ain't going to go well. They're not going to experience the new life in Jesus through their own rule keeping.

And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to live inside of them. I'm going to moment by moment, day by day, week after week, I'm going to speak to their hearts. I'm going to bring to mind what the word says.

I'm going to comfort them knowing that they are not abandoned, knowing that they are not unloved. But instead, they are loved by God. They have a purpose.

They have a mission. They have a home in heaven. And that happens as Jesus makes his home inside of you.

Hopefully, most of you have not lived in a bad home situation, maybe someplace that was abusive or chaotic, someplace that was filthy. I would hope you have all had good home lives.

I know many of us have struggled, and we can't say that our home lives have always been that great. What is the home environment that you are creating for the Holy Spirit within your life? God lives in you.

Is your life something that God can feel comfortable being in, or are you taking the Holy Spirit places he should never go? Are you saying words that the Holy Spirit should never hear? God is with you.

He's not abandoning you, but are you making a good environment for the Holy Spirit, or are you having kind of a toxic home environment for the Holy Spirit of God within you? Verse number 24. The one who doesn't love me will not keep my words.

The word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. Jesus here declares that to accept what Jesus has said is to accept God. There is not a difference here.

Jesus doesn't say, I'm on one team and God the Father is on another team. He says, we are on the same team, giving the same message, the same words. And to reject Jesus is to reject a relationship with God.

In verse 25, he says, I've spoken these things to you while I remain with you. If you will, these are the last words that I'm giving to you. I'm here with you now and you need to know this.

He says, but the counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, that is with Jesus' authority to accomplish Jesus' purpose and mission, he will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.

The Spirit's goal is not to give you primarily new information, but to remind you of and to apply the information that he already gave you. If you will, he teaches you and reminds you of everything that Jesus has told us. So Jesus is sending help.

But what does that mean for us today? How does that impact us? Well, first today, I want us to see that the Holy Spirit is God living in you.

The Holy Spirit is God living in you. The Holy Spirit is not just like a force or power from God. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.

We are told that he has a mind, that he has a will, that he has emotions. We're told that we can grieve the Holy Spirit of God. We're told in the Book of Acts that Paul and his missionaries, they wanted to go to one place in Asia Minor.

It says, but they were prohibited by the Holy Spirit, that he did not want them to go to a specific location. So the Holy Spirit is a person. And the Holy Spirit is God himself living inside of us.

And I want us to see first under this today that the Holy Spirit is Jesus' eternal gift to you. You can see this even in the passage as Jesus says, I will ask the Father that he will give the Spirit.

He says, I am coming to you, that it is from Jesus, it is by the will of Jesus that we have the Holy Spirit. He says, that through the Spirit, I will love you and my Father will love you. He says, through the Spirit, I will reveal myself to you.

The Holy Spirit is Jesus' eternal gift to you and to me.

The Holy Spirit is given at the moment of salvation, that that moment that we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we were told that that is done by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, that if you will, we were dead in our trespasses and sins,

our thing that makes us able to have a relationship with God was dead and broke, so much so that Paul tells us in Romans chapter 3, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and there is none good, no, not one. There is none who

seeks after God. But when the Holy Spirit moves into your life, he regenerates you, he makes you alive, if you will. He's got the spiritual, what do you call those paddles in medicine?

It's those ones that the Holy Spirit goes, and you go, oh, I'm alive. I can believe in Jesus.

And in that moment, the Word of God says that the Spirit places us into the body of Christ, that we have union both with Jesus and with all other believers in Jesus, that we're all part of the same body of Christ now.

Whether you're here at Tabernacle Baptist, whether you're over at, you know, Rosedale Baptist, I've got some friends over at Eastern Assembly of God, or a thousand different places all over the globe, wherever people have placed their faith in Jesus,

we are part of one body of Christ. And not only that, but the Spirit then lives inside of us. We're told in Paul's letter to the Romans that if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, if you do not have the Holy Spirit, you do not belong to God.

You do not have eternal life. And we're told in Acts chapter 10 with the story of Peter witnessing to a Gentile family, the family of Cornelius, that they had heard a little bit about Jesus, but they wanted to know more about him.

And so Peter comes and he's sharing the gospel with them there in Cornelius' home. And before he can give an invitation, before he brings a baptistry or something out, they believe in their hearts in what he is proclaiming about Jesus.

And it says that the Holy Spirit indwelled them in that moment. It totally shocked Peter as he saw it.

And so then he told the rest of the believers, listen, I know all of us to this point have been Jewish believers in Jesus, but these Gentiles believed and they received the Holy Spirit. And so they are now united with us.

He says we need to baptize them because they have received the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit indwells us at the moment of salvation. He places us into the body of Christ.

He indwells us and he facilitates our relationship with God. We're even told in Romans chapter 8 that when we pray, we don't know what we should be praying for. But it says that the Holy Spirit, if you will, he translates.

He tells God what we really should be praying for.

And so even as we live our Christian lives and as we pray to the Lord, we can ask God, God, I know what I think I need in this moment, but Holy Spirit, would you bring the request that I should be bringing to my heavenly father?

So Jesus, sorry, the Holy Spirit is Jesus' eternal gift to you.

As opposed to how the Holy Spirit came on people in the Old Testament, where it was for a time for perhaps a specific purpose, in the New Testament, we are told that when the Holy Spirit sets up shop in you and I, he never leaves.

For an example, if I said, Roy, I'm going to give you this Bible, and this is a gift for you. Here's this Bible. Then it went, no, actually, that's not a gift for you.

Well, was that a legitimate gift in any way if I immediately take it back, or was it something that was conditional, something that was not truly a gift? The Holy Spirit is Jesus' eternal gift to us, and he is never going to take him back.

But way of application, use the gift that Jesus gave to you. Spend time with the Holy Spirit in prayer, and spend time in his word. That's what we see next, that the Holy Spirit teaches and reminds you about his word.

We can see this in the passage as he is described as the counselor. It said that he will teach you all things, that he will remind us of everything that Jesus has said.

I love this quote from the book study that we're going through in Do You Believe by Paul David Tripp.

He said this, I as an author, Paul David Tripp, he said, I don't travel to reader after reader, sitting with them as long as it takes, shining light on the things I have written, making sure they understand, and helping them to apply the content of

the book to their everyday lives. No human author has ever done that for you or for me. He says, but that is exactly what God does. That as we read the word of God, we are not doing it by ourselves.

The author, the one that inspired scripture, is the one that lives inside of us and wants to help us to understand and to apply God's word to our life.

So today, because the Holy Spirit is sent to teach and remind us about his word, read the word of God, memorize it, put it deep down inside of your heart and your life, and you will find over and over again as you encounter different situations, that

the Holy Spirit will bring to mind the verses and the passages that you have put into yourself, that then he goes, hey, you know, you remember that verse that you memorized where it said, wherefore putting away lying, let everyone speak truth with

their neighbor. Right now, yeah, your dog did poop in that neighbor's yard and you could lie. But this verse that you memorized, I'm reminding you of the fact that you need to not lie.

That's kind of a silly example, but that's what God's word can do for us as we give the Holy Spirit tools to say, okay, God, remind me of this later.

When I get downhearted, remind me of the verse that says that he heals the broken hearted and bandages up their wounds. Then the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our relationship with God. He's the guarantee.

Jesus says that he gave the Holy Spirit to be with us forever. He says that he gave the Spirit so that we would not be orphans. And then he also said that, because I live, you will live as well.

That the life of God himself, undying, eternal, is the same life that he gives to us in the Holy Spirit. Paul would say that the Holy Spirit is the down payment of God's promised possession of us.

That God says, I am going to one day fully purchase Christine or Peggy or Rhonda.

And on that day, when they are completely rid of sin forever, when they have eternal life, when they are perfect, when everything has been made right, I am going to do that.

And the guarantee of that, my down payment, is my own presence, the Holy Spirit. I worked with Dina when we were buying our house. And when I put down a down payment, if I back out of the deal, I'm getting that down payment back.

Like, that is theirs now. That's what a down payment is. And think about this.

God describes what he did for us in giving us the Holy Spirit as his down payment.

And just as nonsensical as it would be for God to lose out on the Holy Spirit because he put a down payment on Bryon, and then he didn't end up actually saving Bryon from death and hell and destruction, well, he would lose out on the Holy Spirit if

he lost me, if the Holy Spirit is the down payment on me from my God. And so, it is nonsensical for us to experience rejection and the shutting out of God once he has placed his Holy Spirit on us. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee.

Today, rejoice in the security of your salvation, planned by the Father, bought by the Son, applied by the Holy Spirit, and go tell someone else how they can be saved.

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Godʼs Love Through Spirit

So, the Holy Spirit is God living in you, and then as we close, the Holy Spirit is God loving through you. First, we experience the Trinity's love through the Holy Spirit.

Even as Jesus says, When the Holy Spirit is in you, you will be loved by my Father, and I also will love him, that there is, we are entering into the eternal love of God.

If you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, if you have repented of your sin and placed him in charge of your life, the Holy Spirit lives in you. And if he's in you, the Father feels about you the same way he feels about Jesus.

Jesus feels the same way about you as he feels about the Father, that we are entering into the eternal love of God. You see, in all the ages past, God was not bored. He was not lonely.

Instead, for all of eternity past, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have existed in joy and in love.

And when he created mankind for his own good pleasure, he invites us to become a part of that, that as the Father loves the Son, loves the Spirit, loves the Father, that we would be entered into the love of God.

And what a joy that today, if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you've turned the reins over, you've said, I am a follower of Jesus, I'm one of his disciples, that God's love rests on you.

And there's never a moment of your life where you have to question, does God love me? Because the love of God on you is not as a result of your perfection or your good works, or how little you have butchered your life.

Instead, the love of God on you is because of the Holy Spirit within you, because the Son died for you, because the Father chose you from before the foundation of the world.

And what a joy that that is, that God's love remains on us because of his Holy Spirit. Can I encourage you, allow yourself to feel, to experience, to rejoice in the love of God that he gives to you through his Spirit.

No matter what Satan tries to tell you, you are not rejected, unwanted, or despised. You are adopted, chosen, beloved, elect, rescued, and honored through the anointing of God's own presence.

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Spirit-Led Obedience

And then lastly today, Spirit-empowered believers love Jesus by obeying his commands. If you are truly saved, Scripture makes it clear that you will follow Jesus. Jesus said it two or three times in the verses that we were looking through.

If you love me, keep my commands. The one that loves me will keep my commands. Those that refuse to repent from sin and turn in obedient faith to Jesus are not true Christians, regardless of their professed theology.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, what is it? That's a duck. With Spirit-empowered believers obeying Jesus' commands, I love this quote from a man, I believe from the first four or five hundred years of the church.

He said this, If some rich and powerful friend were to enter your home, you would quickly clean the entire house for fear something there might offend your friend's eyes when he entered.

Let anyone then who is preparing his inner house for God, cleanse away the dirt of his evil deeds. Like I mentioned earlier, what's the home environment that you are making for the Holy Spirit?

It's kind of the closing statement with the Spirit moving and working and cleansing and teaching us. I want to encourage you with something.

The Spirit moving in your life or in our church doesn't necessarily mean that you get teary-eyed or you get goose bumps or you start speaking in other languages, though the Spirit's moving has included those things at various times in human history.

How we know the Spirit is moving is when we obey God's word. When I want to snap back or yell at someone and I choose patience. When someone has never forgiven a person but chooses to forgive now because of Jesus.

When I would be too scared to talk to someone new, but choose love and community instead of isolation or fear. The fruit of the Spirit isn't goose bumps or magical abilities or natural giftings. The fruit of the Spirit is His character.

It's the way that God is. Today, God has given us His Holy Spirit. He has given Him to us so that we would learn and live His way.

That we would experience God's love moving through us, and we would experience God living in us. Today, are you thankful that God has sent help to you in the person of the Holy Spirit? Are you listening to His voice?

What is the home environment that you are making for the Holy Spirit of God?