Spirit-of-Truth

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The Spirit of Truth "Healing" and "Revival" almost seem to be "magic words". Some churches are only talking of "The Spirit" but tend to forget the contents of "the Truth-part…" How can one really worship in Spirit and in Truth ? And what is meant by "Truth" ?

The Truth of God
Some churches think, that truth comes from our hearts. If that would be so: why would we need Jesus ? And if Jesus would be The Truth only: then why would we need The Holy Spirit…? And when we need The Holy Spirit: then why would He be showing us our transgression…? And furthermore…how are transgressions measured and why would His Spirit ask us to bring our sin to Jesus…?

Biblical Truth…

A: John 17:17 - Gods Word is the Truth
B: John 14:6 - Jesus is the Truth
C: John 1:17 - Gods Commandments, Gods Law, is the Truth

In order to receive The Spirit of Truth we need to be born again in Christ. And being a Christian means following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. But being born again doesnot mean that we will stay without sin. So thats why we need to know Gods Commandments (to understand what it is what we do against Gods Will), the Holy Spirit of God shows us our sin and He points toward Jesus. And Jesus will forgive us our transgressions when we ask Him with a heart of remource.

John 14:15-17:
"If you love Me, keep My commandments.And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever. "The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you."

When you really love Jesus, you have to keep His Commandments: Love God above all and love your fellow-human-being as you love yourself. And it won't come as a suprise to you, that His Commandments, spoken in general, are in fact the same as The Commandments of His Father, because these 10-Commandments are the "formal way" of (doing) what Jesus asks of us !

The first 4-Commandments are all about showing love and respect for God. The other 6-Commandments are about showing love and respect for all people. Jesus adds "the love-part" to it. One shouldnot try to consider keeping the Commandments as "a work" but one should keep the Commandments out of love and respect.

The Spirit of Truth or…another spirit…?!
That brings us to another issue. How do we know it is "The Holy Spirit" we are dealing with ? Some churches and people say that you can feel it. "Gods Spirit feels great" they say. Is that really so ? Is that a biblical remark or conclusion ?

I don't think so. Of course: when we grow in Truth we will be blessed by God, but wouldn't it be a lot better to ask Gods Word what the Holy Spirit does in our lives and how it will feel.

Before Gods Word tells us how we will experience The Holy Spirit of God, we first have to be sure it really is the Spirit of God !

According to John 14:15-17 and the above mentioned biblical meanings of the word "Truth" we know that:

We need to love Jesus

We need to keep His Commandments

We need The Word of God

We need the guidance of His Spirit

Why we need all this: God ask from us that we change. Our lives have to change. We have to learn to show love and respect for God, for Jesus and our fellow-human-being. And not by our standards and rules, but by His standard and rules: His Commandments and the Commandments of His Son. And we can only receive the Spirit of Truth when we give The Truth, Jesus, a central place in our lives: in thinking, doing and changing towards God. And we need Jesus.

The real Commandments of God (Exodus 20:1-12)

1. "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."

2. "You shall have no other gods before Me."

3. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;

4. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day* is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it **.

5. "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you".

6. "You shall not murder".

7. "You shall not commit adultery".

8. "You shall not steal".

9. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor".

10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."

* The Sabbath-day is the seventh-day of the week; Sunday is the first day of the week ! *
** God hallowed the seventh day, the Sabbath (Genesis) and He did so as an example for us. Clearly the Sabbath-Commandment is NOT Jewish, but it is God's Day ! **

The main reason I say "the real Commandments of God" is because we all know the Roman Catholic Church changed the 10-Commandments. The Roman Church took away the part that is about not making "a carved image" (=third Commandment), the part of the Sabbath (=Friday Sunset till Saturday Sunset; fourth Commandment) and changed it to the Sunday. In order to have 10 Commandments again the RC-Church split up the tenth Commandmend into two seperate commandments ...

Of course the Roman Catholic Church had it's reasons for doing this.

The Roman Catholic Church makes statues of saints

The Roman Catholic Church worships statues of saints

The Roman Catholic Church worships the 3-in-1 sungod; also known as "IHS". This "IHS" you can find on many Roman Catholic Church-walls and means "Isis, Horus and Seth"; the 3-in-1 sungod.

As we know from Gods Word: Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath; not of the Sunday. The Sunday is the day of sunworship and this day is dedicated to LUCIFER (=satan).

The Spirit of Truth: how can we recognize Him ? (John 16:7-9)
"Nevertheless 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 depart, I will send Him to you. "And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment."
The Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement. Those are very harsh words... But what would it mean in "faith-experience" ? We already learned, that the Spirit of God points towards God, towards Jesus and toward His Commandments. Now we read that He will make us aware of our sin, of our righteousness and of judgement... What would this mean in sense of faith experience ?

It means:
A. Gods Spirit will show us our sin
B. Gods Spirit will show us our actions and whether they are righteous or not
C. Gods Spirit will show us the causes of our actions

How would this feel...? Pleasant...? I don't think so. Maybe we will feel sad about this and cry. Maybe we would feel small because of this. Maybe it would makes us feel sorry for what we have done. And maybe that is exactly what the Helper of God should be doing: helping us in order we can change our ways. He helps us changing our hearts and our actions towards others.

Maybe you now start wondering: "A lot of people feel great ecstasy, lots of people experience "a laughing-wave" (=Toronto Experience)". Other people "fall in the Spirit"; they suddenly collapse or fall down. Does this look like the working of Gods Spirit ?! Is this similar to what the Bible describes ? No. Not at all ! Gods Spirit has nothing to do with the "I feel good-idea or feeling". But there is more...

Keeping the Holy Spirit is all about your (daily) life...
Keeping the Holy Spirit is all about your (daily) life. From John 14:15-17 we have learned that we need The Spirit of Truth to point out our sins and ways out to us, but before He will do so, we need Jesus and God in our lives for The Spirit also point towards Gods Commandments (nature of the transgression(s)) and He will point towards Jesus for we need to be cleansed from our sins, so we can come to God without sins.

Besides the knowledge and trust in God and Jesus we have to act accordingly. Not only when we are in church or during a praise-gathering, but in our daily life towards God and our fellow-men.

From the story of the ten virgens (Mattew 25) and the connecting story (Mattew 25:14) of the man travelling to a far country and gave his servants "talents" we also know, that we can only keep the Spirit "burning from within" when and only when we keep God in our daily doings. In honour of Him and so tellings other people of Him.

God asks us to live in accordance to His Word and Commandments. We need The Spirit to points out to us our sin and wrong ways and at the same time we need a heart of remource because of our wrong doings. Only then Jesus can cleanse us from our transgressions. Only asking without any regrets would be useless and wouldnot lead to a changed heart.

Worshipping in Spirit and in Truth... has very little to do with music, trance, feeling-good or "the great experience". Worshipping in Spirit and in Truth has to do with the centre of your life, your doings/ways and your changing heart...

Written by: Hein Kuipers dd. 17-th of March 2003

Sources

The Word of God; The New King James Bible

De The video-teachings of Prof. W. Veith - South-Africa

Several video's from our www.Sign2God.com - video-list

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