Daily Prayer Devotional for Women and Men | OnlinePrayerJournal

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For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.

The Work of the Holy Spirit 26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.  27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning. 16  “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away.  2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.  3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.  4 I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you,  5 but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’  6 Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things.  7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  8 When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:  9 about sin, because people do not believe in me;  10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer;  11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. 12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.  13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.  14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.  15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

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Today, I went for an X-ray. This remarkable technology shows my doctor what she cannot see with her eyes: the bone formation inside my foot. X-rays reveal truth. Yet this truth is largely limited to bones and metal plates. By contrast, Jesus talks of the Holy Spirit as being the guide to ‘all the truth’ (16:13, emphasis added). Like a witness in a court of law, the Holy Spirit speaks the whole truth and also nothing but the truth—‘he will speak only what he hears’ (16:13). The Spirit speaks truth in different ways. He speaks truth to the world, proving it ‘in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment’ (16:8). The Spirit discerns and reveals what is evil, false, unjust, and so on. On a personal level, when the Spirit blows truth into our lives, awakening our consciences, he reveals what’s wrong about the values and habits we thought were harmless. On a broader plane, the world sometimes glorifies what is hateful or ungodly; we need to be alert to what the Spirit may be challenging around us. Most importantly, the Spirit will ‘testify’ about Jesus (15:26) to us and to others. The apostles have a duty to testify about Jesus as well, as they have known him during his earthly ministry (15:27). It is only through the glorifying, truth-bearing power of the Spirit that anyone can come to know Jesus for themselves, in John’s day or our own. Jesus tells his disciples all this so that they ‘will not fall away’ (16:1). When difficulties come, it’s easy for us to lose sight of spiritual truths. Make it your practice, intentionally and regularly, to bring to mind his teaching.

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