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.