The Spirit will teach you about Jesus in ways no one else can teach you.
It’s one thing to read the scriptures like you read a textbook. It’s something else entirely to read them and ask the Spirit of God to illuminate them for you, to make the words alive and awake in such a way that they are distinctly and perfectly applicable in your life. One gives you facts about God, the other gives your access to the intimate places in God’s heart.
What is more powerful and life-giving—knowing facts about a person, or knowing their essence and their soul? Which makes for a more intimate relationship?
The Spirit gives you access to this kind of intimacy with God, all the time.
Listen to how Paul says it in 1 Cor. 2:9-12:
But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
The Spirit will open your eyes to the truth about yourself.
The Spirit of God knows you intimately. He made you, after all, so he knows the truth about you, and can separate the truth from the lies. If you’re willing to listen to him, to respond to His critique and to be obedient, you will grow and change and become more like Him.
He can show you the evil in your heart. He can open your eyes to your sin and compromise. He can peel back the layers of selfishness and pride you don’t even realize are still there, and he can whisper to you the things that would please Jesus. Meanwhile, He holds you in the grip of God’s grace.
Are you trying to “stay faithful” without Him? Is it working?
