15)
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
16)
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
17)
Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you.
18)
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come
to you.
19)
Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live
also.
20)
At that day ye shall know that I am in my
Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
21)
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my
Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
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hrough
this series, the Lord has been trying to get us to accept that all that we may
ever need has already been addressed by Him. Getting our problems solved is as
easy as taking God at His word. Of course, the devil neither wants us to know,
or accept this, for if we would, we would truly "turn the world upside
down."
In
our text today, we have spoken of truth, the Spirit of truth and the Comforter.
The latter has been given to us to "handle" all that comes and give
us all that we need. Though this is scripturally sound, it does not seem to
"register" in the mind of man--that is, that there is no need for
worry or sorrow. The sacrifice of the Lord is enough to care and provide for us
forever.
One
of the chiefest ways that the devil is able to keep
us under control is to play upon our natural tendency to be suspicious of what
is contrary to our human will. Therefore, we are behind before we begin in
dealing with spiritual issues. In point of fact, the spiritual "goes
against our grain," making it that much more difficult to submit to the
Spirit. Spiritual success is, then, impossible
without the renewal of the human mind.
In
our scripture text, today, we are made a promise by the Lord, Himself that He
will not leave us in our misery, but rather, He will come to us. This ends for all time our excuses for indulging in self-preservation. Time-and-time-again,
we prove that our focus is
"off," for we make it our business
to "preserve self." In that the Lord receives permission to move into
our situation only as we put that situation into His hand, we will never benefit from God's blessings until
we understand that the life that God created does not exist for "us."
The
"reckoning" that most must come to is that no one has a permanent
"place" in the Lord. What does this mean? It means that no one has a
"monopoly" on the Lord and consequently, all are required to meet and fulfill their obligations before God
and submit themselves to Him. You have
no place apart from fulfilling the Lord's requirements to get to that place.
Sadly,
too many have no direction in salvation and even less insight into God because
they have never come to know Him in the Spirit . You see,
if we are "married" to this life in the flesh, we will find it
impossible to know the purpose of God. Why? Because that
purpose is inaccessible through human
understanding. This makes it all the harder to understand why we fight
so hard to stay the same after salvation. After all, Jesus came to give us new life--one full in Him and contrary
to the flesh.
It
is endlessly amazing that man can abuse himself, then look
around for someone else to blame for
his misery. This is despite the fact that we know ourselves well enough to know
that no one has ever been
able to make us do what we do not want
to do.
The
affirmation of "I love the Lord" has, in some ways, become as "kitchy" as "Have a Nice Day!" Does everyone
who says this, mean it? How does the Lord know? He knows by the
"yardstick" of whether or not we obey
Him. You see, man fell as a result of disobedience, so the only way back
to Him is through obedience
.
The
reason that the Lord had to send "another Comforter" is that He knew
that He would not always be present in a body of flesh. This is a two-fold
blessing for us, the first being that He affords us salvation and all of the
blessings of belonging to Him. In addition, another benefit of the Spirit in
the life of the individual is that He is available to lead and guide us. The
fact of "availability" is important, for it is only those who willingly put themselves into His hands
who will lead a life of peace and prosperity. Therefore, we choose the path that our lives
take--whether we will rest in Him or continue to struggle against the things
that all other unredeemed men struggle.
The
Lord comes to us as the Paraclete in order to be in a
position to help us. He assumed the
form that He did after the crucifixion that He would be available to aid and
defend us. The problem that we have when we live as natural men is that we are
incapable of believing that we need assistance in running our lives. Therefore,
we are subject to making mistakes and using bad judgment and this is the recipe
for unhappiness and unprofitability.
When
one's life is surrendered to the Lord, he need fear nothing that might take
place in his life. He has complete confidence that no mistakes will be made and
that all will be worked out to the glory of God. He can have this confidence
because he loves God and in so doing, shares His passion for the winning
of souls.
This
is not accomplished without a testimony and a testimony is never gained but
through trials and tests. The church world is largely no more successful than
it is because too many have no credibility.
It is easy to "tell" another what to do, but an entirely different
thing to deny self and demonstrate God.
There
is absolutely nothing else that the Lord can do for us to engender our
confidence in Him. From His own mouth, He promises His presence and through all
that He does, He shows that He can be trusted and depended upon—provided we
will take Him at His word. Those of us who go without His comfort do so because
of our own shortcomings. Now is not the time to live in self-pity and the
Satan-generated and flesh-perpetuated feelings of low self-esteem and self-loathing
that plague too many. Instead of trying to "be" something of themselves, the people of God need to start serving the only One Who can give
loathsome man any worth. Maybe then the church of our God will be a place of
joy and become able to win the people for whom it was created. n