The Promise Series

motor.” The man does as he’s told.... No hum.

He says, “Go to the back and look for the cord.... see if it’s plugged into the the

energy source”...... There’s a long pause..... the young college grad realizes he forgot to

plug in his new fangled Refridgerator........ He comes back to the phone and says, “it

doesn’t really matter, for as much as I paid for this fridge it should have worked anyway.”

and hung up the phone.

The truth is it doesn’t matter how nice, how expensive your appliance is.... it

won’t work with out being plugged into the source of energy, right?

The same is true about our Spiritual Life... Unless we are plugged into the Holy Spirit, and

His power, our Christian life just won’t run, it just won’t make sense, it will be empty, and

everything will spoil and run onto the floor of life.

When God created you, When He saved us, He gave us all the necessary parts for

Spiritual life and victory. But we are dependant creatures. We have not been designed to

work on our own. Only as we are empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit will we

produce what our lives are suppossed to produce. If your not relying on that power

today, don’t be surprized if the milk of your life is spoiled, and the ice cream begins to

melt.

The Holy Spirit is God’s Supernatuaral fift to make the new being we have become alive

and real. The Holy Spirit is the heart and soul of the Christian faith and the victorious

Christian life, and if we don’t get plugged into him we will continue to experience defeat

after defeat.

This next statement is really important... you might write it down.

The Holy Spirit is necessary to make sure that our knowledge about God is

transformed into an experience with God. This doctrine of the the Spirit filled life is like

Freon of God’s Grace that flows through our new nature, keeping our spiritual lives at a

tempature that, like an expensive Refridarator, protects us from spoil and ruin and keeps

us fresh for God and nourishing to others.

This morning we are going to begin our study by looking at one of the foundational NT

passages for understanding the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. I’m talking about the

Upper Room conversation that we have read, Jesus delivered this message on the night of

the Last Supper and the night of his Betrayal. It was here He promised His followers that

God the Father would send them “another Helper.” v. 16.

This was not one of the greatest moments in the lives of the disciples. This was

what you would call a spiritual downtime. Everything was going wrong. Judas had

shown himself to be a traitor and had just left the room on his way to betray Christ. One

of the 12 was a Benedict Arnold.

More than that, Peter had just been toldl that within the next 24 hours he was

going to publicly deny Christ, (John 13:38)... And the Jews wanted to get rid of Christ and

all His followers, so the disciples had reason to be afraid.

Then came the worst blow. Jesus told them, “I am going to go away to prepare a

place for you. You can’t come to Me until I come for you. I am not going to tell you