FILLING OUR SPIRITS WITH THE HOLY ADVOCATE-Let’s Talk About John 14:26 NIV
© Photo Credit: @rsone_design
Good afternoon my beautiful people! I hope you guys are all safe and well during this pandemic and that may God bless all of the lost loved ones around the world. I want to tell you that I love you all as a brother in Christ and that you’re worthy of salvation. All of us are. No matter who you are, what you look like, or where you’re from, God loves us all and He wants to fill our hearts with the Holy Spirits. This is why I want to talk about John 14:26 NIV. It states: ‘But 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.’ This is saying we are all allowed to be given the Holy Spirit known as the advocate so that we can use it to learn how to be godly and follow all of His instructions. I want to try to assess the meaning of advocate using the brief story of me and my high school counselor. Let’s begin with The Self Advocate.
The Self advocate
Let me tell you a time when I was younger. When I was a freshmen in high school, I was wandering around with no friends or mentors to guide me. I never got in trouble but I would always found excuses to not do well with my schoolwork. I would finish the school work but I never had the drive to get A’s and B’s. Instead, I would focus on trying to be an NBA player. It was an unrealistic goal considering that I was only 5’9, and my school district had never provided any future NBA prospects in the area. I made the cut on the freshmen basketball team, but I was a benchwarmer with an average skill. The only thing I did was be determined to rely on the coach’s instructions and learn from my teammates. That way I could perhaps get some minutes in the upcoming basketball games. I wanted to be a starter, but I never succeeded so I was sad and depressed. I wanted a mentor or someone who guides me to do great things in basketball. Then one day, I had a guidance counselor who would tell me to be my own self-advocate. She told me to rely on myself because if I relied on other people to get motivated, I would either procrastinate or repeat the same grade. In another words, she was saying that I was too mentor-dependant. I had no spirit of faith, courage, or independence. I was just simply waiting for someone to guide me to excel at my best. The advice was poignant and it made sense since I realized not one soul had pushed me for this long. So I started to take heed on her advice, and became more faithful of my independence, doing things on my own. After all it became a good sense of habit, and I learn how to build my work ethics. Indeed, I became my own self- advocate. By the end of the school year, I became more and more self reliant and so forth. I let God guide my path to success and I entered college in 2010 for a Liberal Arts bachelor’s degree. Mind you, this was before I even got to know who God really was, and something in my spirit told me to do God’s work. This may seem to be a little off topic with the verse of the day, but stay with me here. The spirit I had wasn’t the Holy Spirit yet, but it was just the spirit of self-advocacy. Now that I’ve graduated from college, I used that spirit of self advocacy to get farther in life.
The Holy Advocate
Now that I graduated from college, I continued to be my own self advocate. In doing so, I started to be wild, carefree and independent, living the life of sin. Disobeying God’s Will and living life the way I wanted to. Now, I’m not saying my guidance counselor’s advice was a wrong path to godly life. It was more like: I took her advice and twisted into my own meaning of being a self advocate, so therefore I was on a path to destruction. Doing whatever I wanted to do and didn’t care if it was ungodly since being a self advocate meant so much more than working and pushing myself. At that time, I needed the Holy advocate spirit, not just the self advocacy spirit. Even though the guidance counselor’s advice were pure and justified, I still needed salvation. So I got to know God and asked Him for the Holy advocate to fill my heart. Therefore, I felt alive and was able to serve Him with a purpose, being on the right path to a godly life. The Holy advocate, more simply known as the Holy Spirit is God’s gift for our hearts so that we can watch our actions and obey His Word. Everything we do in life, God sees and remembers. It will be recorded into our own Book of Life and for most of us, it won’t be a pretty thing to read. We all fall short of the glory of God and when we do read it, it will have us all feeling guilty for EVERYTHING we ever said, did, or thought about. That’s why God wants to give us the Holy advocate (Holy Spirit) so that we can live our lives the right way and obey his Word that leads to an everlasting life. Don’t get me wrong, the self advocacy spirit is great to have but once we are filled with the Holy Advocate, we will excel our purposes with love, complement, and obedience. God has never let us let down with it, so let’s ask Him for it!
Conclusion
You can be your own self advocate but we have to make sure we are going on the right path of Jesus Christ and receive the Holy Advocate known as the Holy Spirit. It’s a way to do our jobs properly by serving Him and fulfilling our purpose for Him. Everyone is given a purpose in life and we are expected to give it 100% using his guidance and instructions. I wanted to be in the NBA thinking I could be the next Allen Iverson. “No”. God said “Absolutely not, because I have a better plan for you and as long you have the Holy Spirit, you will happily compelled to do what’s best for yourself. Be a self-advocate in THAT regard, by doing your job the right way. My Way since I created you to be great and that you’ll have an everlasting life with Me. The Holy Spirit guides you to the right path of self-advocacy.” He didn’t say this to me, He said it to you and everyone else in this world. We just have to listen, and trust that He knows best even if we don’t think it is.
I may be a little off with explaining John 14:26, but all I’m trying to say is HOLY SPIRIT is the best advocate we’ll ever have in our lives. It’s a start of the progress to an everlasting life.
Are you ready to submit to God and receive the best advocate of your life known as the HOLY SPIRIT?
Feel free to leave your thoughts, comments, or questions below,
Peace and Love
© Photo Credit: Ryan Stone / @rsone_design
