The Holy Spirit Has Come

Scripture Reading: John 20:30-31, Hebrews 1:1-3, John 14:18, John 16:7-11, Acts 2:1-4, Acts 2:14-21, Ephesians 1:11-14

As we’ve been reading this year’s Advent study together, I’ve both loved and struggled with that uncomfortable feeling of the in-between. There are so many ways we get to experience these aspects of Jesus now, and there are still so many we cannot fully experience until we’re in His presence. The lyric from the Jimmy Eat World song, “The Middle,” comes to mind—”It just takes some time / Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride / Everything, everything’ll be just fine / Everything, everything’ll be alright, alright.”

There are some days when I don’t fully believe those words. Faith tells me everything will truly and completely be alright, but logic, emotion, experience, and even well-meaning family and friends can slip notes of doubt into my mind’s mailbox. This is, I’m very thankful to say, why Jesus did not leave us to our own devices when He returned to the right hand of the Father. He sent us His Spirit to be with us always as a close, ever-present Counselor. 

The role of the Counselor according to John 16 doesn’t sound super fun and exciting at first read, but these convictions of sin, righteousness, and judgment are the things we need in order to find the true peace, joy, and belonging of Jesus’s presence. If I want to follow the Jesus I read about in Scripture, I need to have the Holy Spirit’s convictions of my sin in order to turn my heart back to Him. If I want to live with the same love and grace Jesus is known for, I need the Holy Spirit’s conviction on righteousness to guide my thoughts and actions. If I want to have the endurance to withstand the suffering and brokenness of this world until God makes all things new, I need the Holy Spirit to strengthen me as Jesus was fortified to endure the world’s judgment of Him. 

Looking at that job description, the Holy Spirit has quite a task when it comes to leading and shaping me to be more like Christ! It’s hard not to think that there has to be something more I need or something I must be missing when it comes to knowing how to live and love like Jesus. But as Ephesians says, the Spirit is the “down payment of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14), so the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life is the firstfruits of our relationship with Him. 

I can’t help but think of the many, many phone calls with lenders and seemingly never-ending list of documents and identifications from our home-buying process, all just to prove that the money for our down payment was indeed ours! As cliché as it sounds, praise God that’s not what having the Holy Spirit as our down payment looks like in His kingdom. The Holy Spirit is not something we have to scrape and save for or something we have to prove we possess; the Spirit is here with us now, giving us the convictions of sin, righteousness, and judgment that make us more like Christ. As we long to live according to God’s wisdom and His best way, we reach for the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit to lead us in the way everlasting.

Written by Kayla De La Torre