Experiencing God // The Holy Spirit and Me, Part 3

The only way we really get to know someone is to live with them. Problem is that today, that can just mean shacking up. But God has a plan to make His home in us – and it’s so much more than what the world has to offer.

The only way really to know someone is to live with them in the same house, day after day, year after year. Boy meets girl and they get engaged, they get married and on their honeymoon they think they already know each other but the reality is they don't really and they're going to spend the rest of their lives trying to figure one another out. That’s the wonderful mystery of marriage. When I signed up with Jesus, when I made that decision to give my life to Him, to follow Him, I thought, "I just don't want some Sunday religion thing, I want to know Him and the only way to know someone is to live with them."

Nowadays living together, couples just moving in, is an accepted part of life in our society. Many people decide never to get married at all. In any case the whole marriage thing, well it ain't what it used to be, somewhere between a third and a half of all marriages end in divorce. The idea is that you move in on your own terms without any permanent commitment and if you want you can leave, it's the way of the world, it's a lifestyle choice.

Sounds good until you talk to someone who's been through divorce or been through a separation, when a man and a woman share each others homes and lives and souls and bodies and when they sleep in the same bed they become one flesh, that's Gods plan. The two become one and when you tear that apart it hurts something terrible, it's an unbelievable pain.

So what about God? If we want to know Him we have to live with Him and that's the way it goes but what does that plan look like? What if it ends up in divorce? How do we live with God? Jesus has a plan, it's a beautiful, eternal, wonderful plan for you and me to get to know Him. And it's not like the worlds plan that says, "Stay as long as you feel like it." It's a perfect plan, it's a plan made on God’s terms and not ours. Have a look at this, this is what Jesus said. We looked at this yesterday and I'd like to look at it again today.

He says, "If you love me you'll obey what I command and I'll ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world can't accept this spirit because it doesn't see Him or know Him but you know Him because He lives with you and He will be in you. I won't leave you as orphans, I'll come to you, before long the world won't see me anymore but you will because I live you'll live too and on that day you will realise that I am in my Father and you're in me and I'm in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them that one loves me and the one who loves me will be loved by my Dad and I too will love Him and show myself to Him and we will come and make a home with them."

A promise of Jesus to be with us, in us, make His home with us through the Holy Spirit forever and ever and ever, but it's not for everyone. Let me say that very clearly, I was talking to a man a little while ago who wanted God but wanted to live his life on his own terms. He wanted the relationship but he didn't want to live it God’s way. Look at what Jesus said again:

If you love me you will obey my commandments and I will ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.

In other words this is on Jesus terms.

If you love me, you'll obey me.

Jesus isn't some cuddly lap dog, some fluffy soft toy, not some buddy to perform tricks when we want Him to and to get us out of a pickle.

God is God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Not a bunch of rules, not saying you've got to do all these things in order for me to love you but if we want to be in a relationship with Him we have to be in that relationship on Gods terms. He is looking for someone with a heart that’s open to learn from Him:

If you love me, if you really love me you will want to obey my commands and I'll send another comforter just like me.

I love that second bit.

I'll send you the Holy Spirit to be with you forever.

Not shacking up, not a try before you buy arrangement, I mean I accepted God as a teenager but as I grew up into adulthood I turned my back on Him, I wandered so far away I didn't even know if He still existed but He was still there in my hour of need because the promise of Jesus was:

I'll be with you forever.

And I'd accepted Him and for eighteen years I wandered in this wilderness and forgot all about Him but He didn't forget about me. And the third part of His promise, firstly that God will send us another counsellor, Holy Spirit who's just like Jesus. The second part is that He will be with us forever; the third part is a promise of intimacy. Jesus says, "I won't leave you as orphans, I'll come to you. The world won't see me but you will and I'll be in Dad and you’ll be in me and we'll be together and I'll come and Dad and I and the Holy Spirit will make our home with you."

That’s the language of marriage, that's the language of intimacy. The promise is the presence of God in us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus, Dad, the Holy Spirit making their home, living together in us forever.

When you think about a husband and wife they share every room in the house, they share their body and their soul, it's the same with Jesus but deeper. With the Holy Spirit we get to share our spirit with Him, that deepest, deepest part of us. Now some people want to keep Jesus out of this room or that room and then they wonder why there's no intimacy. "Well I want all of Jesus but I don't want Him in this part of my life" or "I still want to go off and do this and not obey Him" and think well, it's not working, that's because Jesus said:

If you love me you'll do what I command.

It's on His terms; the amazing thing is Jesus doesn't actually say "don’t do this" very often. There's a handful of things that He says, "they're not good for you - don’t do them" but if we want to go against them, if we want to be angry, if we want to criticise people, if we want to lie or cheat or be dishonest, we're not going to know this peace and this intimacy and this relationship.

Will we let Jesus and the Holy Spirit into every room in our lives, work, school, homes, thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, anxieties, everything? Will we have a relationship where there's no room that we don't let Him into? No part of our lives that we don't share with Him, the Holy Spirit and me, the Holy Spirit and you.

God has a plan, that plan is for a wonderful intimacy, that plan is for Him to set up His home in me, in you and to live together not for a month or a year or five years or ten years until we divorce but forever and ever and ever. And even when you and I blunder and we go off on our own and make mistakes, Jesus never forsakes us, He never leaves us, never goes away because His promise that when we accept Him, He will come and dwell in us forever and ever and ever.

The Holy Spirit is how He does it; the Holy Spirit is God in us.