Your personal assistant in your everyday life

As a Christian you are never alone. Jesus Christ has sent you a PA – a personal assistant – a comforter and a helper – the Holy Spirit. As you continue your walk as a disciple of Jesus Christ, you will come to know more and more how the Holy Spirit is your Helper in everyday life. When you realise that he always indwells you, strengthening and guiding you, you will be filled with thankfulness and even ask for more of his help.

The Holy Spirit is your helper in your everyday life

BeforeJesus left his disciples he said that he would not leave them fatherless but that he would send the Counsellor and Helper to them. He was speaking about the Holy Spirit who would come to the disciples and help them in their daily lives. (see John chapters 14 - 16)

To live as a Christian is to live a supernatural life. It is to live in fellowship with God and to do his works. No-one can do this in his own human strength, so Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to be the Helper. He gives life a whole new dimension and teaches you to live supernaturally and to break through the barriers of your human limitations.

1. The Holy Spirit gives you insight and understanding

The Holy Spirit will open the Scriptures for you and lead you into all truth. He will glorify Jesus for you and give you a deeper insight into and understanding of God’s plan. He will open your heart and your mind so that you can understand God’s will in all things. He is your counsellor whom you can always trust because all he says is in agreement with God’s word, the Bible. The Holy Spirit, who inspired the authors of the Bible to write down God’s word, will help you to understand the Bible.

But when he, the Sprit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. (John 16:13)

2. The Holy Spirit gives you power to testify

As a Christian you have been given a task, you are to testify about Jesus and tell other people about his salvation (Mark 16:15). Fear, and the feeling of not being good enough or not managing, hinders many Christians in making contact with non-Christians and from witnessing to them. The Holy Spirit gives you the strength to witness. He gives you the courage to take the initiative. He gives you the right words when you need them. He gives you insight into people’s needs. When you boldly witness and pray for people his power will set them free, heal them and lead them to salvation in Jesus.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

3. The Holy Spirit teaches you to pray so that your prayers are answered

When you do not know what you should pray for or how to pray in a certain situation, the Holy Spirit will come to your aid. First, he gives you a new prayer language - tongues - with which, although you don’t understand it, you can communicate directly with God from your Spirit without using your mind. When you pray and praise in tongues you get built up inwardly and you are strengthened in your faith.

At other times the Holy Spirit will remind you about people or situations which need your prayers. He will give you a burden for people you need to pray for.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. (Rom. 8:26)

He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself. (1 Cor.14:4)

4. The Holy Spirit gives you gifts with which you can bless others

When you are baptised in the Holy Spirit, a whole new world is opened to you. You have available to you the gifts of the Spirit, which are supernatural ways of expressing God’s blessings to others. The Spirit who dwells in you wants to make himself known and to share with you God’s plans for and thoughts about people, so that you can be a tool to set them free and to bring healing to them.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. (1 Cor.12:7-11)

Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. (1 Pet. 4:10)

5. The Holy Spirit will lead you

When you are baptised in the Holy Spirit your “spiritual ears” are opened so that you become sensitive to God’s voice and receptive to his leading. He will lead you every day. He will put you in contact with people whom he has prepared in advance and who are ready for what you have for them.

Philip is a good example of this. He was led by the Spirit to leave the revival in Samaria and go down to the desert road to Gaza. When he did as the Spirit prompted him he met a man from the Ethiopian court. The Spirit whispered to him that he should stay near the man’s chariot and when he discovered that the Ethiopian was reading from the prophet Isaiah he began to speak to him at once. In this way he was able to lead this man to Jesus and make him a disciple by baptising him when he believed the gospel (see Acts 8:26-40).

The Holy Spirit will lead you to people who need to meet Jesus in the same way today. He will lead you to see people’s needs, both at your workplace and in your everyday contact with people. He will show you how you can convey Jesus’ love and God’s power to them.

6. The Holy Spirit will make you zealous

When you are baptised in the Holy Spirit and fire you will experience an inner cleansing. The fire of the Spirit will burn away unclean thoughts and wrong priorities. The Spirit will create in you a new eagerness to do God’s will. A new desire to do all that God wants will be created in you. You will also find within yourself disgust for all that God says in his word is impure and wrong.

When the fire of the Spirit burns in you, you will be an eager Christian who wants to serve God wholeheartedly. This fire will make you zealous for God. It will mean that you will not tolerate hearing his name misused. You will have a burning desire to honour God in everything you do. When the fire burns in your heart you will no longer want to compromise but just to go right on in God’s way.

Exercise:

Which of the six things mentioned above are most precious to you? Why?

Continue to memorise the previous Bible verses and add this one to your list:

For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. (2.Cor.12:13)