A Helper for All Occasions - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, August 22nd. Where do you believe God is leading you?

How much confidence do you have that He can take you there? Today's podcast helps you understand more about the Holy Spirit, our Helper for all occasions. Have you ever wished you had a 911 number that rang in heaven? I certainly have because I think all of us have been in those times in our life where either there were difficult situations or sometimes critical or even sometimes desperate, we needed help. So where do you turn when you need help? Well, people usually turn to all different kinds of things when they need help. Then there are those people who deny that they even need help. And what they do is they say, you know, I think I can handle it. And then there are those folks who just stuff it.

They just decide they're going to make it work no matter what. They just go on in life refusing to acknowledge the fact they need any help from anybody. But the truth is we all do. And sometimes people think it's a matter of weakness to accept the fact that, well, I need help at this point. It's not a matter of weakness.

It's a matter of just being human. And if you'll think about it, for example, when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and He was about to be crucified the next day and He was undergoing some real heartache and real pain as He thought about being separated from the Father, it's interesting what He said. He said to His disciples, He said, I'm grieved and distressed. And He said, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.

Remain here and keep watch with me. At that moment in His humanness, He needed their presence. He needed the assistance of their presence with Him. He needed to feel their presence.

He certainly was not weak. And yet there are moments in all of our lives when we do need help. For example, you have a flat tire at four o'clock in the afternoon on any Atlanta Expressway right up against the wall. You desperately need help. Believe me. Or you break your leg. You need help.

Your heart gets broken. You need help. All of us at times in our life need help. The issue is where do we go? What can we do?

And is there any real help? And sometime we see situations that it appears that nobody else in the world can really help us. Then what do we do? Well, I want you to turn, if you will, to John chapter 14. And the title of this message is simply this. A Helper for All Occasions.

You and I have a helper for all occasions, no matter what those occasions may be. Jesus is in the upper room getting ready to be crucified the next day. Disciples are confused and frustrated things that are happening all around them and remembering some things that He said. Now the things that He's telling them seem to be almost a contradiction to them. How can He be the Son of God and the Messiah and still talk about being crucified? That doesn't make any sense to them.

It just didn't match at all. And so what He's doing, He is not only comforting them, He is reassuring them and He is reassuring them in a way that not only it was a reminder to them and ultimately later a blessing as they began to recall of what He said, but you and I have the awesome privilege of being blessed by what He promised them every single day of our Christian life. And when I think about people who are not aware of this, live their whole life and wonder why things just don't work out right, what's missing even in our Christian life? And I can remember when I was coming along and I'd been preaching a pretty good while and I remember asking myself the question, what is there missing in my life? I knew that I was saved and I knew that I was trying to serve God with all of my heart, but something was missing.

And what was missing is my awareness, my personal experience with who I want to talk about and what I want to talk about in this message, a helper for all occasions. And so if you'll turn to the 14th chapter of John, just a couple of verses, we're going to read lots of them. So I hope you have a pencil and a pad and a greasy elbow because lots of verses and they're all important and you'll be glad you wrote every single one of them down. He says in verse 16, 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 has not seen Him and does not know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. Abiding with you now, but will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.

And so notice what he says now. He says, I'm going away, not going to leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Now I simply want to say, first of all, that all of us have a Helper for every occasion in our life. And I want you to go back, if you will, to the Psalms for a few moments because I want you to see how absolutely vivid this truth was in the mind and heart of King David, even as a shepherd before he became a king and certainly after he became a king. And let's go back, if you will, let's start with say Psalm, go back to Psalm 18.

I'm going to take you through a few Psalms just to sort of whet your appetite a little bit and give you an idea because 50 times in the Psalms, he refers to the fact that God is His Helper in one fashion or the other. So beginning in this 18th Psalm, he says, in my distress, I called upon the Lord and cried to my God for help. He heard my voice out of his temple and my cry for help before him came into his ears.

Chapter 30. Again, he's crying out or expressing the fact that he's crying out to God and asking for help and direction. And so he says, beginning in, let's look in verse one of the 30th chapter. I will extol you O Lord, for you have lifted me up and have not let my enemies rejoice over me.

O Lord my God, I cried to you for help and you healed me. And then if you look in the 63rd chapter for a moment and the sixth and seventh verses, notice what he says in the sixth verse. He says, when I remember you on my bed, I meditate on you in the night watches.

Now that's the verse you ought to underline because I do believe that is one of the most precious, awesome times in the life of any kind of believer, whoever you may be. You want to get close to God. You want to draw near to Him. You want to sense His intimacy in your life.

There's nothing like waking up in the middle of the night when it's absolutely dark, no sounds, nobody to bother you. And he says, meditating and thinking upon you in the night watches for you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. And so when I think about that, I want to think about for just a moment. Let's define what a helper is all about. A helper is someone who assists us, someone who comes to our aid, someone who, shall we say, someone who serves us, someone who will help us accomplish something either by doing the work for us, by supplying us whatever needs we may have, whatever supplies are necessary, someone who will give us encouragement and someone who will remove the obstacles in our life to keep us so that we will be able to accomplish what God has called us to accomplish. And so when we talk about a helper, we're talking about somebody who really becomes involved in our life.

And so what we have here is we have the promise of a helper. Now go back to this fourteenth chapter for a moment and look, if you will, and notice what he says. I want to take you through because Jesus identifies who this helper is.

He says in verse sixteen of chapter fourteen, I will ask the Father, He will give you another helper that He may be with you forever. Now watch this. That is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him.

You know Him because He abides with you. Now watch this, and will be in you. Now, I want you to notice the word another.

I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper. That word means another just like this one. He says, I'm going to give you somebody just like me.

Now proof of that besides the word itself is this. He says, He may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not know Him or has not seen 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.

Now wait a minute. How can you be leaving me and coming to me at the same time? Because the one He is about to send is just like Him. And that is the Holy Spirit. Look if you will, now the same chapter, look if you will in the 26th verse of this 14th chapter. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring all things that He says, bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. So we see very clearly in the scriptures, very clearly who this Helper is.

That is, our Helper for all occasions is none other than the Holy Spirit. Now I want to clarify something so that you'll understand and not be sitting here being confused. Now listen very carefully if you're listening, say Amen.

All right, now watch this. I want to explain this so you'll understand why this emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Well, let's look at several scriptures and if you'll jot these down, I think this will clarify your mind. Look if you will in the 103rd Psalm first of all. 103rd Psalm and if you will, you want to mark this verse down. This is a verse you ought to mark. 103rd Psalm and the 19th verse.

Let's think in terms of it this way. The Lord has established His throne in the heavens and His sovereignty rules over all. Hebrews chapter 1. I'm going to give you several passages here because He makes such a point of this that I don't want to overlook this and I want you to understand it. Hebrews chapter 1. He says, speaking of the Lord Jesus, verse 3, and He that is Jesus is the radiance, the glory. He says the radiance of His glory, the exact representation of His nature.

Jesus is like the Father and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He that is Jesus had made purification of sins that He doubt on the cross, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty that is God the Father on high. Chapter 12, verse 2. He says, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfect of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Very interesting that four times in this book, He reminds us where Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us. So therefore, we have the Father ruling and reigning. We have the Son seated at the Father's right hand and He is interceding.

Now we have the Holy Spirit. And if you recall in this passage that the Scripture says that He continually talked about Him sending the Holy Spirit. He says, I will ask the Father, He will give you another helper that He may be with you forever.

What is He doing? The Father seated in His majesty on the throne in heaven, seated at His right hand is the Lord Jesus Christ and now, remember what He said? He said, I will send Him to you. The Father will send Him to you. The Spirit of God is now on the earth, living in the life of every single believer.

And what is His work? While the Father's work is ruling and reigning over it all, while the Lord Jesus Christ seated at His right hand is interceding for us all, it is the Holy Spirit who is now enabling us all. The Holy Spirit came in order to enable you and me to become the persons God wants us to be and accomplish and achieve the work that God has set for us. That doesn't mean just preaching and teaching.

It means whatever God has called you to do in your life. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this life. So therefore, we have the Father ruling and reigning. We have the Son interceding and we have the Spirit enabling us.

So now give it back to me. We have the Father doing what? Ruling and reigning and the Son doing what? Interceding and the Holy Spirit doing what?

Enabling us, empowering us to do anything and everything that our Father has called us to do. So when we look at the Holy Spirit, we talk about Him being a helper for all occasions. For example, He certainly is a personal helper. He's not a thing.

He's somebody. He's a person of the Trinity. Not only that, He certainly not only is being personal, but He is a very practical helper because we're going to see in a few moments that He involves Himself in your life and mine in every single aspect of our life as believers, no matter who we are. Not only that, He is certainly an adequate helper because He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. And that is He has all power to do anything and everything that needs to be done in, to, for and through us. Not only that, He is an available helper because He is living on the inside of us. He indwells us, the indwelling Spirit of the living God.

When you trust that Jesus Christ is your personal Savior, listen, not only did He convict you of your sin, not only did He give you the gift of faith, not only did He seal you with the gift of the gift to make you eternally secure, He says He sealed you under the day of redemption. Now He lives on the inside of us to enable us to become and to do the things that God would have us to. And so therefore God sent Him because He knew we could not do the work that God called us to do.

And so therefore you say, well, why is that true? Because He said to His disciples, He said, Luke chapter 24 verse 49, He said, You sit here in the city of Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high. They were not ready. They'd watched Him heal, heard Him teach, watched Him and the way He cared about His life.

And what happens? He said to them, You're still not ready till the Spirit of God anoints you for the work I've called you to do. He said in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth, not until the Holy Spirit came.

Remember back in the 16th chapter what He said to them? He said, He abides with you and He will be in you. He was not in them living as the sealed Holy Spirit at that moment. But He said, listen, the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to indwell the church. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit came.

He would come and go upon those whom God had called. But now every single believer is indwelt by the very presence of Almighty God in the person of the Holy Spirit. Listen, you and I are inescapable from Almighty God. He has sealed us.

Listen, He's decided to live on the inside of us. That should send us an awesome message about our inadequacy. Listen, He said to His disciples, you can't do it until the Spirit of God comes upon you and lives in you. Listen, they couldn't do it. We can't do it.

Nobody can do it. And the sooner we realize we can't do it, never will be what God wants us to be apart from the Holy Spirit, then we'll begin to live the life He wants us to live. That's who this Helper is. Every single believer has Him. Now, the thing that grieves me is I think about how many people go to church week after week after week. They read the Bible. They come to this Holy Spirit and they think, well, who is He?

That's something of young. That's some denomination, some group, something. Never even dawns on them, never been taught, never understood that He is a Person of the Trinity. You are so loved by God. He so loves you and wants the best for you. He has sent, listen, not only the Savior to save you, but the Spirit of God to enable you to become everything you can possibly be. That's love at the highest.

That's love at the pinnacle. That's love at the zenith of all that God can do. If you wonder whether God loves you or not, listen, He hasn't left anything to us. He sent the Savior to save us and then He realized what a mess we was going to make even of that in our Christian life.

He sent the Holy Spirit to enable us to live the life that He wants us to live because He knows we cannot do it. He said, now, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. Well, yes, it does because I'm going to tell you something. You cannot live the Christian life.

Now, watch this. We live in fleshly bodies. We have five senses. We have lots of naturalness, every single one of us does. We live in a world that's absolutely full of sin and wickedness and rebellion and sensuality and all the rest.

Everywhere you turn, there it is. You hear it, you see it. One of the reasons He came is this. In order to live through us a life He knew, you and I could never live. Can't do it. You and I are not strong enough.

You can try all you want to, but it's doomed to failure. It's coming to the realization that I couldn't, that I can't, that it's not my work, that it's His work. And when I, knowing Jesus Christ as my Savior, am willing to acknowledge I can't live this life, and I acknowledge the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit to live through me the life of Jesus Christ, that's when the Christian life begins to express itself through us.

It is not our life. This is what Paul meant when he said in Galatians 2 20, he says, I have been crucified with Christ. That is, he says, you know what, he said, I just died to the old self because it didn't work. He said, nevertheless, I live, yet not I. Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

It is Christ living His life in and through us through the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, when I look at all that, I think, Lord, thank God for the Holy Spirit. What a mess we'd all be in, wouldn't we? Wouldn't know how to pray.

Couldn't read the Bible worth anything. Wouldn't know how to deal with our sin. Wouldn't know how to deal with our frustrations and anxieties and our weakness and our frailties. We would have to be doing all this ourselves. You know why there's so many frustrated Christians living in defeat?

Because they're trying to do everything I've just mentioned in their own strength. And my friend, you might as well give up. It's not going to happen. It can't happen, but it can happen. If you're willing for the Spirit of God to rule and reign. You see, this is what the Bible speaks about in Ephesians chapter five. When he says, be filled with the Spirit, you know what that means? Just surrender everything to Him.

Just turn it all over to Him and just say, I can't. You can. I surrender. You do it. Thank you for listening to A Helper for All Occasions. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.