2023 01 17 Ghosted - Our Advocate

The speaker continues their series on the Holy Spirit called Ghosted. They discuss the importance of hearing from God and decluttering distractions. They encourage letting God handle public relations and share a personal story about trusting God. The Holy Spirit is described as our advocate who speaks for us in difficult situations and even prays for us when we don't know what to say. The speaker emphasizes that the Holy Spirit never leaves us and knows us better than we know ourselves. They encourage trusting the Holy Spirit to speak on our behalf and to focus on glorifying God rather than our own reputation. We're going to be continuing the series that we started the last few weeks on the Holy Spirit called Ghosted and you can probably can't even read it I can barely read it from here and i'm standing next to it But uh the first week we talked about hearing God and cluttering out the distractions in our life That is that's really the only way that we can hear from God And last week we talked a little bit more about living that out in real life and why the Holy Spirit matters tonight I want to talk to you about letting God do your pr your public relations if you will But we're going to start off the same way we've started off the last two weeks reading the same set of scripture that we've been reading because It's good to have a little bit of repetition because I don't know about you I could read something and walk away in five minutes and don't remember what I just read. So Let's jump back into this. It's going to be in john chapter 14 Verses 15 to 27 which says If you love me, this is jesus speaking If you love me obey my commandments and I will ask the father and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you He is the holy spirit who leads into all truth The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him and doesn't recognize him But you know him because he lives with you now and later will be in you No, I will not abandon you as orphans. I will come to you Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me since I live you also will live When I am raised to life again You will know that I am in my father and you are in me and I am in you Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me Because they love me my father will love them and I will love them and reveal myself to each of them Judas not judas iscariot But the other disciple of that name said to him lord Why are you going to reveal yourself only to us and not to the world at large? Jesus replied all who love me will do what I say My father will love them and we will come and make our home with each of them Anyone who doesn't love me will not obey me and remember my words are not my own What I am telling you is from the father who sent me I'm telling you these things now while i'm still with you But when the father sends the advocate as my representative That is the holy spirit. He will teach you everything and will remind you of everything Everything i've told you i'm leaving you with a gift peace of mind and heart and the peace I give is a gift The world cannot give so don't be troubled or afraid So When hannah and I were originally getting to know each other, I know you're going to think chris Use this analogy last week. This is a different one When hannah and I were getting to know each other initially, uh, I was interested in hannah Long before she was interested in me And I was trying really hard to get her to like me. I was trying to display my better qualities You know to get her to notice me. It's potentially more than a friend, but I really wasn't getting anywhere at first so I remember one day just praying to god and saying god like Is this one of those moments that i'm going to look back on that is like the perseverance? Or am I just like a creepy stalker guy that needs to know when to quit like which one is it here? Because I don't want to be that guy So like a little bit of guidance here and I believe that what he impressed upon my heart was him basically telling me chris Let me do your pr. Let me do your public relations. Stop trying to do your own pr, right? You tell her about me and i'll tell her about you Is basically what I believe that he was trying to tell me and so after that I spent most of our conversations together Just talking about what god was sharing with me about not that particular thing But what god was sharing with me in my life what I was reading in scripture asking her what was going on in her life In that way and we just talked about god and we ended up growing much closer as a result So that's not just my advice to someone who's looking to win over a godly spouse But that's actually my advice for life in general. Let god do your pr let the holy spirit advocate on your behalf Instead of trying to advocate for yourself, which is our big idea for tonight. The holy spirit is our Advocate we just saw that in the scripture that we just read First point being the advocate speaks for us What does an advocate do right when jesus was sending out? His 12 closest friends his disciples on their first mission to share of the good news of his salvation He said this in matthew chapter 10 verses 16 to 20. He said look i'm sending you out as sheep among wolves So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves But beware for you will be handed over to the courts and will be flogged with whips in the synagogues You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are my followers, but this will be your opportunity To tell the rulers and other unbelievers about me When you are arrested don't worry about how to respond or what to say God will give you the right words at the right time for it is not you who will be speaking It will be the spirit of your father speaking through you So most of us in this room probably won't be whipped or flogged or sent to jail, but Similar to those disciples the advocate helps us by speaking For through from for himself through us and for us, right? We don't need to worry about what to say to others because the holy spirit will guide us Into what to say if we can listen to him, right and that goes back to the listening To him right and that goes back to the listening we talked about first week doesn't mean everything that pops in our head It's going to be the holy spirit, but he can speak for us if we're willing to listen to him He also speaks for us not just in those situations to others But he also speaks for us when we don't know what to say to god himself. In fact, the bible says In romans 8 26 to 27 the holy spirit helps us in our weakness For example, we don't know what god wants us to pray for But the holy spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words And the father who knows all hearts knows what the spirit is saying for the spirit pleads for us believers in harmony With god's own will he can give us the words to speak to god the father in prayer on those days We know we need god. We just don't know what to say We know we need to change what we don't know what to say We're feeling broken and tired and out of words. The holy spirit can speak on our behalf And we may think sometimes that we've messed up too much We've made too many mistakes, but that leads me to my second point, which is that john 14 16 also says that the advocate will never leave us Romans 8 39 Emphasizes this even further The whole chapter is great, but just i'm just i'm going to give you the end and a spoiler alert This is a spoiler for the chapter, right? But it says that no power in the sky above or in the earth below indeed Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of god that is revealed in christ Jesus our lord not nothing you can do nothing that others can do can separate you from that He's always there advocating for us even when we can't see it He's working behind the scenes and when we might think we've messed up too much for the holy spirit We haven't he hasn't left us. He's still working for us behind the scenes The holy spirit right now is advocating for you for you for you for you for you Even as you might feel like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling and that you're alone You're not alone. He hasn't left you even when you can't see it. He's working. He never stops working He he's working and I really want to emphasize that for you because Each person in this room is going through things things that maybe we've talked about before things that maybe you've talked to no one about before and you feel like No one could understand even if you did tell them about it Or that maybe they'd understand but they judge you for it or whatever. It may be but everybody is going through Something and maybe it's not something that you is happening directly to you. But maybe there's someone in your life that uh Is making bad decisions or maybe they're not necessarily you're like, they're not a bad person. They they they're just They haven't quite had that break that they need in their life to get where I know they need to be right and You feel like you're like, it's just working out for this person and this person and this person It's not working out for me or it's not working out for that person. The holy spirit is advocating behind the scenes for you In ways that you couldn't imagine in ways that you may only see in the rearview mirror 10 20 years from now, you know He's working behind the scenes. I hope it doesn't take that long for you guys, but he's working behind the scenes for us Last point I want to emphasize for you is that we should trust him to speak for us Because he knows us better than we know ourselves Right sometimes we want to speak for ourselves we want to advocate for ourselves because It's hard to trust god working behind the scenes when we can't see it It's hard to trust that he's actually doing something But he is and he knows us better than we know ourselves Sometimes people see us better than we see ourselves. We all have an idea. Have you ever? Maybe i'm maybe i'm just crazy and nobody else has experienced this but have you ever had the experience of like You you you even think you look a certain way and then you see yourself in the mirror and just like That's not me. Right or you see a picture of you and you're just like What how do I don't look, you know, maybe you got dressed up and you're just like, oh, you know I'm looking like a million bucks and then you see yourself. Oh, maybe 99 cents not quite a million bucks, right? and We we have an idea of ourself or maybe things that we think are our strengths and then if somebody asks You ask somebody else what's what do you think my strengths are and they list some good things but you're like None of those were the things that I thought I was good at kind of thing, you know um We have different ideas about ourselves than others Have about us Scottish poet put it this way robert burns. He put it all the gift that god could give us to see ourselves as others see us It rhymes better if you have a scottish accent, but i'm not going to embarrass myself right now Um, it's true though, right what a gift it would be To see ourselves the way that others see us honestly, i'd be kind of scared to find out but Sometimes people can see things in us that we don't even see us in that good sense and the holy spirit lives within a christian and he Experiences everything that we experience he experiences everything that we think and that we do except unlike us He has a perfect unbiased perspective He has the ability to look at what we think and do through a perfect objective lens Luke 12 6 to 7 uh, that wasn't actually supposed to be added that was supposed to be in my notes there, but The brackets are not in the scripture there just so you know What is the price of five sparrows two copper coins yet? God does not forget a single one of them and the very hairs on your head the lack thereof Are all numbered so don't be afraid you are more valuable to god than a flock of sparrows Jeremiah 1 5 goes even further Showing god knew us before we were even born as he told the prophet jeremiah I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations And while this was a specific word for Jeremiah what we can take from this is that god knows you so deeply so intimately in his plans and purposes for you Even before you were born. He had a plan for you He knows you and he can advocate for you better than we can because he knows our strengths He knows our weaknesses and he knows where he's trying to take us. We have to trust him to advocate For us So as you go about Your coming week when you feel that defensiveness Rise up in you and you want where you want to advocate for yourself. I want to encourage you to instead stop Ask the holy spirit the advocate to advocate for you He's ready and he's willing and he's working behind the scenes for you already We don't need to make ourselves look good or focus on our own reputation Instead we need to focus on glorifying god sharing him with others and building up his reputation And he'll take care of our reputation better than we can Let's pray Holy spirit We want to trust you to advocate for us to speak through us instead of worrying about what we need to say And we want to trust you to speak on our behalf when we feel that others get the wrong idea about us Thank you for praying for us when we don't know what to say We thank you that you know us deeper than anyone else could ever know us even deeper than we could know ourselves We thank you that you're speaking to us and speaking for us behind the scenes Help us to do our part by advocating for you in jesus name. Amen