In John 14:15-16 Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit and that the spirit will come to be an advocate, a counselor, a comforter. He can guide us in our decisions and protect us from physical and spiritual dangers. As the Comforter, He calms our fears and fills us with hope.
Too often, I fear we focus on “Holy Spirit as Comforter” and selectively begin to see the Holy Spirit as a problem solver and pain reliever — a kind of spiritual Tylenol when the going gets tough. There is so much more to the Holy Spirit than this! And today, I’d like you to consider that the Holy Spirit is actually more of an instigator of making us “uncomfortable”.
Read this from John 20:21-22: So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be to you; just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
This suggests that the Holy Spirit was not sent to solve all our problems and be our spiritual pain-killer. But, in fact, we receive the Holy Spirit and then are presented with a problem. And frankly, we probably should have seen this coming. If you look at verse 21 again Jesus clearly is giving us a task to do here. “Just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
The Holy Spirit is not about sedation, but about SENDING. This is where things start to get a little uncomfortable. Accepting God’s calling on our life entails we receive the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit makes us uncomfortable because He prods us to:
- love the unlovable
- pay for the penniless
- dispossess our possessions
- to be a witness to the skeptic
- to welcome the stranger
- to embrace the unknown
- to have visions of the unseen
- to touch the untouchables
I’m game. How about you? Let’s all go out and get uncomfortable. Let’s see what God’s Holy Spirit can do with us and through us today!
Wishing you faith for today,
Roy
