An Unbelievable Promise!

In my last blog, I wrote about our relationship with the Father through Jesus, His only Son  -- that our relationship could be the same as Jesus' relationship with the Father, if we were in Him and He in us.    Today, I want to write about an almost unbelievable promise that Jesus made to his disciples the night before his death -- the promise of direct communication:

When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.  He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.  He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine.  That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you (Jn. 16: 13-15).

 

The reading I was doing this morning (Give Us This Day) pointed out the difference between seeing your new grandson on Skype and holding him in your arms.  That is exactly the difference between the Old and the New Testaments -- after Jesus.  Previously, as The Book of Hebrews points out, God communicated to us through prophets, but now directly through His Son, who has come into the world.  And Jesus did not intend that only those present to Him in the flesh should hear His voice, but that all who accepted Him would do the same. 

 

God always desired direct communication with mankind, but man was afraid to hear His voice, lest they die.  From the time of Moses, man wanted an intermediary.  They told Moses, "You speak with God and tell us what he says; we are afraid!"  But God said through Jeremiah:

 

I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor,

or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,"

because they will all know me,

from the least to the greatest (Jer. 31:31).

 

So how do we receive the Spirit of Truth, since Jesus plainly said that the "world" could not accept Him, "because it neither sees him nor knows him" (Jn. 14:15)?  It is clear that not everyone will hear the Spirit through direct communication, but only those to whom Jesus sends the Spirit.  The first letter of John is very clear about this matter:

 

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God....Anyone who believes in the son of God has this testimony in his heart...He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the son of God does not have life (I Jn. 4:2 and 5:10).

 

And the beginning of John's Gospel says it plainly also:  ...to all who received Him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God --children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husbands' will, but born of God.

 

So it is not the whole world that hears God speaking in their hearts, but only those to whom Jesus has sent the Spirit.  But the promise of direct communication with God is a great and unbelievable promise, and it is true!  It is also true that God can communicate with us through prophets and the written word, which is "God-breathed," but when the Spirit of God hovers over those words -- either spoken by others or written in Scripture -- the words take on life and breath and power.

 

The very first thing each morning we should do is to welcome the Voice of God, the Spirit of God, who wants to teach us and direct us.  It's a living, loving, thing and available to all who will receive it!