Our Help Began at Pentecost

The words "God, I need help" have come from the lips of every Christian at some point in life. The wonderful thing about this short prayer is that God provided the help we need long ago - at Pentecost. Inside every believer dwells an intimate, all-sufficient Helper with one goal: to ensure we grow in Christlikeness. The Holy Spirit starts working even before we are believers to reveal the character of Jesus. Remember the vivid story of scales falling from the eyes of Saul (later renamed Paul) to end his blindness? (Acts 9:18) A similar thing happens as we receive the Spirit’s instruction. He pulls away the scales of our unbelief to reveal the true nature of Jesus Christ. First, God’s Spirit testifies to the saving power of Jesus; then, after we become believers, He acquaints us with the nature of the Lord through Bible reading and observation of God’s work in our daily life. Our dependence upon the Holy Spirit should grow in tandem with our understanding of God. As we learn of the Christ to whom is conforming us, the Holy Spirit at the same time reveals our inadequacy to appropriate such divine attributes without His intervention. God’s Spirit calls us to surrender our will and way of coping so that He may live the character of Christ through us. We trade frustration for peace, anger for patience, and shallow happiness for pure joy as we become more like the Lord we serve. With the aid of God’s Helper, our old existence of lonely desolation is pushed away in favor of a triumphant Christian life. ~Dr. Charles F. Stanley~