The Helper You've Been Ignoring

Today, I want to start with a confession, and I want you to hear it as a confession and not some grand setup. As I was looking back, we're more than 60 episodes into the show. 60. And I've talked about the Father.I've talked to him about the provider and being the judge, the one who runs down the road to meet the boy who wasted everything. And of course, I've talked about the Son, Jesus Christ. I talked about the cross more times than I can even count.We talked about the empty tomb, we talked about the blood, and we talked about the ransom and the name above every name. But in 60 plus episodes, I've never once taught about the Holy Spirit. Not one time. You might be saying, ralph, okay, that's great. We know about God.We know about his son, Jesus Christ. But why does that matter about the Holy Spirit? And as I thought about that, I think the gap is bigger than just me.I think it's a picture of something that we have to really embrace today. Because if I ask you about God the Father, you can answer that question pretty easily. You can find the words.If I ask you about his son, Jesus, you would light up and say, oh, he's the center of my life. And you'd have a story about that. But if I asked you about the Holy Spirit, really, what does the Holy Spirit mean to you?I think most of you would go quiet. I know I would. You would say something about this feeling, you know, that goosebump you feel during a song. Maybe the word dove comes to mind.But then look. And you'd hope I would take it from there. Probably just help you fill in the blanks.We have a member of the Trinity that most of us treat like a rumor, like a whisper in the distance. And I think it's costing us more than we know. Hello and welcome to Truth Unveiled with Ralph.I'm Ralph Estep Jr. And I just want to thank you for giving me time today. And I don't take it lightly. Everybody who shows up every week and listens to this accountant talk about faith, it really helps build me up.And today I want to talk about something I should have talked about probably 50 episodes ago. And I want to look straight at that third person of the Trinity. Honestly, when I look around in our culture, we don't talk about it much.Let's let Jesus tell us who he is, not our own nervousness. And here's the thesis of the entire episode for today.I'm going to say it plain out right from the beginning so you know where we're going in your life. You're not supposed to be doing this alone. You were never supposed to be doing this alone at all. And that's the reason I think some of us are.So many of us feel like we're constantly running on fumes. Maybe right now, as you watch this or listening to, you're like, ralph, man, my gas tank is empty.And we're trying to obey a God that we genuinely love. We all love God, right? But you've been treating his helper, the one that Jesus promised us, like it's some optional feature.Like, well, yeah, maybe I could use that. Jesus had one night left with the men he loved. His Last supper. And I just want to lean into this a little bit.I want you to understand how he chose to spend it. What he said. This is exactly what he said. He said, I'm not leaving you as orphans. That's where we're headed on today's show.Well, let me get right into the primary text because I want to read it. I want you to understand. The night before Jesus went to the cross. Just picture this, if you will. Here he is at a table with all of his friends.You've seen the pictures of the Last Supper. He knows he's about to be arrested. He knows where he's going the next day. And this is how he spends the last hours on earth.We're going to go to John, chapter 14, verses 15 to 27. And this is what it said right there.It says, jesus himself, he says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. And then he continues on. He says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you yet a little while, and the world will see me no more.But you will see me because I live. You also will live. In that day. You will know that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I in you.And whoever has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to Him.And that was when Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, lord, how is it that you will be manifest yourself to us and not be in the world? And I'm just going to pause there for a second. What a great Question.And I. I think about, if I was there, I would ask the same question, like Jesus, wait a second. Where. Where are you going? I don't think they had an understanding of where he was going, but then he answered this. To continue on the text.He says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me these things.I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring you your remembrance.All that I have said to you, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let your hearts not be troubled, neither let them be afraid. That's the text.And just think about if you were in the room, what Jesus just laid on there. He's telling you, hey, yes, I'm going away, but I'm leaving something even stronger than what I gave you. So let's get to the hard parts.First, I want to talk about the diagnosis. I want to kind of take this apart. Why we made this Holy Spirit, just be a feeling for us. This professional reflex.I'm going to tell you about it like I use myself as an example. I'm a licensed public accountant. I've been doing the same job for more than 30 years. I practice in Middletown, Delaware.And for 30 years, I've built a reflex that I'm honestly not proud of. And you're going to laugh when I tell you this, but you know what I do for a living? I fix things. People come to me. I fix them all the time.Throughout the year, somebody comes into my office and they set a grocery bag of unopened mail on my desk. Hey, Ralph, here's what it is. They quit looking at it a year ago. They're like, I don't even know what's in that envelope anymore.Ralph, this is what you do. Take care of it. And I take that problem off of their desk and I put it onto my desk. That's the service that I do. And it's good work.It's been very fruitful for me. It's provided for me. It's provided for my family in ways that God has blessed me richly. And it's why I can talk to you today.But I've spent 30 years being the guy who Fixes it. And it makes a man very, very bad at being helped. To be honest with you, because I'm the fixer. You can ask my wife this. Jennifer will tell you this.I carry a thing for weeks and then I mention it in the past tense after I've already handled it. But I didn't ask anybody for help. I just did it. This is what I do. I fix things. And I gotta be honest with you, I think it's.My professional deformity is actually a spiritual one. And if we're being honest with each other, I think a lot of you share that same one.Because we've made the Christian Life a self improvement project and Jesus is our sponsor in that. But we've missed a main part of that because that's what happens when you delete the Holy Spirit. And I see it done in three ways.I want to get into those three ways that we've deleted the Holy Spirit because I've done all three of these. This is a very introspective episode today. The first way I feel like we've done it, we've turned them into a feeling.I've mentioned this a couple times, like, oh, that goosebump feeling, that feeling of being with the Spirit. You've probably heard if you go to church, oh, I'm in the Spirit today.If the only time you think about the Holy Spirit is when the music swells, then the spirits become an emotion that you have at church. And on those mornings where you feel nothing, where you don't feel that swell, you just feel like, oh, here's another day in paradise, as they say.He seems like he's completely gone from you. And your sense of God's presence rises and falls with the emotion of the day. It rises and falls with your sleep, with your blood sugar.And then, of course, if the worship leader at church picks a great one, you're like, oh, yeah, there's the Spirit. I'm in it today. Well, that's a miserable way to live.And I've lived it because the helper's been here all this time and I just didn't even think about, like, he's right here with me. He's right there with us right now. I honestly believe right at this moment, the Holy Spirit is speaking through me.And I don't say that in a weird way. I think he's helping me along this because I'm just an accountant.I don't have any formal theological training, but I feel like he's given me this gift and I lean on him right before I record every time I always say, holy Spirit, speak through me. Because it's not. I don't want you to hear my words. I want you to hear his words. So that's the first thing. I think we've made it a feeling.The second way I think we've made it a problem is we turn them into somebody else's problem.I just want you to think about your childhood when you were younger, because a lot of us grew up in rooms where the Holy Spirit was at church down the road. That got weird. Remember those people that they played with snakes and they talked about these Holy Spirit revivals and.And we kind of distance ourselves from that. Oh, that's those strange people down the road. And I don't think that was anything other than a normal reaction.That's what we do when people feel like it's too much. But in a lot of ways, in our current Christian culture, I think we've overcorrected with that.I hear all the time people saying, oh, I'm a lover of Jesus. I'm one to embrace Jesus. I want to be with Jesus. That's great. But I think we've missed a mark here.We've built a very careful, very orderly, respectable faith with a giant hole in the middle, and we've called that hole reverence. See, I've sat in churches. This is one of the things I've done.I've been to Baptist churches and Catholic churches and Lutheran churches and Episcopalian churches and all the other different types of churches. I've heard the Trinity talked about. They can quote the chapter, they can quote the verse, but nobody expects that third person of.To do anything on a Tuesday morning when you're empty, when you've hit the end of what you got and left in your tank, that's the second way. The third way is even more sinister. I think we've turned him into a mascot.I'm a big University Delaware football fan, and our mascot is the Blue Hen. So picture a chicken that's blue. That's the Blue Hen.But I think so many people have turned the Holy Spirit into a mascot, because I think that's the one that gets most of us. You know, we say the right words. Oh, be in the spirit. We close with prayers with them. Oh, and the Holy Spirit come to us.We put them on the sign out front, this logo we display, but we never consult it. And that's where the work goes, because I want to put it back into terms that I understand. Think about accounting.Think about your Own personal budget. Most of us have a budget that we live on in our homes, right? If you delete a line from the budget, that expense doesn't disappear magically. Right?You still got to pay for groceries. You still got to pay for fuel. You still got to pay the mortgage. You can take it off the budget, but it doesn't go anywhere.But what happens is it gets absorbed elsewhere. Some other category has to pay for those groceries or pay that mortgage or pay that rent or pay that utility bill.So let me ask you a real pointed question. Where does the work go when you delete the Holy Spirit? You probably weren't expecting that question, were you? But where does it go?I'm gonna tell you where it goes. It goes to you. All of it. The conviction, the wisdom, the discernment. Yeah. Even the patience. The power to say no to the thing you keep saying yes to.See, that's the goal. That's the job of the Holy Spirit. But when you eliminate him, when you delete him from your life, all of it becomes your job.And you take it all on and you get up earlier, you read more, you just white knuckle through it. You make rules and you then a rule to protect the rules. And 11 months in, you're exhausted. And that may be where you are right now.You're loving God, but it feels like a second job you're failing at. I'm going to get back to a practical thing. I've watched people do this with money for three decades. They come in to me, remember?I said, I'm the fixer. They come in with a problem and a problem from their past, and they always say the same thing. They say, you know what, Ralph?I'm just going to use my willpower this time. I'm going to push through it. Hey, listen, I did this with diet for a long time. I said, you know what? It's a willpower issue. I know what I should do.I've said this a million times. I don't need to go see the doctor. I don't need to go see the nutritionist. Because, Ralph, you already know what you need to do.So I'm just gonna push through it. And I brought in that willpower and I shredded it. I kept trying harder, but I didn't get anywhere.See, if right now you're living as a functional two person trinitarian, probably a big word. You're thinking, what in the world is he talking? Trinitarian. Let me explain where I'm going with that. You know, the Father God is Real.If you're listening to me, you probably accept that Jesus Christ, his Son, is real. You can see those two people now. I don't know that I can even explain that. I understand the Trinity. It's a very unusual thing.It's kind of a hard thing to understand. It's like, how can he be God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit all at once? I'm not going to solve that today, but I think all of us see that.But then the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is just this, like, wind, like this feeling, this, like, whispery thing. But you're tired. And if you're like me, you're trying to do all the things that the Holy Spirit has been promised to do for you.You're trying to do this supernatural life on natural horsepower, but you can't do it. And then you start to think, well, wait a minute. Maybe I. Maybe I should be able to do this. There's a tragedy in thinking like that.It has nothing to do with God being disappointed in you. Just think about what Jesus said when he was with his people. Jesus with his. His folks. What did he promise us?He's going to send us a helper right now. Wherever you are, he already sent the help. And you've been out there doing it by hand. I want to say something really bold.You can't make grass grow if you know a little bit about me. My farm is my property. I raise Black Angus cattle here. I have a neighbor down the road that actually manages that for me.And the truth is, I know the limits of my competence. He and I just met the other day. He's going to put some seed down because the cows eat the grass seed.And he said to me, he says, I'm going to help the grass grow. And I know in my own heart I can't make the grass grow. I can test the soil. I can add water to it. I can put fertilizer on it. I can fence it in.I can move the herd from one side to the other to make sure the ground rests. I mean, these are all real things. But the growing part, that's not mine. You can only put yourself in a position for it.And I think a lot of us are out there in the field at midnight pulling on the grass, wondering why it's not growing.We're working hard, we're being sincere, we're sweating, we're white knuckled, and we're getting nothing because we're trying to do the one part that was never assigned to us. Hold that thought. I'm Going to come back to that, because I want to pivot to part two of what I'm going to talk about today.It's what I call the gospel interruption. And I want to lean into a word because I think Jesus chose this intentionally. He said, this Holy Spirit is called the helper.I want to go back to the table, think about it again. Jesus is hours from going to the cross and suffering a vile death. He's talking to his people about leaving. Think about these people in the room.These are men that gave up everything for him, Everything. They walked away from family, they walked away from careers. They walked away from everything. They knew they were with him.They watched him raise the dead. And now all of a sudden, he's saying he's leaving. These folks at the table were devastated.Can you imagine if you had spent that much time with somebody? You saw, you knew he was the Christ. You knew all the great things he was doing. And he was just saying to you, right then, I'm leaving.But then in John 14:16, he says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Two words to carry the whole load. I want to dive into those. The first is another. And I think it's important we understand this.The Greek has more than one word for it in the Greek. And listen, I'm not a Greek expert. In my research, this is what I found. One means another of a different kind, a substitute, a downgrade.That's what the Greek. That's one way of defining it in the Greek. But Jesus reaches past that to one meaning, another of the same kind.And I think we need to understand that, because that's what Jesus was saying. He's giving us another of the same kind, the same nature, the same quality. And if you understand the Trinity, think about it like this.The same God, Friend, you're not getting a stand in. Jesus said to his folks, you're getting me in a form that you can never lose. You can ever lose this. So first of all, understand it's really God.And the second word is the one we translate, helper. Now, in the Greek, it is parakletos. Now, para means alongside kaleo, to call. So the one called alongside you.Now, different Bibles render it differently. As I prepared for today, some people call it the comforter. Some Bibles call it the counselor. Some Bibles call it the advocate.Some call it the helper. And that's kind of courtroom language in, isn't it? But think about it like this.If you're in the courtroom, it's someone who stands at your side where you're in way over your head.You ever watch one of those movies where they go into the courtroom and you got arrested, you got fingerprinted, you got your picture taken, and you got put in this orange jumpsuit. They roll you into court, and you're standing there all by yourself, and you're wondering what's going on here.And all of a sudden, an attorney walks in from the back and stands next to you, and you're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm going to be all right. This one's going to help me. Well, that's what the Holy Spirit is. And see, I've been there. Don't misunderstand me.I'm not the Holy Spirit. But I've been in the conference room. I know what it's like to be the one called alongside of somebody.I'd been in a room one time where a woman had just found out. I'll never forget this, the rest of my days. Her husband had just passed away, and she called me. She said, hey, can we talk about what's going on now?She just made some assumptions. We sat down in my conference room, and she said, ralph, I'm trying to figure all this out. The court's asking me for this. The probate needs this.And she says, I need copies of my tax returns for the last four years. And I said to her, your husband hasn't filed a return in four years.And I think she kind of knew that because she started digging through the mail and she found a letter. And the thing about that is, I couldn't fix her grief. Her husband died. There's nothing I could do about that.But what I could do is I could be a helper to her. I read out the reason, what was going on out loud. I told her what was true. Yes, your husband hasn't filed returns for four years.We've got a problem here. But I was able to tell her what we can do next for her. I was that helper. Now, when she left, she still had that problem of not filing tax returns.She had debts. We talked about that as well. But you know what the difference was? And she said this to me a couple months later.She said, ralph, I didn't feel alone in it anymore. See, that's what the Greek paracletos is talking about. Jesus said, the Father is going to give you one of those, and it's a forever thing. Forever.And it's your advantage. And then he says something in the next chapter. And I honestly find it hard to believe even after all these years.Let's go look at John, chapter 16, verse 7. It says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. Now listen. When Jesus says, I tell you the truth, the pastor of my church says, listen up.He's fixing to tell you something true. Let me continue. He says, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.Now, I want to pause there for a second because think about what Jesus is saying. His disciples are thinking, whoa, wait a minute, Father, why are you leaving us? Where are you going? Like, what are you doing here, dude?And what does he say? He says, it's to your advantage that I go away. Because if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.Now, as I prepared for today's show, I didn't really think about this. And I thought about when I leaned into this. It's to your advantage.Now, I don't know about you, but if I hear the word advantage, that means that's a good thing, right? And he tells his friends, these are his friends. Don't forget about this. Like, you can call him disciples. You can call them the called.You can call them the church chosen. These folks were his friends. And he says to his friends that they're better off with him gone and the Spirit came to them.But I want to be careful here. This is a very strange sentence and it deserves respect, not some slogan. And this is what Ralph thinks. Here's what I think he means here.Because there are some differences in biblical teaching about this. While Jesus walked on the earth, he was in one place at a time. He didn't have the capacity to be in 15 places at a time. This is the truth.When he was in Capernaum, he wasn't in Jerusalem. He could only be in one place. He had the ability to be in one place. He was a human being. He was fully God, but he was fully human.Now let's look at John 14:17. I was with you and will be in you. Just think about that for a second. With you and in you. That pre position is the whole gospel.In this one passage, it's the presence of God moved from besides them. And this is the people. I don't. People don't get this one. It's not just God being next to you, walking with you, it's inside of you.It's called the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He's not just visiting you like, hey, I got a pal that's visiting me from out of town and he packs his stuff and goes on Sunday.When you accept Christ as your personal savior, the Bible is very clear about this. It says that you become indwelled with the Holy Spirit that becomes inside of you. It resides inside of you. And Jesus says it.We make our home with him, with you and with me. Verse 23 is the most tender line in the passage and nobody quotes it. Let's go to John 14:23.It says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. I think we got to pause there for a second. What is Jesus telling us? He says make our home with him. That's somebody that lives with you now.They're with you. 365, 24, 7. It's not some stop by friend. It's not some check in and move on thing. God is not a guest in the life of a believer. Hear me on this.He is a resonant within you. But of course I got to go to Romans. You know, I love the book of Romans because here's what I think the hinge is.Romans 8, the hinge of this entire episode. Romans chapter 8. There's a moment for every honest Christian. You sit down to pray and you got nothing.I've been there more times than I want to admit. You know, I thought like, it's time to pray. But man, I got nothing. I don't even know what to say.I know when I lost my mom, I needed to pray, but I didn't have any words. That was grief. There have been times in my life when I lived in a. In a state of fear. I didn't know what was going to happen.I didn't know what was going to go on next. It was a state of fear. Maybe right now you're in a situation that's so tangled you honestly don't even know what to ask God for.And I want you to listen to what Paul says about that exact moment. This is From Romans chapter 8, verses 26 to 27. He says this, and this is Paul's words.He says likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the Spirit.Because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Friend, when you run out of words, that prayer doesn't stop. And it took me a long time to understand that just because you can only groan like.You ever been in a place where all you could do is groan like that's all you had left. See, that's when the spirit picks it up. And the spirit takes that groan because it's coming from inside of you.It takes that groan that you can't form into a sentence. All your body can do is just. And that's when the spirit grabs it and he takes it right to the Father.And he knows accurately, according to the will of God, what you need to pray about. And I tell you right now, friend, I've prayed prayers that were nothing but a long exhale sounded like this.I can remember sitting in the dark in my car in the driveway, going through a situation with my wife or the kids. But I know, looking back at it now, the Father received that. He didn't just tolerate it. He received it because somebody was there translating it.The Holy Spirit was saying, you know, Ralph doesn't have anything left. God. But I'm coming from within Ralph, because I dwell in him, because he's one of your children. And here's what he's trying to say.Now, before I leave this section, I want to set up a guardrail here because so many of us hear a preacher get warm about the Holy Spirit and brace up, because so many of us have sat in a room where the name got used to work a crowd. You know what I'm talking about?Have you ever seen the movies where you get this guy preaching and he's on fire and he's dancing all around, and you're like, wait a minute. This doesn't pass the sniff test. Be careful of that. Because there's a word from a spirit that turned out to be a man's own ambition.And that's happened to me before, and I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. So let's let Jesus draw a boundary, because I think it's really important that we draw a guardrail, we draw a boundary.And this is one chapter later in John 16, verses 13 and 14. It talks about the true spirit, because I couldn't just do this episode and talk about the spirit without talking about some true spirits.Because honestly, there are a lot of fake spirits around there. But this is what he says. John 16:13.It says, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak of his own authority, but whoever he hears, he will speak. Whatever he hears, he will speak. And he Will declare to you the things that are to come.He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. And that's the part we gotta really understand. What is Jesus saying? He will glorify me. That's the test.The Holy Spirit spends zero effort making himself the center of attention. And that's, I think, part of the reason why we don't think about Him. The Holy Spirit always points to Jesus. Always.So if something puts a spotlight on a man, on a stage, or on some experience, some goosebump feeling or how spiritual you've become, that's not him. And it's something. It's quietly making Jesus bigger to you.If it is that his word is heavier, his cross more precious on an ordinary afternoon when nobody is watching, that's him.If the what you're feeling now, that spirit is pointing you to Jesus, if it's pointing you to have a deeper relationship to Jesus and to really understand Jesus. But you don't have to choose between fearing him and being weird about him. There's a third road, and Jesus paved it.And this is the good news of this episode. You're not on your own horsepower anymore, but you never were. You've just been ignoring the one who came alongside.But now I want to get real practical. One of the things I want to do on this show always is be practical.Because if this doctrine can't survive contact with a Tuesday morning, I don't want it either. And here's what changes 5 places that change when you start to think about the Holy Spirit being that helper in your life.Number one, it's about that prayer you can't form. Because I want you to start. Because this is the fastest relief. When you go to pray, stop waiting until you have composed something worthy.I know people personally that haven't prayed in six months because they can't figure out how to say it. They're so worried about, well, if I don't say it right. And some of us came from churches where you had to speak very clearly.They gave you a prayer book and they said, here's how you pray to God. I think Jesus sent that to the out the door, honestly. Romans 8 says, Bring the groan. Sit down in the car.It could be something like this, Jesus, Just say that it's okay to say, I don't know what to ask for. That's a complete prayer. You can just say, jesus, I don't even know what to ask for. But that's enough because the Spirit's gonna finish It.Here's the second thing. That decision you've been agonizing over for days, months, maybe even years. Most of us have one of those right now. Maybe it's your job.Maybe it's this move you're thinking about. Maybe it's a school you want to go to. Maybe you got a parent right now that you realize can't live alone anymore. You see the signs.Maybe it's a conversation your family keeps not having. Now, listen, I'm gonna get practical. I'm an accountant, so hear me. I'm not saying don't build a spreadsheet. I'm not saying don't get the numbers.I'm not saying don't run them twice. Wisdom and the spirit have never stood on opposite sides of a decision. We gotta do both. Look at John 14:26.It says, he will teach you all things and bring to you remembrance all that I have said to so bring to your remembrance. One of the main ways he works, and it's so ordinary that we miss it. He surfaces.The verse you read four years ago, the Holy Spirit goes, wait a minute, I got. It's kind of like that computer chip. It goes, wait a minute, remember?And at 2:14 in the afternoon, when you're struggling, he goes back and hands you a truth you already had. But he adds weight to it. So add a step to your life before you list the pros and cons of that decision. And should I do this? Should I do that?Ask him out loud, holy Spirit, what do I do here? Open up the Bible. Keep it open, keep the council close, but pay attention to what will not leave you alone.And the thing that nobody says about guidance, and this is a hard one sometimes, that answer never comes. You can pray about things day in and day out. And you're like, man, Lord, I've been praying about this every day, but I'd never get an answer.But maybe that's your answer. Because what comes instead is a peace enough to walk into decision without having to make a decision. I've watched people wait years for a certainty.God never promised. Maybe right now you're asking for a map and he's already handed you a hand in that. That hand, that helper is more than a map.It's harder to take, especially if you're a fixer like me. But it's better now. I'm going to get real practical here. I'm going to talk about your marriage. If you're married, go to Galatians 5.Galatians 5 says, and this is Galatians 5, 22. It says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.Against such things there is no law. And I want to talk about that in terms of a marriage or a partnership or relationship. Notice, not one time does it say achievements of the spirit.It says fruit. I've been on a diet journey. Fruit's a healthy thing. Fruit is what a healthy thing produces when it's connected to what feeds it.As much as we'd like to, we can't grunt and an apple appear on our desk. We can't grunt an apple into existence. They may be like, Ralph, you've lost me. Here, let me give you the marriage application.You know the argument you and your spouse have, for so many of us, it's the same one over and over. It's got a shape. And honestly, you both could perform the other's lines. You already know what they're going to say before they say it.And you know that point in the conversation every single time. When you go from talking to winning and you just have to win, self control is on that list for a reason.When you feel that switch flip, you got about one second. Trying Harder has a 30 year losing record in your house. Here's what I'm encourage you to do when you find yourself in that position.Just say four words. Don't say them out loud because your partner's going to look at you and not be happy. But this is what you do, and I've done this and it works.Just say this in your head. Help me right now.And when you do that, you're asking a person who lives inside of you to do something in you, right there in that kitchen, right there in that room where you're having that conversation, to do something you never once managed on your own. And then close your mouth for 10 seconds. Here's a fourth thing I want to talk about that conviction.We don't use the word conviction so much in our society today because people are like, oh, you're just condemning yourself. There's a difference between condemnation and conviction.Because right now, I guarantee there's something you keep doing and right before every time you do it, you get that quiet check. You're like, wait a minute now. It's not some lightning bolt. It's just this little check. It's a small little no.You hear, and if you're like me, you've gotten skilled at talking past it and you've rehearsed the argument for years. You have to blame that the Check on it. Oh, it's anxiety. Oh, no, that's my mother's voice. Oh, that was from that church I went back to in 1994.But friend, I want to challenge you right now. That is the spirit of truth. What did Jesus say is going to leave you a spirit of truth? And he's doing his job. But I want you to hear me carefully.This is where people get hurt. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, conviction and condemnation are not the same and they don't sound the same. Condemnation says, you're disgusting.There's no point, just go hide. But conviction is healthy. It says something else. It says this one thing right here. Bring it in and come home. Think about it like this.Condemnation is a fog. You don't know what to do. It doesn't tell you anything. It just tells you all these terrible things about yourself.But conviction is specific and it always has a door in it. If what you're hearing has no door, that is not the Holy Spirit. Well, let's talk about Monday morning. This is the last one.And I hear myself preach at myself one of this. I said at the beginning, I'm bad at being helped. I'm the fixer. Do you know how that shows up in prayer life? I'm going to tell you.I'll be honest with you for a second. I pray about things I've already decided I can't handle. These things I can't handle, I've handled the rest. God, I figured them all figured out.I give him the big ones, the scary ones, the ones that are clearly out of my reach and everything else. Those ordinary Mondays, those client calls, the email. I don't want to answer the conversation. One of my sons that I keep putting off.All of those things I just handle on my own, quietly. But John 14 gives us something better. He says to be with you forever. And he will make our home with him. We will make our home with him.The Holy Spirit is not a fire department. You don't call him when you need help. He's a resonant. So here is Monday morning, before your feet even hit the floor, before the phone.I want you to say this. I want you to say this every morning when you wake up, the first words. I want you to say this. I am not doing today by myself.That's the whole practice. That one sentence, said honestly over a few months is going to change the texture of your life more than any other reading plan will.Just say to yourself, I'm not doing this alone today. But I want to slow Down. Just a minute here. I know we've gone a little long today, but this is a message that we have to talk about.Because I've got some questions and I'm not asking them to make you feel small. I'm asking them because I asked them of myself this week as I put this together and they cost me something.So now I'm asking you, when was the last time you asked the Holy Spirit for anything? Be honest. I'm not talking about thinking about him, not saying about it in church. Those are great things.But when's the last time you actually asked him a question? Here's another one. Is there anything in your life right now that only works if God shows up? Anything?Or like me, have you built a life so carefully managed, so well hedged, so completely within your own competence that the spirit of the living God could draw from you on Thursday and nothing on your calendar would change until at least the following spring because you've got it all scripted out. That question right there has been sitting on me for about a week now. I'm gonna give you one more question, I promise. One more.Where are you exhausted? Seriously right now? Where are you exhausted? I want you to name it, say it in the car, say it in the kitchen, wherever you are listening.Where are you worn down to the studs? And then ask yourself the honest follow up question.Is it possible that I'm tired there because I've been carrying something I was never told to carry alone? I want to give you one more. This is for the fixers. Guilty. I'm a fixer. This is one for people like me.Is there a part of you that would rather be tired than be helped? I see people smiling right now because for so many of us there's a certain pride and exhaustion. It's kind of our identity.We see ourselves as being the strong one. Being the one who everybody leans on and who leans on nobody. And Jesus looks at that and says something.He says, I'm not going to leave you as orphans because an orphan handles everything himself. An orphan has no one to go to, friend. You're not an orphan. You gotta stop living like one. But here's the truth unveiled for today.The Holy Spirit is a person with a name and a job. He's the helper Jesus promised, calling alongside you and living inside you. And he stays in the room when the music stops.You've been trying to live a life that requires God on strength. That only belongs to you. He already sent help. Just ask him for it today. Now, before I Close.Today, I want to talk to somebody listening from the outside. Because the helper I described today, the one who comes to you and lives in you, comes with Jesus. And you get the helper the moment you got the son.I don't want to tell you about Jesus. Jesus lived a life that you have not lived. He died a death that you haven't earned. And he also came out of a grave on the third day.And he offers a gift you could never earn. And if right now you need to know Jesus because you need that Holy Spirit, I want you to pray with me and listen. I don't have any magic words.You can use your own words. You can grunt, you can groan, whatever works. If my words don't fit, I don't have any magic here. But if you think about it, just pray alongside of me.God, I've been running my own life and I'm tired. I'm worn out. I believe Jesus is your son. I believe he died for what I have done. And I believe you raised him from the dead.And I got nothing to trade you for about this. So I'm asking you, Lord, forgive me, take me. Send your spirit to live in me and change what I could never change on my own.From this moment forward, Lord, I'm yours. Amen. Now, if you prayed that, I want you to tell one person this week, don't walk alone anymore.You can reach out to us@truthunveilwithralph.com decision again. That's truth Unveiled with Ralph. Now, I want to put three things in your hand before you go that you can carry this week.Number one thing, remember the Holy Spirit is a person. You talk to a person. So start talking to him today out loud, like he's in the room. Because he is in the room. He's inside you.Second thing, remember, he's with you and you have nothing. When those words run out, the prayer doesn't stop. So bring the groan. And number three, he came to live in the house.He's there on the ordinary Tuesday when nothing at all is on fire. And hold. One last thing Jesus says in our passage. He says to be men about to watch him be executed. This is what he says in John 14:27. He says, Peace.Just think about this. I'm going to get executed tomorrow. And Jesus says, peace, I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid. Not as the world gives. The world gives you peace. When the problem goes away.But Jesus gives you peace when the problem's still sitting right there on the table because he sent somebody to sit next to you. I want you to embrace that today. And how about we pray as we close today? Father, I just want to thank you.I want to thank you didn't save us and leave us here to figure out the rest of it by ourselves. Thank you for the helper that you've given us. And Lord, I want to pray for some specific people right now.I want to pray right now for the one who's exhausted, for that one who's white, knuckled and been abiding in you for years and they can't understand why it keeps getting heavier. Lord, right now, let them feel the difference today between striving and abiding. And give them rest that isn't laziness.And for the one right now who can't even muster up a prayer, who sits down and earnestly just gets nothing decided, that means something is wrong with them, Lord. Father, make meet them in the silence and let your spirit carry what they can't even say.And for that one right now who's afraid of this entire subject, somewhere along the line they got hurt in a room where things got strange and manipulative. That person, that somebody used your name to work a crowd, Lord, I just ask right now that you would heal that and show them that there is truth.Give them back whatever that fear has stolen.And for that one right now who's under conviction, who knows exactly what this episode was about because you've been saying it to them for months, Lord, don't let them walk past it again right now, Lord. Give them courage. Give them that door we talked about.And Lord, for the fixers, the Ralphs, the strong ones, the ones everybody calls and who calls nobody to help. And God, I'm one of them, so I know how deep it goes. Break the pride in that, Lord, and teach us to be helped.And for that one who is just plain lonely right now, who are listening to this by themselves in that house that used to have more people in it. Remind them, Lord, that they aren't really alone. And remind them that you make your home with them.And remind them there's no such thing as an empty room for a believer. Holy Spirit, we've ignored you. Forgive us. Come and do in our lives what only you can do. And I ask this in Jesus name, Amen.Well, this was episode 60 plus. And if this one landed, I want to encourage you to do something. Send it to somebody who's tired.We all know people in our lives who are worn out, who are tired, who are the fixers, who are trying to do all of it on their own. You know who they are? That person in your life that never asked for anything.Just send them a list, send them this episode and say, you know, you should listen to this. And if you haven't subscribed this the first time you heard me, do me a favor and subscribe to that so that the next time we record something.We do these every week. Next time you'll know it without even going to listen. Listen to me. You're not an orphan, and you're not alone.And you were never meant to do this on your own strength. The helper's already here. All you got to do is ask him for help. I'm Ralph. This has been Truth Unveiled. May God bless you, and I'll see you next time.

Truth Unveiled? Like breaking through the dark, Your word remains? When the world falls apart? I stand firm? Though the culture shifts like sand?Your truth, O Lord, is where I choose to stand? Truth unveiled? Truth unveiled?