HRT: Advent 2022 Day 32

My two year old son has a favorite phrase. All throughout the day, in any number of situations, he looks to me or my wife and says, “Help me!” Even at such a young age, my son recognizes that in order to flourish in life he is going to need outside help. But isn’t that one of the first things we jettison from our psyche as we grow up? Doesn’t the world encourage us to live as self-sufficiently as possible, and aren’t we told that needing help is a sign of weakness or laziness?

Oh, how detrimental is this aversion to outside help for our spiritual lives. Think about it. Who among us can honestly affirm that we love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and strength as Scriptures command (Deuteronomy 6:5)? None of us! And yet, so often we live as if we can. But this pretense does great harm to our relationship with the Lord with very little upside. It drives us into shame when we inevitably succumb to temptations, dilutes the power of God’s grace, and erects a wall of pride between us and our heavenly Father.

I am convinced that there is a better way to live, and it has everything to do with the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, he promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth (John 16:13). His disciples would have immediately picked up on the allusion to the Old Testament promise detailing how God would one day put his own Spirit within his people to cause them to follow his ways faithfully (Ezekiel 36:27). This was one of the last promises that Jesus made before leaving, which should demonstrate for us that our Savior knows that we need divine help as we work out how to follow him in our daily lives. So Christ guarantees that help. As Paul writes, “In him you also were sealed with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13).

Therefore, obedience to Christ is as much a work of the Spirit as it is our personal responsibility. He is the one who removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart that is alive to the will of God. He is the one who writes the gospel upon our hearts so that the redemptive purposes of God for us and the world becomes the focus of our lives (2 Corinthians 3:3).