Someone Else Is Speaking

Wow, it's been a long time! This new year has gotten a lot of new things on my mind. One in particular is this blog. It will be moving. I have a domain name that I'll be using for this and I'll announce it when it gets moved. The design work for the new site isn't complete yet, so I'm going to work with this one for a while.

I remember posting something about that prayer we all pray and it goes something like this: "Jesus, show me more of You. I want to know more of You." Normally we pray that prayer and do nothing about it. We don't look into the Word of God to see Jesus, and we often pray it after we're done with our quiet time (if you have one) or during communion. Don't get me wrong, it's a legitimate prayer if you mean it. It's necessary and important that we all pray that. But what we doing to get to know Him better?

John 16 has a neat account of Jesus with His disciples. It's almost time for Jesus to make His move on sin and death to conquer it. He begins talking about the Holy Spirit, the Helper He'll send after He goes back to the Father. One verse rings out a little more to me with what I'm resolving to do this year in my relationship with God. Verse 14:

He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.

Are we asking God to speak through His Holy Spirit into our lives? If it's through the Holy Spirit He makes Himself known to us, why haven't I prayed that prayer? I spend so much time talking about Jesus and He's told me His method of revealing Himself to me, and I haven't asked Him to do that. You can call it splitting hairs, but aren't we all a little guilty in putting the Holy Spirit in the back seat, not giving enough importance to Him as the revealer of Christ and God's will for our lives? His role is glorify Christ. That's why Jesus sent Him. He is to help us glorify Christ. If that power is living within us, have we suppressed it by not asking God to use Him to disclose the Father to us? Have suppressed the Holy Spirit because we want to do things ourselves instead of stepping out in faith, obeying God because it's the right thing to do? We know what He wants, but we're not really listening. We're Americans. We're independent. We're right. We've messed up.

Well, my prayers have changed. It's why I'm blogging again. Before I spend time reading and searching God's Word, I'm going to ask God to speak through His Holy Spirit so He make known to me more of Himself. Join me in listening for Him.