The Holy Spirit As Our Tutor

John 14:15-17a, 26 (NIV) -

“If you love me, keep my commands. 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 Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

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Recap:

- Submitting to God, like submitting a test, means completely giving ourselves to Him to be judged, without taking anything back.

- The Bible is our textbook, which we can study to learn how God wants us to live.

- Jesus, the perfect student, sacrificed Himself to give His friends an answer key so we can properly interpret the Bible.

- Obedience to God's Word is the proof that we are actually one of Jesus' friends.

- Repentance, a complete change of our actions and direction, is absolutely necessary to become Jesus' friends. But how do we figure out what to change, and what to?

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When you're studying for a test, it is absolutely crucial to talk to someone who knows the subject matter a lot better than you - a teacher or a tutor. That way, if there are things that you don't understand, they can explain it to you to help you understand it. When it comes to living a godly life, there is no better tutor than the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is one member of the Trinity - God, Son, and Spirit. Because He is God, He knows exactly how God wants us to live, and because He lives inside every believer, He can teach us and empower us to actually do it!

(On a quick side note, notice the prerequisite that Jesus gives for receiving the Holy Spirit at the beginning of today's passage - we must be obedient, like we discussed the other day.)

The main resource that a tutor uses to explain things is the textbook, and the Holy Spirit is no different. The most common way that He will teach us what is right and what is wrong is to point us back to the Bible (our textbook). He will make particular verses stand out to us and help us to understand their meaning, then apply those lessons to our life to become more like Jesus. This is what we call revelation or illumination.

Sometimes, a tutor will use an example from real life to help you understand a lesson. In the same way, the Holy Spirit will sometimes use the situations that we're going through to help us understand things about who God is and how to live the way He wants us to. When we know there's a lesson to be learned and something new to discover about God in every situation, it can make the difficult times a little bit more peaceful to go through because we know there's purpose to the pain.

However, in order to receive the full benefits of a tutor, you have to keep meeting with them regularly. Otherwise, you'll never learn anything new and you'll forget the things you did learn. If we don't keep making time to be with God, invite the Holy Spirit to be with us, and communicate with Him every day, then we will stop growing as Christians and eventually fall back into our old ways of sin.

With that said, how do we spend time with God? What do we talk with Him about? Tomorrow, we will look at the topic of prayer.