John 16-18

John 16
The Holy Spirit was the last of the Trinity I met. Growing up, I understood the Trinity--er, as much as the Trinity can be understood. I got that there was God the Father, and there was Jesus, and there was the Holy Spirit, three persons, in one, all God. Sure, got it. kinda.

I think as a child, Almighty God the Father and Jesus were the easiest to understand and their relationship was relatively clear to me. God the Father, Christ the Son. They were put in their little boxes and described in their little songs, but they were always there with a clear picture and a clear role. As I grew, my understanding of them grew with it. Which is good because while "Jesus loves me" and "there's nothing my God cannot do" are true principles, there's more to those persons of the Trinity than that... But I feel like the Holy Spirit was always more of a vague idea that mostly came up on Pentecost Sunday and had no real bearing on my day to day understanding of God. My picture for the Spirit was a dove, which isn't really all that helpful, and I can't remember singing any songs... So the Holy Spirit was relatively absent from my understanding until at least my late teens, and I think it was honestly college or post-college before I really started to understand what a gift the Holy Spirit is.

What a shame!

In John 16 Jesus says, "It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate [or Helper] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer; concerning judgement because the ruler of this world [satan] is judged...when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth...he will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you." (Sorry for mixing of translations just felt some verses were clearer. 7, 13, 14 from TNIV, 8-9 from ESV).

What an amazing gift the Spirit is! A helper, an advocate, a guide to truth. It's been a great discovery in the last few years of my journey with God to understand that I have his Spirit to convict me, to help me sort through things, to share the truth of God with me, to make clear Christ's righteousness since Christ is not here in the flesh. That the Spirit had been guiding me for all my life, without me really knowing or giving it any thought. It's still a little vague, this person of the Trinity. A little unclear how it works, but gosh, how amazing. It's a little hard for me to accept that for me--for the disciples--it is better to have the Spirit, than living breathing human on-earth Jesus. But we all get the Spirit with us, all the time, and Jesus shared our human limitations while on earth.

That's what struck me most today when reading.  Brief thoughts on the other chapters out of order because I want to end with Jesus' prayer for us:

John 18
Blows my mind every time that they choose the real criminal over Jesus. And that Peter denies Christ, and that Judas betrays him. It makes me wonder: what are my robbers, or riot starters, or sin or whatever, that I choose to keep in my life over Jesus? How and when do I deny him? In what ways do I betray him?

John 17
"Not one was lost" !

and part of Jesus' incredible prayer for us:
"My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one--I in them and you in me--so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them as you loved me." (20-23).