Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, May 30th. Is there someone special in your life? If you're a Christian, the answer to that question is always yes. Let's understand the mission of the Holy Spirit as we learn more about our constant companion. I want you to turn to the fourteenth chapter of John, the two passages of Scripture I want us to look at here. And this thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen chapters are all about His last hours with them. And He knew what they were beginning to feel because He started talking about leaving them.
Well, wait a minute now, leaving us. Because they left everything to follow Him to begin with. And they'd been faithful, loyal, devoted to Him for three years.
And now He starts talking about something happening, throwing Him and leaving. So, I want you to look beginning in this sixteenth verse, the fourteenth chapter. He says, I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper that He may be with you forever.
That is, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. He knew how very, very important it was that they not feel He abandoned them.
He had been their absolute most intimate companion up until this time. Now, look if you're in the sixteenth chapter and look in the fifth verse, if you will. He says, But now I'm going to Him who sent Me, that is, the Father. And none of you ask Me, Where are you going? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.
But 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 go, I will send Him to you. So, it's very important to them that He remain with them or do something so that they do not feel like that He's abandoned them. And if you can imagine how they felt, and I'm sure we can't imagine it like they did, for three years they devoted everything they had to Him. And they talked about the kingdom of God and all the things, heaven and all the wonderful promises He'd made.
And all of a sudden He starts talking about, of course, He'd sort of mentioned it before, but they didn't get the point. He starts talking about leaving them and being crucified and scribes and Pharisees killing them. How could that be when you said the kingdom of God's in your hands and all the promises He'd made to them? And Jesus knew it would never work. If He sent out those eleven, remember what happened to Judas, if He'd sent out those eleven with all of their experience and all their testimonies, all their witness and all the miracles and everything else in order to do what He called them to do, they'd be an absolute failure. That's why He said to them, sit down in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued, until you are anointed, until you are filled with the Holy Spirit because you are incapable and inadequate to do what I've called you to do.
What did He call them to do? He said, I want you to go out into the world. And this is a Roman world. This is a wicked, vile world, a hateful kind of world, a brutal kind of world. And you're going to go out there and tell them about me and you've got to tell them that I've died. Then you've got to tell them that I've risen from the dead.
Who's going to believe that? There must be more in your message than what you come up with. There's got to be more in your message and more in the power by which you say it in order to convince them and persuade them. So He said, you must sit down, tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until you be filled with the Holy Spirit, anointed with the power of God, then you'll be equipped. And so the very work of the Holy Spirit is a vital, important part of your life and mind. The Father's in heaven. Jesus is at His right hand. Holy Spirit is down here. Listen, you say, well, how are they different?
Well, they are different. Listen, there are three distinct persons, but I'll make up one, which is the Godhead. As we said, the Father is Creator and Sovereign. Jesus is Saviour and Lord. And the Holy Spirit is our Helper, our Inaunter, our Encourager, our Comforter. And He's the one living within you to enable you to be what God wants you to be, which brings me to the point of why did the Father send Him in the first place?
So there are three reasons I want to give you. Number one, the first reason He sent Him, listen, watch this, is to fulfill the inner man. That is, God wants us to be fulfilled in our Christian life.
You say, well, what does that mean? Well, you ought to have joy and peace in your life. You ought to be able to do things that are pleasing to God, but you ought to be able to enjoy it in the process. So, I want you to turn, if you will, for a moment to Galatians chapter five. Galatians chapter five, and I want you to look at these verses that you're very familiar with.
I want you to think about them in this light. In verse twenty-two of Galatians five, the Bible says, the fruit of the Spirit. That is, that's what He produces. Now, we don't produce fruit. We are fruit bearers. You remember what He said about the vine and the branch? And here's the vine, here's the branch. The branch is abiding in the vine. Sap runs in the vine, runs in the branch, produces the grapes.
You separate the branch from the vine, you don't have anything. So, what He's saying here, look at this, but the fruit of the Spirit, that is, watch this now, as a result of the Holy Spirit living within you, this is the will of God. Watch this, you listen, say amen. This is the will of God, that He exercised Himself in you and through you in such a fashion that out of you flows what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. When He says, against such things there's no law, what Paul was simply saying is, the law is against a lot of things, but the law would be never against this.
So, here's the issue. You have in dwelling you the Holy Spirit. And one of His first works is to do what? Is to fulfill you. And that is to produce in you.
You can't produce it yourself. In other words, you just think about loving. Look at this again, how difficult it is sometimes for us to love or have joy or peace or patience or kindness or goodness or faithfulness or gentleness or self-control.
Sometimes we have problems with those things. And if a person's not a Christian, they can't. But here's what I want you to see. Because you are indwelt by a person of the Godhead and you are sealed unto the day of redemption, your whole eternal salvation is based, listen, is based on the fact of what the Holy Spirit did for you the moment He brought about salvation in your life, wrote your name in the Lamb's Book of Life, and now He's living on the inside of you. And one of His primary reasons for living on the inside of you is to do what? And that is that when you and I submit ourselves to His leadership and we obey Him, here's what we can expect. We can expect flowing from us what?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Now, is there anybody here who does not want any of that? Raise your hand.
We all want that. Well, you say, well, you know what? I'll try, but it doesn't happen. Listen, you and I cannot produce. We can't produce that out of our own strength.
We'll blow it every time. And what happens is it's the work of the Spirit. For example, if you take the vine and the branch, the branch, listen, a branch can shake all it wants to. It can't produce any fruit. The branch simply abides in the vine and the sap that runs in the vine runs in the branch and the stem produces grapes.
Grapes are fantastic. But if you separate the limb from the very root, then you don't have anything. Here's where a lot of folks are.
Ignorant of the Holy Spirit or ignoring the Holy Spirit or just absolutely don't believe in the Holy Spirit and trying to live a Christian life, it is absolutely a total disaster. You cannot. You can't. And notice He didn't say here's what you produce. He says the fruit. This is what the Spirit of God flows in you and me. So, one of the first reasons He sent the Holy Spirit is to bring us to a life of fulfillment. That is that you and I could live the kind of life that bears the characteristics of Jesus. Listen, when we're impatient, unkind, thoughtless, and unloving, and all the other negatives to these positive fruits, then we're not acting like Jesus.
Listen, you and I are the most like Him. When we are totally surrendered to the Holy Spirit to live through us, speak through us, work through us, whatever it might be, and He indwells you no matter who you are, if you're saved, He's living on the inside of you. And the reason He is is because God knew. He knew, for example, these apostles, they'd never make it. They doubted Him.
They argued with Him, denied Him, you name it. He knew that He was giving them a task they could never accomplish apart from a divine indwelling of a person of a Godhead who is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one who anoints, who energizes, and who does many things. So, that's the first reason that He sent the Holy Spirit.
But there's a second reason, and that's this. That is in order for us to become the person God wants us to be. You just think about when you were saved, and some of you were saved maybe a little later in life, and maybe you lived a pretty tough life and done a lot of things you're sorry you had done, but you did them. And now you look back in your life and you say, well, you know, I wish I had another chance and I could go back, but you can't do that. But when, listen, when you got saved, remember this, when you trusted Jesus as your Savior, everything was forgiven.
He didn't hold one single thing back. You were forgiven of every single sin. And by the blood of Jesus, every single sin, past, present, future, forgiven once you become a child of God.
But that's not enough. In order to live a godly life, the Holy Spirit must live that godly life through us, and some of that must be the fruit we've been talking about. And I think one of the most reassuring things to me happened to me in my church in Miami. And I didn't understand a lot of this at the time. And when I began to realize, I came to this conclusion.
I was out in my little study in the backyard and I was separated from the house. And it was like a big light shining in my soul. And the truth was this, I don't have to live the Christian life.
I don't have to live that. Because there's somebody on the inside of me who is willing to live it through me if I will just let Him do it. Now as a pastor, we want to do the things that God wants us to do. And we think about all the multitudes of responsibilities and tasks and things to remember and on and on we could go.
There's no way in the world any pastor can do the work God's called them to do apart from the Holy Spirit. And the truth is, I think about mothers. I think a mother may say, well, you know what? I'm a mother, so it doesn't make any difference.
Let me tell you something, Mom. The Holy Spirit knows all about motherhood. Amen? The Holy Spirit knows all about motherhood. It is just as important for a mother to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be an example to her children, an example to her grandchildren, example to her husband, and to be a godly wife as it is for a pastor to be filled with the Spirit to preach the gospel. Because the truth is, we can't be what we ought to be apart from Him.
And that's why Jesus said, listen, I'm going to send Him. He's going to be in you, with you, and upon you forever. Within you this morning is a person of the Godhead.
Within you is a person more powerful than any and all the powers in the world. Because He is divine. He is eternal. He is a person of the Godhead. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all three. And so, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us, to enable us to become the person God wants us to be. He's living within you, ready to live through you the very life that He prepared for you. The Spirit of God is within you. If somebody says, well, I like to talk to Jesus, fine.
One is as good as the other. I mean, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And I think for many people, talking to Jesus is fine.
Because it's the Holy Spirit who conveys their prayers to Him anyway. So, that's not the issue. The issue is this, you should never feel like you're alone.
You know why? Because you're not. You are not alone once you've trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. Thank God, you'll never walk alone. Listen, you won't walk alone, work alone, love alone, die alone. Once you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior, you got it for all eternity.
And it's not an it, but somebody. And that's the Holy Spirit who is, listen, He's the one who's sealed you and no person ever sealed by the Spirit in God has ever had a seal broken, not one. So, one of the primary reasons is to become the person God wants us to be.
The third reason is in order to do the things that God would have us to do or achieve the things that God would have us to achieve, accomplish the things that He would have us to accomplish in life. And that's why He said to those disciples, you're not ready. If I'd have spent three years with Jesus and watched what they watched and I'd have said, what do you mean I'm not ready? Look at all the things I've seen.
He said, you're not ready. Watch this, here's the reason. Watch this, God had to indwell them in order to equip them to do the things He called them to do. They turned into a hundred and twenty and then they turned into three thousand and then here we are on the other side of the world preaching and teaching the Word of God, believing the Word of God, sharing the Word of God. And the whole world has had felt the impact of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That just started with one man and then eleven, then a hundred and twenty and three thousand and on and on and on.
You know why it worked? Because it was the work of the Spirit of God and not the efforts of man. And so, when I think about that and think about how God used Peter, for example, and how He used people down through the ages and how He's taken people, for example, who didn't have a lot of abilities and talents and skills and I would be one of those.
And how He can transform our life. And this is why a person who is a believer should never say, oh, no, no, no, no, I can't do that. The question is, is that what God wants you to do? Now listen to this. When the Spirit of God fills you and you begin to operate out of your spiritual gifts, you will be surprised at what Almighty God is able to do in you, with you, and through you.
And you are no exception. You have the Spirit of God within you equipping you, enabling you, empowering you to do whatever He's called you to do. And remember the Bible tells us very specifically many things that the Holy Spirit does besides convict us of our sins and so forth. For example, He teaches us. Listen, when I open the Word of God, one of the first things I want to do is say, Holy Spirit, you've got to teach me the truth. He teaches us. When I want to know what to do next, He guides us. When I want to know what the real truth is about something, He said He'll guide you into all truth. And then when I think about how He bears fruit through us, you'll say something to somebody that transforms their life.
This isn't what you did. It's what the Holy Spirit did through you. And not only that, Scripture says He's our Comforter. And the word parakletos means one who walks alongside.
And so sometimes translated Comforter and sometimes Helper. But think about this, if you can just visualize this, no matter where you are, what you're doing, who you're doing it for, when it's happening, sick, not sick, whatever, that no matter where you stand, standing beside you, so to speak, living within you is the very Spirit of Almighty God Himself there to enable you, to equip you to do your best whatever you do in life. You will never walk alone.
You can't. Because once you trusted Him as your Savior and He sealed you as one of His children, He says He'll be in you, with you, and upon you forever. And He empowers us. Listen, He gives us the energy, the divine energy to do what He calls us to do. And, you know, I wouldn't compare myself with anybody else on any condition. But I can tell you this, you wouldn't catch me out here if I didn't think the Spirit of God had anointed me to preach the gospel.
I wouldn't think about it because I'd be scared to death. That's the work of the Holy Spirit, enabling us, energizing us, teaching us the truth, teaching you the truth. When you sit and listen, for example, the same Holy Spirit speaks to me, speaks to you. You may have insights and surely the Spirit of God will give you insights about the Holy Spirit, what He does in your life. He won't give it to somebody else because He knows you perfectly.
Listen, think about this. He knows exactly where you are mentally and spiritually and physically. In every single moment of your life, He's there. So that at no time do you have to say, I feel so alone. If you're feeling better way, open your eyes, open your mind.
What's the truth? The truth is you are not alone. You may feel lonely, but listen, you won't feel lonely long when you begin to realize the Holy Spirit of the living God loves you so much. Not because you're good, but because it's who He is, that He's right there with you no matter what.
Anybody here feel lonely? Good. Good.
Listen, when you do, you just remember this. That emotion is not from God. So if it's not from God, Lord, I may have that feeling, but I know that you're with me. Let me ask you a question. If you were going through a very difficult, painful, horrible situation, who would you want with you?
One of your friends or God? Right. Well, just remember this.
He's there. Amen. Thank you for listening to part two of Our Constant Companion. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
