Help is here!

Saturday mornings were a blast when I was a kid.

Not only did Saturday mornings mean a few hours of indulging in those great old school cartoons, that morning of lounging in pjs with a bowl of cereal and glass of chocolate milk in front of the TV were topped off by a cheesy B-western movie.

Those old westerns were all the same, I sometimes wonder if they used the same script and just changed actors! But the excitement of Saturday morning was capped by the “calvary” scene — that classic moment in a western when settlers headed for the wild West were attacked by Indians. Things didn’t look good for the settlers until, piercing through all the gunfire, came the sound of a bugle.

The calvary was coming!

Help was here!

The settlers would be saved as the calvary charged in and chased off the attackers.

If your life has been anything like mine, there have been times when you’ve longed to hear the sound of a bugle and have some help come charging in to save the day for you.

Well, help is here!

Truly, the greatest help any human being could want or need is available to every Christian in the Person of the Holy Spirit, who lives in each disciple of Jesus. He is ever ready to charge into each moment of our lives and help us with living. When Jesus was preparing to leave this world, He comforted His followers with this promise …

“But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks 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. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and 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. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you,” John 16:5-14 (NASB).

And in John 14:15-18 we read, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 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” (NASB)

Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as a “Helper” to us. The Holy Spirit is all the charging calvary we could ever hope for! Take a peek at just some of the ways the Holy Spirit works to help Christians live for Jesus:

• • The Holy Spirit regenerates us. “Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life,” John 3:5-6.
  • The Holy Spirit lives within us, He is ever present. “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? …” 1 Corinthians 6:19a.
  • The Holy Spirit gives us assurance of our new life and new identity. “For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children,” Romans 8:16.
  • The Holy Spirit gives us hope and peace during difficult times. “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit,” Romans 15:13.
  • The Holy Spirit gives us strength and endurance. “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit,” Ephesians 3:16.
  • The Holy Spirit brings conviction. “And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment,” John 16:8.
  • The Holy Spirit provides power over temptation. “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves,” Galatians 5:16.
  • The Holy Spirit grows us into holiness. “God the Father knew you and chose you long ago, and his Spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ,” 1 Peter 1:2.
  • The Holy Spirit helps us pray. “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will,” Romans 8:26-27.
  • The Holy Spirit gives us wisdom for making decisions. “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him,” Ephesians 1:17 (NASB).
  • The Holy Spirit provides us with understanding of God’s Word. “That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.’ But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others. For, ‘Who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?’ But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ,” 1 Corinthians 2:9-16.
  • The Holy Spirit guides and directs us into specific events. “So Barnabas and Saul were sent out by the Holy Spirit. They went down to the seaport of Seleucia and then sailed for the island of Cyprus,” Acts 13:4.
  • The Holy Spirit calls us unto salvation. “For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future,” Ephesians 4:4.
  • The Holy Spirit equips us with confidence over fear. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline,” 2 Timothy 1:7.
  • The Holy Spirit enables us to speak effectively about God. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere — in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” Acts 1:8.
  • The Holy Spirit gives every Christian a spiritual gift. “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us. A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other,” 1 Corinthians 12:4-7.
  • The Holy Spirit produces spiritual fruit in our lives. “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” Galatians 5:22-23.

Those are just some of the ways the Holy Spirit is a Helper to Christians.

What a help!

Are you fostering an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit so that He can be the Helper you need to live for Jesus?

Scotty