Author: Edtucner

John 14:16,17                                                       God Is Spiritual

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the spirit of truth.  The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (NIV).

 

Our God is a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The triunity of these three is a great mystery.  Each one is distinct, but together they make up one God.  Jesus spoke to the Father throughout the New Testament.  God, the Father spoke at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” Matthew 3:17 (NIV).  In the focal verse of this message, John 14:16,17, Jesus says that He will ask the Father, and He will send the Holy Spirit.  All three are spoken of in the same verse of Scripture.  That’s it, God is three in one.

If God will send the Holy Spirit to be a helper and advisor and a counselor, we can certainly say that God is spiritual.  He is using the Holy Spirit, part of our triune God, as His personal presence in this world today.  The Holy Spirit carries all the authority of God, speaks with the knowledge of God, and acts with the love of God.

We are made up of three parts, body, mind, and spirit, and our spirits are most able to interact with the Holy Spirit.  When we say we “got a Word from the Lord,” we mean that we heard from the Holy Spirit.  How do we hear from the Holy Spirit?  Once in the Old Testament, God wrote words on a wall for a leader and his close followers to read.  As mentioned earlier, God spoke audibly at Jesus’ baptism.  We have the audible words that Jesus spoke recorded in the New Testament.  All of that is great, but how can we hear from the Holy Spirit.  I believe that one of the best ways is to spend as much time listening as we do speaking when we pray.  We often don’t give the Holy Spirit any time to respond before we move on to our next point in our prayer.  Listening while praying is a learned activity, and a worthwhile one.

Many mentions are made in the New Testament of “speaking in tongues.”  There are things that our minds are not capable of expressing to God, and our spirit can express them by allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to our spirit and give our voice the words to speak in a language either earthly or heavenly that we have not learned.  This is one time when we allow our spirit, one third of our being, to operate on its own.  We let our body do things on its own, and we allow our soul, our mind, to think things on its own.  The third part of our being, the spirit, has been given to us by God for a reason.  I believe that reason is to give us a greater ability to communicate with Him when our hearts are broken or when we are bewildered, and our minds just can’t come up with the “right words.”  Speaking in tongues is a learned activity and a valuable one.

Yes, God is spiritual, and because He is spiritual, He has given us the Holy Spirit, a counselor, a helper, an advisor, and an interpreter.  Thank you, God for sending us the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 86:15                                                           God Is Gracious

“But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth” (NKJV).

 

The dictionary defines gracious as having and showing kindness, mercy and compassion.  Those three words certainly describe God.  We have already had messages that describe God as being merciful and compassionate.  He has frequently shown mercy to me when I deserved anything but mercy and has shown compassion when I have needed loving care.  The grace of God is immeasurable.  His kindness, mercy, and compassion are visible wherever we look.  Anyone we speak to can relate numerous stories of God’s mercy, kindness and compassion, usually occurring in the past few days or weeks.  It would probably be a good exercise for me to stop writing and suggest that you and I take a few minutes to think about the past month and write down some of the times God has shown His gracious nature to us.

If you have done what I asked, there is no need for me to write any more.  Our experiences with God have undoubtedly shown Him to be quite gracious.  All that remains is to go to prayer and thank Him.  Thank you, Lord!

Acts 17:24-25                                               God Is Self-Sufficient

“The God who made this world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.  And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything.  Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (NIV).

 

Paul spoke these words in Athens as he was addressing a gathering of Athenian philosophers.  They had many gods, and Paul observed statures and monuments to the many gods throughout the city.  He even saw an inscription “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.”  He then went on to introduce them to this “unknown god” of theirs, the known God, the God of Jesus Christ.  As can be seen from the Scripture above, God made it all, and He needs nothing.  Paul’s all-encompassing words were, “Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”

Before I began to write this message, I asked God for His help.  He led me to read a daily devotional from a book of devotionals, Drawing Near by Pasquale Mingarelli, a writer I admire. We agree that God uses His creation to draw us to Him.  Mingarelli says that since God created everything, He is not part of creation, but independent of creation.  He goes on to say, “God does not need the help of creation to exist.  Everything in creation needs the help of creation and the help of God to exist.  God alone is self-existent.”  All life on earth is dependent upon something else in order to exist.  God created it that way.  Mingarelli says that trees need sun and soil, animals need food, fish need water, and mammals need air.  Ultimately, He created everything in such a way that we and every part of creation depend upon Him.  Colossians 1:17 tells us:  “He was before all else began and it is his power that holds everything together” (TLB).

God was and is self-sufficient.  He didn’t need us, and He doesn’t need us, but He desired us.  He wanted to be able to fellowship, so He created all of this, every single bit of creation so that we would be able to live and enjoy a beautiful world that invites us to study it and come to appreciate God, the creator.  Since we didn’t obey His one basic rule, “Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” we couldn’t fellowship with Him.  So He provided a way for us to still be with Him.  He sent His Son, Jesus, so we could obtain forgiveness for not just that one sin, but also for every sin committed since then.  Once we accept that sacrifice of Jesus, we have eternal fellowship with God.  So, God is self-sufficient, but He desired us, and that is our great blessing.

Psalm 103:2-5                                      God Is Compassionate

“Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (NIV).

 

We count on God’s compassions every day.  I know I need His mercy and compassion daily because I don’t follow Him and His leading as I should.  I get lazy about Bible reading and I get lazy about prayer.  I don’t know why I do that because I am rewarded every time I read His Word, and I come away from prayer time, when I take time to listen for His voice, refreshed.  As a member of the human race, I sin both consciously and unconsciously much more than I should, but because of His compassionate nature, I can feel confident that He has forgiven me for all of my sins.  As Isaiah suggests in 49:13, I “Shout for joy, you heavens, rejoice, you earth, burst into song you mountains!  For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones” (NIV).  I shout, I rejoice, and I burst into song many times in life.  Why wouldn’t I shout because of the Lord’s compassion?  I shout at baseball games.  Why wouldn’t I rejoice because of His compassion?  I rejoice when I get a raise at work or get a compliment for some work I’ve done.  What better reason is there to sing than having received the compassion of the Lord?

We are rewarded for waiting on the Lord.  Isaiah tells us in 30:18, “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion, for the Lord is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for him” (NIV).  This verse makes it sound like God looks for opportunities to be gracious to us, and we are blessed when we wait for Him.  He makes an effort to show us compassion: “…he will rise up to show you compassion….”

Of course, John 3:16 tells of His greatest compassion for us.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (NIV).  That makes me eternally grateful to Him for His great compassion.

In his letter in 1 Peter, Peter was encouraging the Christians in Asia Minor who were being persecuted.  He told them in chapter 3, verses 8-9: “Finally, all of you, be like minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.  Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.  On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (NIV).  Sounds like serious instruction to “turn the other cheek.”  Jesus didn’t say that His instructions were easy, but they were right–as Jesus demonstrated in the time just prior to His crucifixion.  Sometimes it is costly to follow Jesus.