Seperated From the Ones You Love

It is natural for us to try to protect the ones we love. It can be simple things like pointing out a hole or an uneven spot in the ground. I have learned that if there is a hole my wife will find it, if she finds it she will step into it and if she steps into it she will hurt herself. One of the habits I have developed is to take her arm on a steep slope or an icy walk and help hold her up, I also point out obstacles and holes trying to keep her from getting injured.

I can’t alway fill in the holes or remove the ice but I can at least point out the problems and help her avoid them.

That is kind of the idea that Jesus had in the first part of today’s passage.

John 16:1–4 NASB95

“These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. “These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me. “But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.

Jesus knew that the road ahead would be hard and that there would be many obstacles. He knew that some of those obstacles would come from the least likely places. All that he has been saying and warning them of, all of his advice and warnings were his way of warning them of the obstacles ahead, trying to keep them from stepping in a hole. Not just the disciples but all of his followers, including you and me.

I have heard a lot of people talk about the persecution that the early church experienced from the Romans and I agree that it was terrible. It must have been hard to live and worship in a time when you could be killed just for going to a bible study. I think that there must have been constant stress and constant worry over getting found out and getting arrested. They must have feared the Romans and their government. I also think that there was something much worse for them to worry about.

In my life I have been in the military and worked in several forms of construction. I have been around rough men and rough language. I have been cursed at and I have cursed myself. It was just the way it was and everyone expected it whether they liked it or not. I don’t really remember much of that today. Do you know what I can remember. I remember the first time I passed a group of teenage girls and one of them was cursing. She was not exceptionally vile or even all that good at it but at the time I had rarely ever heard a woman curse and to hear a young lady curse like that shocked me. It was so unexpected.

I remember in church camp a little kid cursing and shocking the camp workers because at that time to hear a child curse was surprising. Sadly, today neither of these occurrences is rare at all. But do you know the one time I was really shocked. The one it took years to get over. I was walking into the office to visit the pastor who licensed me to preach because I had questions for him and just before I reached the door I heard him say a curse word. It was not a rant and it was far from the worst I had heard, It had something to do with a big concrete wall holding back water. I had heard it before and even used it before, that was not what shocked me. It was that a preacher, a man I respected and considered a man of God said it. He had hurt his finger and it slipped out and I was shocked. I just couldn’t believe it. I know that today you might not find this shocking but I had it in my mind that his man was above such things, pastors were above such things, it never occured to me that a pastor could cuss more less that he would. I was shocked. It came completely out of the blue and that made it so much worse.

I think the thing that stressed the early Christians out so badly was not the Roman persecution but the fact that their friends and neighbors were turning them in. It was not the act of being persecuted but the feeling of being betrayed that hurt the most.

Jesus told his disciples, and us, that they would be thrown out of the synagogue and that the ones who would kill them would think that they were doing a service for God. The very ones who betrayed them would think that they were doing something good. One of the hardest things to bear is to know that the one who is mistreating you and abusing you is doing so because they think that they are doing a good thing by betraying you. It can happen right here in a modern church.

Doing the right thing is always best, but it is not always popular. Sometimes the very people you are trying to help can hate you for it. Anyone who has worked with an addict knows this full well. The very one you are trying to help, the one you are going out of your way for, the one you are risking your heart and your home and your goods for will often hate you for it. After you struggle and wrestle and pray for what to do, after you agonize and beg God for a solution and you finally get peace about how to proceed and what to do next, how to help and what the best thing to do is, after all of your worry and sleepless nights you do your very best to help, you do the right thing and the one you love curses you and hates you for it. I wish I could make it so that it is not so, I wish I could make it so that the ones you try to help always appreciate it and always get better, but that is not what is true. I can’t always remove the holes or clean away the ice, sometimes all I can do is warn you of the danger and be there to lean on when you stumble. Life can be hard that way.

Of course if you know the danger, if you expect the betrayal it takes some of the sting out of it. Not all the sting by any means but some of it. If there is someone there to lean on it makes it easier to get through it, it doesn’t make it easy, but it makes it easier.

But what about when you can’t be there to help the ones you love, what about when they are far away or on their own. What do you do then. When I was in the Navy I would be gone for 6-8 months at a time. I could not be there for my wife or my children. I made what preparations I could. I set up direct deposit checks so they had money, found a place to live, did what I could do, but if the car broke down or the kids misbehaved I knew that I couldn’t help, it would be all up to them. I found out that it is hard to let go. On my first deployment I had nothing else to do, just wait.

Before I got out of the service something drastically changed. I had a new option. I could not stay and I could not protect them, but I knew someone who could.

John 16:5–15 NASB95

“But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

When it came close to the time for Jesus to go he promised us that he would send another helper, one who would always be with us and who would be able to reveal even more to us than Jesus did, not because he is better or more knowledgeable than Jesus but because we were not yet ready to hear it all, but the holy spirit would be there, ready and waiting when we were.

When I am out of town, or when I am just across town I can’t be there to protect my family. If my wife walks somewhere and I am not right there with her I cannot warn her of holes or ice or let her lean on me. Even if I am right there I can’t always see all the pitfalls before they are a problem or even protect her from all the things I know will hurt her. To complicate things even more my children have grown up and they live their own lives. I cannot be with them all because they are in different states doing different things. I can’t be with them and protect them everywhere they go and if I could I can promise you that they would not like it. I can’t do those things but the holy spirit can.

Jesus knew that he would soon leave the earth and he did not want to leave the ones he loved unprotected. So he sent another helper, the holy spirit. The part of the Godhead who lives inside us, the one who is constantly with us and in us. The one who never leaves us and who is always right beside us. How wonderful to have someone right there with us every moment of every day who knows all of the pitfalls and how to avoid them. How marvelous to know that we have access to the knowledge and power of God every time and everywhere. Of course there is still a problem.

Last week I was out at a doing disaster relief work after a tornado and high winds. Normally I am using a chainsaw either on the ground or in the man lift for most of the day. This week was different. We have a skid steer that we use to move brush and logs and our normal operator was not with us this trip. For about half of a day I was operating the skid steer but most of the time I was on the ground with a headset talking to the operator. We had a chance to let someone who hasn’t operated it much get some training and someone else who had never been in one begin to learn. My job was to be on the ground and talk them through how to operate the skid steer and keep them from running over anything or anyone.

One of the guys we had in there just didn’t seem to listen at all. As you would tell him what to do he would ignore it and do something else. Can you imagine trying to train someone who just won’t do what you tell them to do. It is both frustrating and ineffective. Inside that skid steer you are surrounded by a cage and you cannot see behind you at all and not much to the sides. When the claw is down that we use to pick up the wood it is hard to see past it and see what you are doing. The man on the ground can see much, much better than the one in the machine. Combine that lack of vision with the lack of experience and it is hard to do anything right.

That is why I was there, I know how to operate the machine and what it is capable of and I can see clearly what the operator cannot see at all. When the operator listened to me I could explain what he could not see and things went a lot better but sometimes he could act on what he could see and I knew it would not work, because I saw things much more clearly than he did. It only worked as it is supposed to when he listened to the one who could see what he could not see.

Life works the same way. The holy spirit can see much more clearly than we can. He knows all the pitfalls and he knows exactly how to avoid them. We only see a small portion of what he sees and we can’t see the safe path. The only way to be successful is to rely on his sight and his judgement. If we try to do it on our own we fall into hidden snares and it just doesn’t work. If we allow him to guide us we can succeed where we would fail left on our own.

So how about your life. Are you letting the spirit guide you with his superior understanding and his clearer vision or are you trying to muddle through based on what you can see and getting stuck in all the pits that you either can’t see or can’t avoid. How would you like to live. Successfully due to clear vision and clear understanding or stumbling in the dark and guessing about what is in front of or behind you. It’s your choice. The guide is there, every moment, willing to help you and direct you, all you have to do is listen.

Other things we do to protect those we love are more complicated like figuring out how much life insurance you need or structuring your retirement to protect them when we are gone.