A Helper for All Occasions - Part 3

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, August 24. The Holy Spirit is a believer's greatest asset. He enables you to do whatever God requires. Here's part three of A Helper for All Occasions. Help us.

Then what do we do? You and I have a helper for all occasions, no matter what those occasions may be. 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 their 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. Now, what are the practical ways in which He comes to your help and mine? And there are lots of them, but I want to mention some that things that you and I have to deal with every single day of our life.

And the first one is this. The Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer life. All of us have difficulty praying, but we have the Holy Spirit.

Listen to this. We have the Holy Spirit when we don't know how to pray, and there are times, many times when our heart cries out to God, whether it's a broken heart or whether it's some decision you have to make, sometimes you don't know how to pray. Sometimes you don't know how to pray for other people. We all need the Holy Spirit, and He is there to help us.

So what does He do? He not only lifts our prayers to the Father, but He will clarify for us. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Lean not your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him. He will direct your path.

Listen. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to clarify for you and me the will of God. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the will of God. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make it plain to us and to enable us to walk in it. One of the areas in which we need help is we need help in our prayer life.

A second very practical work of the Spirit, and listen, another area in which all of us need help is in understanding the Word of God. Now let me ask you something. Say yes, just give me a yes if you mean this. Do you really and truly want to have a better understanding of the Word of God? Say yes.

I'm going to tell you how. You ready to say amen? Number one, this isn't going to be what you think. God, show me the sin in my life. You weren't expecting that, were you? Say amen.

You weren't. Show me the sin in my life so that I can repent of it so that my heart can be clean so the Spirit of God can speak to my clean heart, mind, and spirit. So I will have a deeper understanding of your Word. Listen, God is not going to pour out truth to a dirty heart. Listen, He'll convict the dirty heart.

He's not going to pour out truth into a dirty heart. Clean heart, pure heart, godly heart. You want to understand God's Word?

It takes two things. Clean heart and dependence upon the Holy Spirit to illumine your mind. Listen, watch this. If the Spirit of God illumines your mind of the truth and you don't apply it to your heart, don't come back the next day saying, God, I'm going to have a deeper understanding.

Lord, I just want to know more truth because you know what? He's going to say, go back to the last passage. When you do that, I'll give you a better understanding. Just picking up, listen, this is not your normal book. This is the revelation of God. It has stipulations, regulations, and listen, there are requirements for understanding this and it is not going to a theological seminary.

This is not a normal book. This is God's revelation of Himself and we understand it by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. And then when, listen, when that happens and we're inspired in our heart to do what God wants us to do, then we are required of God to be obedient to Him to do exactly what He's shown us.

Now watch this. Not only does He help me in my praying, help me with the Word of God, but He also helps us with our sinfulness. What do you mean helping us with our sinfulness? Okay, go back to John now and look, if you will, in the sixteenth chapter.

Look at the sixteenth chapter. He wants us to be our best at whatever He calls us to do, no matter what. And sin is a problem.

We all have to deal with sin in our life in some fashion or the other. Verse seven, 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. And when He comes, here's what He'll do. He will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you no longer see me, and concerning judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged.

Now, what is He saying? He convicts us, first of all, of our sinfulness and our need of God. He convicts us, listen, of the righteousness of Christ, which means He convicts us of the adequacy of the atoning death of Jesus Christ to pay my sin debt in full. And He also convicts us that there is a judgment and we are personally liable, personally, listen, accountable to Almighty God for our life. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. He said He will guide us into all truth.

Think about this. We have on the inside of us the absolute perfect guide. We have the perfect compass. He is the Holy Spirit. Listen, He knows the future and the present and the past. He knows exactly where we ought to be, when we ought to be there and how we ought to be there. He knows what we ought to do, what we're capable of doing and what we will do when we get there.

There's not anything He doesn't know. And so we have on the inside of us this awesome omniscient guide who has our best interest at heart and our best interest is never in disobedience to God, but it is always obeying our Lord. And to ignore Him is to ignore the absolute perfect guide that God has given us, motivated by pure love.

Do we need Him? Yes, we need Him to help us to deal with this whole issue of our sinfulness. We ought to think about another area in which we need Him, and that is when we are ministering to others. There are two ways that you and I serve God. We either serve Him in our own humanness, that is our own abilities and our own talents and our own education and experience and so forth, or we serve Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now remember what He said to His disciples. Sit down in the seat of Jerusalem until you be clothed with power from on high. He said you shall receive power and then you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. So He said to them, not equipped to serve me until, remember what He said? He says the Spirit is now abiding with you. He will be in you. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to and to other believers. So all of us are indwelt by Him.

Now, now watch this carefully. Serving the Lord no matter what you're doing, whether it's preaching, teaching, singing, playing, or whatever it might be, but I want to get off of minister in just a moment. Get in your business, whatever it might be. Being a mothered, godly mother. Whatever you're doing, we can do one of two motives. We either want to make an impact in somebody's life or some people's lives, or we want to make an impression. Now, most anybody can make an impression in some way or the other. You can make an impression on the basis of your talents and your gifts or your eloquence or whatever it might be. But an impact in somebody's life is what only the Spirit of God can do. Because here's what happens. You can take two men, one of them filled with the Spirit of God and they can say the same words that the other one says, who's not filled with the Spirit of God.

Same eloquence, same abilities, same gifts, same talents. No anointing of the Holy Spirit. It comes, you hear it.

It may be pleasant to your eyes and to your ears to see and to see all that. No impact. The same time when the Spirit of God is taking the Word of God and speaking through you a servant, a child of God, it's going to make an impact. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. And this is why God does not want us serving Him.

It doesn't make any difference what we are doing. He doesn't want us serving Him apart from, listen, our absolute total dependence upon the Spirit of God who is our Helper. He's the one who enables us. He's the one that God sent.

He said, if I don't leave, He won't come. I'm sending Him. He'll be in you, with you and upon you. He will enable you. He will empower you. He'll give you divine energy. He'll illuminate your mind.

He will show you what to say, how to do it and what to do. What difference does an impression make? An impression is here for this moment and gone the next. An impact changes people's lives. We make impacts upon the lives of our children. We make impacts upon the lives of the people around us, our friends or whatever it might be. So we, listen, the Spirit of God is there to help us. Help us do what? To work, listen, by His power, His energy and His strength to do His will and not our own. But I think there's another area in which He helps us and which we certainly want to call upon Him. All of us hit these times in our life and when we do, sometimes we may feel like, well, Lord, certainly if I'm trusting You and doing what You want me to do and following Your will, I shouldn't have these kind of feelings, but we do.

For example, we need the Holy Spirit's help in times when we are spiritually, emotionally or physically drained. And all of us are going to reach that at points in our life. You ever feel weary and tired?

Sure, physically. What about feeling emotionally worn out? You go through battles in your life and circumstances and situations that you can't change and you can't alter. And Satan will drain our energy. He will drain everything in us he possibly can because he knows if he can get us low enough, he'll either cause us to doubt or we become vulnerable to any and all kinds of sin. So he works on us emotionally and certainly spiritually.

Here's what you'll discover. When you give and give and give spiritually, you are drained. And what happens is you need to be refreshed. Who is the one that does the refreshing? It is the Holy Spirit of the living God. And this is why every believer needs time of quiet meditation upon the Lord, being quiet with the Lord and letting Him do what?

What does He do? He renews our spirit. Listen, He renews our spirit. He refreshes our body.

We can get up and get moving. But He also does something to our soul, to our emotions. He replenishes our emotions when they get drained. God wants us renewed, refreshed, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. And I can remember on one occasion, I was in New Zealand and the pastor, without telling me, finally told me one morning, he says, now today we're going to meet downtown in this particular hall that they'd set aside.

This was not a big city, a small town. And he says, we're going to have you preach for about 20, 25 minutes. And he said, we're going to start at 9 o'clock. When he didn't tell me until we got down there, he was going to do it eight times in a row. Well, after about the third time, I had about 15 minutes between each time.

After about the third time, I thought, God, I'm going to be able to handle this. Besides, it was cold. It's the coldest I've ever been in my life. Slept with my clothes and overcoat on.

That's how cold it was down there. And so I preached in my overcoat, is inside. And so after about the third time, I thought, God, I have to do something about this. So I said, you've got to find me a place and get by myself. So I got by myself and I laid down on the floor, put my Bible and put my head on my Bible, covered up and wrapped up a little bit and closed my eyes. And I just said, God, the Holy Spirit must equip me, must strengthen me physically.

I need physical strength to do this. I can't do this five more times. Unless you do something, I don't have the energy to do it. So I get, kept quiet about five or six or so minutes. So I got up, walked out there, just like the first time. You know what I did? I did it every time thereafter.

Every time I'd stand up, just like I did it the first time. I'm telling you, God will equip you, enable you, strengthen you, listen, refresh you, renew you, replenish you with whatever you need, no matter what's going on. If that's what God's called you to do, He will enable you to do it.

You don't have to go take this and take that and drink this and drink that and pop this pill and that pill. You know what? The Spirit of God is the greatest energizer there is in the whole world. He is ready and able to do for you whatever you need, no matter what it is. Well, let me just say one or two other things. First of all, let me just say this about His help. The Holy Spirit is certainly the one to help us when we begin to doubt our salvation.

Now think about this. When I think about people who have been saved and doubt their salvation, if they've truly been saved, it is the work of the devil to cause you to doubt your salvation. It is the work of the Spirit to reassure you that you are saved.

He says the Spirit Himself testifies, bears witness, sends you the message of the cross and the atoning death of Jesus and that you repented of your sins. You placed your trust in Him and you are saved. You may be discouraged. You may be falling into temptation. Satan may be having just a circus in your life. Does that mean that you're lost? No, it means you're living in disobedience to God, need to repent of that sin, get right with God. It doesn't mean that you're lost and the work of the Holy Spirit is to do what? To assure us of our salvation. There's another work of the Spirit and that's this one. I'm going to close with this one. And that is to help me live the Christian life. How many of you ever have any problem living the Christian life?

Absolutely. In fact, I want to tell you something to just relieve your mind. It's absolutely impossible to live the Christian life. You say, now, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. Well, yes, it does because I want 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. Now, how in the world are we going to live a Christian life? That'd be like a bride dressing up in a white wedding gown and going down to the coal mine and expecting to come out white. No way. How are you going to live your life in a wicked, sinful, vile world and expect to live holy?

Can't do it. That's the reason the Holy Spirit came. Why did He come?

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 hate. You can. I surrender.

You do it. You will be amazed what God will do in your life if you'll just give up, stop fighting, stop holding on, lay down the conflict, throw up the white flag and say, I surrender to live a life submissive to the Spirit of the living God. Father, you are so wonderfully kind and gracious and good to us. Knowing that we make a big mess of everything, you sent the Holy Spirit to guide us, direct us and empower us. And I pray that He will convict every single person who hears this message, who's never trusted Christ the Savior, to realize that apart from the shed blood of Jesus at Calvary, His atoning sacrificial substitutionary death on our behalf, there is no hope. But the moment that a person's willing to accept Jesus as Savior, there's eternal hope and promise and assurance. And then, Lord, for every believer, we stop fighting. Give up in our own strength and say, Lord, not my will, but your will be done. Not my life, but your life. For we pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Thank you for listening to part three of 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.