Holy Spirit Sweetness

The Holy Spirit Is With You

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

John 16:13

The sweetness of the presence of the Holy Spirit is hard to put into words: deep peace, love imparted, hope released, and faith encouraged. The Holy Spirit’s job is take all that Christ did on the Cross and make it known to us. Not known in our heads as information, but truth taken, illumined, revealed, and applied in our hearts. The Holy Spirit makes Christ available to us, in us, and through us. He can make the sweetness of Christ’s presence known to us every minute of every hour of every day.

The Holy Spirit makes grace (i.e., Jesus) available to empower us to live the Christian life: make righteous choices, overcome temptations, receive gifts for service, strength in spiritual warfare, and an anointing for evangelism. As believers, we can be assured that wherever we are, the Holy Spirit’s sweet presence goes with us making Christ known to the hurting of this world.

Wherever you have to go, whatever you may have to do, however isolated your life may be, the Holy Spirit is with you and in you to make you aware of the presence of Christ. Christ reveals himself to you thus; and every time of awareness, every time of recollectedness, is the direct result of the operation of the Holy Spirit in your mind bringing you to think about, recollect, and to respond to the presence of your Lord.

Whatever you have to do in the shop, or office, or factory, or home, on the street, or as you travel, as you in these varied senses and occupations recall Jesus Christ, it is the Holy Spirit who is enabling you to do it.

In the special circumstances of life, you may be cut off from Christian fellowship. But you face all such loneliness in the calm confidence that the Spirit of God is always within you to remind you of the presence of Christ.

Christian fellowship is a glad and happy thing, but it is not the chief thing in a Christian’s life. The chief thing is to have Christ Himself. And that gracious presence is ministered to you through the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

Thus in every of temptation or difficulty the Holy Spirit is ready to reveal Christ as the answer to all your problems and the Savior from all temptations.

J. Russell Howden cited in His Victorious Indwelling, ed., Nick Harrison (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 12.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.