If the Holy Spirit Has You, then Jesus Is Your Life’s Priority and Lord of All Your Life

MESSAGE SUMMARY:

The Upper Room Part 1: The Promise of the Spirit (Apostles Anglican Church; Knoxville, TN)

John 14 is one of the Bible’s foremost explanations of the Holy Spirit for us and our lives. The context of Jesus’ explanation is that Jesus is on His way to the cross. In John 14:23,36, Jesus is helping the Apostles and us to understand the Holy Spirit that is being sent to us by God as a gift for the followers of Jesus: “Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. . . But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.’". Jesus is telling the Apostles, and us, that He is leaving them on the Earth; but God is not leaving them or us alone – God is providing the Holy Spirit. Jesus promises to His followers that the Holy Spirit will be both with us and in us.

Today, twenty-one centuries after Pentecost, how should we consider the Holy Spirit: 1) the Holy Spirit is very important in following Jesus – being created in God’s image humans, like God, are Triune Beings as body, soul, and spirit which are made “alive” at our conversion, but in John3:5 Jesus told Nicodemus and us that eternal life only comes from our rebirth in the Holy Spirit: “Jesus answered, {Nicodemus} ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God’”; 2) the Holy Spirit brings the presence of God and Jesus with us and in us; 3) the Holy Spirit is our Helper in following and obeying Christ and in facing life’s challenges and the Holy Spirit helps us when we don’t know how or what to pray; and 4) the Holy Spirit is a teacher – we have the teaching of the Holy Scripture because the writers we inspired and taught by the Holy Spirit and now the Holy Spirit helps us understand the Scriptures.

In many of us, “the pilot light is lit, but the furnace is not engaged.”. That is, we have Jesus in our lives, but we are not engaged with the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is one thing to believe in Jesus, but it is another thing entirely to yield oneself to Jesus through our obedience and prioritization of Him as the cornerstone of everything in our life. Therefore, the question becomes not “Do you have the Holy Spirit?” but rather “Does the Holy Spirit have you?”. To this end. God desires us to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. With this filling of our life with the Holy Spirit, God will be Lord over all in our life.

 

TODAY’S AFFIRMATION: I affirm that because of what God has done for me in His Son, Jesus, I AM RIGHTEOUS IN GOD’S EYES. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21).

 

Scripture Reference (ESV): John 14:15-31; John 3:3-8; John 4:24; John 7:37-39; John 14:15-17, John 15:26; John 16:4-14; Acts 2:10-13; Ephesians 2:1,4; John 14:16-17; Genesis 1:2; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20; Ephesians 5:18; Psalms 28:1-9.

 

THIS SUNDAY’S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach’s Current Sunday Sermon: “Jesus says: ‘Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division’", at our Website: https://awtlser.podbean.com/.

 

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