Holy Spirit Our Advocate (327)

0:02 Welcome once again to the Quality Christian Living Podcast. I am your host, David Friend. Today's topic is the Holy Spirit, our Advocate. Now what does it mean that the Holy Spirit is the Advocate and what is the difference between the words Advocate and Comforter, which is the topic of our last podcast. We'll look at several powerful scriptures about the Advocate and learn how our Advocate, the Holy Spirit, recommends and supports our needs. I'm excited. I hope that you are. Let's get into this after we pray. Heavenly Father. Once again, I thank you for who you are. I pray that you would bless this podcast, that you would anoint it, that the Holy Spirit would do what only he can do. I pray that you would bless this now, Father, and that the Holy Spirit would lead and guide and direct everything that we cover today. Now, I pray that you would touch those who are listening in, that they would receive from you, Lord, because they're obviously interested in hearing about the works of the Holy Spirit.

0:54 So, I pray you would bless it. Now, take control, take complete charge of this, and I'll be careful to give you praise now for what's about to take place. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. We all know that the Bible talks significantly about the Holy Spirit, and Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit and the Apostles spoke. So, if you look in the Old Testament, you'll see the moving of the Holy Spirit throughout the Old Testament days. So, we really have a great topic here that is so important to our walk with God, and we want to learn a lot about the Holy Spirit, and we can only learn that when we get into the Word of God. When we get into God's Word, when we seek His Word, when we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal what it's telling us, us, then we will receive something very special. I pray right now that the Holy Spirit would come in and take charge of the scriptures that I'm reading. You inspired these Holy Spirits to be written by John and I pray that you would bless them now, that they would touch us, that these were written 2 ,000 years ago but they're still so powerful and so alive. So I submit to you and I ask that you would help us as we read the scriptures to focus on those things that will help us understand the relationship between the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, and all of us who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I pray that you would anoint it now. I'll thank you for it and I'll give you the praise. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Well, I'm gonna start off just a little differently today because I don't want to assume that everyone here is a born -again believer.

2:14 You all know Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. I'm sure the majority of you do. But if there's even just one person who's not certain of where they're gonna spend eternity, I wanna take a moment right now and have you pray with me this prayer so that you'll commit your life to the Lord Jesus Christ if you don't know know for sure whether you're going to heaven. You don't have to finish this podcast wondering about that. You can receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you'll be changed from now through eternity. So I just pray that you'd listen to these words and then you'd repeat them in your own heart. Say, Heavenly Father, I need you. The word of God tells me that if I... give my life to Jesus, that he'll forgive me of my sins. And so I come to you now and ask that you would forgive me for the sins that I've committed.

2:55 I'm sorry of these sins. I repent of my sins. And he asked you to come in and change my heart, make me a new creation. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, dead and buried, but he arose from the grave, and he arose so that he'd go to heaven and prepare the way for each and every one of us to be with him. This day, at the opening of this podcast, I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I promised to serve Him all the days of my life. Now if you prayed that prayer and you meant it with a sincere heart, Jesus came into your life. The next step you need to do is find a good church, a good Bible preaching church, a church that believes in the Word of God and you need to get a Bible and get that Bible into your hand. I recommend getting a translation, the New Living Translation or maybe the Message Bible. These are languages that are more common to today and they're easier for new Christians especially to understand. So get the Word of God out. I would encourage you to read in the book of John the four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read those and see what Jesus did as he walked this earth. So I just want to congratulate you and welcome you into the family of God. Get into a new church and I know God's gonna bless you. All right for those of you who already knew Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior I hope that you understand that from time to time we need to do as the Holy Spirit leads and if there's a time when I feel that there could be people listening in who are not sure if they're going to spend eternity in heaven or not. They're not sure of their relationship with Christ that we need to give them that opportunity. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be doing this podcast if

4:27 there wasn't an opportunity to help people receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. All right, in getting into today's topic about the Holy Spirit, our advocate, I'm going to read several scriptures and talk about them as the Spirit leads, and I hope this will help each one of us get a better understanding of what it means for the Holy Spirit to be our advocate and what does it really what an advocate does and what it means in our daily walk with the Lord. In John chapter 14 and verse 16 in the New Living Testament, Jesus said these words, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate. Now that means there must have been an advocate before that and of course that was the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It says, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truths. Now here we're seeing John write as he's being led by the Holy Spirit to write these words. We're seeing John bring forth the power of the Word of God to help people and to touch them and to get them to understand that there's another advocate. That is the one who stands behind us and stands beside us and stands with us and supports us and encourages us and also Jesus is telling the disciples that the Holy Spirit will never leave them, that he'll always be with them and that he is truth, he is nothing but truth and he will lead them always into truth. All right, now let's take a look at another scripture here and see what it has to say in John chapter 14 again, this time in verse 26 in the New Living Translation. Jesus is speaking again, so we want to listen up to this very carefully. Jesus said, but when the

5:58 father sends the advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit. He will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. Once again we hear the word advocate which is obviously our support and also the advocate is one who wants to teach us and help us and even remind us from day to day what the Word of God says but first we need to get the Word of God into our heart and into our mind so it's there then the Holy Spirit will bring forth that word to remind us of where we can receive strength where we can receive help and that he is our helper he is our advocate he's on our side and he wants to be with us and support us John knew that and so he knew he had to write about it Let's move on now to John chapter 15 and verse 26 in the New Living Translation. Once again, these are the words of Jesus, but I will send you the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth. He will come to you from the Father and will testify all that is about me. Verse 27, and you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of time, or since the beginning of His ministry. Now, this is really important because what we're hearing here is that John is telling us that the Holy Spirit, our advocate, is here and Jesus is basically speaking these words. John's recording them and he's speaking the words to say that we must then testify about Jesus. We must talk to other people about the Holy Spirit. We must talk to other people about the advocate and explain to other people what

7:30 we're learning in our daily walk and that's something that's kind of hard for Christians to do from time to time because we get busy, we get distracted, we get a little nervous and sometimes people are afraid to speak about what's happening in our life but it's important that we do that because when we do that then the Holy Spirit will bring to mind what we've already learned and then he will also teach us new things and he'll help us interpret the scriptures as long as we then testify about Jesus and talk of our relationship with Christ. Now that means we must testify about what Jesus has done in our life. Probably the best way to give a testimony is to tell people of who you were before you became a Christian and then tell them who you are today and how you think today and how things have changed and how different things are. are taking place in your life and how you rely upon the Holy Spirit to help you and how the Holy Spirit is always there and he has our back. He's blessing us, he's protecting us, he's recommending prayers to the Father who the Father receives and those prayers are the divine will of God and so all this needs to come forth so that we'll understand the power and the working of the Holy Spirit.

8:39 In the first podcast in this series, I should say that one previous to this, we talked about the Comforter, how the Holy Spirit's always there to help us and comfort us and be with us. And that particular podcast, I think, was received in a very special way because I've had people already respond to me and tell me about how that touched them and helped them to receive the power of comfort and the peace that they lacked in their life and they needed to have. So the way that happened in the last podcast can happen in this one, and that is that we must understand that the Holy Spirit is our advocate. He is the one that supports us. He's the one that is always there, never leaving us, never forsaking us for the rest of our life. And here's one final scripture in this particular area of this podcast and it's written in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 1 in the New Living Translation and listen to these words, if anyone does sin, well that's all of us, we're all sinners and we're saved by grace, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father.

9:37 Now there's a great example of how the advocate is there and when you know sometimes we just don't know how to pray, we don't what we should pray for, how we should pray, what scriptures we might use, or which words that we should say in each particular situation when we're praying. That's happened to all of us. But if we then submit and yield to the Holy Spirit who lives and dwells in us, and by the way, he comes to live in us when we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and I mentioned that for those who receive Jesus in the early part of this podcast, as soon as you accepted him, the Holy Spirit was sent into you to dwell inside of you, and he now lives with with you and will walk with you the rest of your life. Therefore, we must listen to Him. And if we listen to Him, then He pleads our case before the Father. He's like our attorney. He's the one who brings the case before the court, which would be God. And He pleads our case and helps us and prays for us and encourages us and helps us to walk in the Spirit and to walk in the love of God and walk in the precepts that we've learned from the Word of God so that our way will be pleasing unto the Lord. and the Holy Spirit is one to help us do that and then pleads our case to the Lord and he always desires for the Lord to give us God's divine will for whatever we're praying about and praying for. Okay, we need to move on now. The difference between the Comforter and the Advocate. Now, there is a little bit of a difference here, but it's one that's kind of important for us to understand. The Comforter provides encouragement and peace. The Advocate pleads for us when we need it. which is most

11:10 likely every day. Both are the operations of the Holy Spirit. That's the beauty of it. In that case, that power is operating inside of each and every one of us who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. This tells us that the Holy Spirit has an unlimited arsenal of ways to help and bless and guide us. So when we have an advocate behind us, remember, there's an unlimited amount of things that the Holy Spirit can do to help us. He can put people in front of us that we need to speak to. He can help us to have conversations with people we thought we wouldn't ever have a chance to. to talk to them. He can bring families back together. We can pray for our children who don't know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior or they've gotten away from the Lord and they're now wandering around on their own and we can pray and ask the Holy Spirit to go to them and convict them of their need to come back to Jesus or to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. That's the working of the Holy Spirit. He's an advocate not just for us but for those that we love, those that we pray for. We can pray for people and ask the Holy Spirit to give them comfort in the midst of their pain and their difficulties and their sickness and their illnesses, he can help people who are going through all kinds of trials. No matter what it is, the Holy Spirit can show up and do something amazing in their life. But that can only happen if someone is praying and believing and trusting God to do something for that individual.

12:34 A lot of people might question what I'm talking about now. They might say, well, how can it be that you as an individual can pray that the Holy Spirit will go somewhere and will try and convict people? of their sin or help them and comfort them in their time of need. Well, the reason we can do that is because we're supposed to pray. We're supposed to believe and trust that the Holy Spirit can move upon people and convict people. Had the Holy Spirit not convicted me that I was a sinner, I would have never come to know Christ. And I know that there were people who knew me who were praying for me and believing for me. My grandmother was a Christian. She was praying for me. My mom and dad took us to church all the time when I was a kid. I know they were praying for me and I believe the Holy Spirit hears those prayers and then he then will go out and Convict people of their need to turn their life to the Lord Jesus Christ I believe that with all my heart and I think I can prove that as we continue to go through this series on the Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit has placed so much power in the Word of God and many scriptures that I've read are examples of the power that's in the scriptures, in these words, that when we repeat them and believe them, it can change our lives. In the prior podcast that I talked about, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, I gave a couple scriptures about where we can receive strength. One was found in the book of Psalms 46, verse 1, that God is a very present help in times of trouble. The other one was in Proverbs 3, 5. These are all Holy Spirit -inspired scriptures where it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding and

14:05 all your ways acknowledge him and he'll direct your path. Those are examples of the power placed in the Word of God for the Holy Spirit to be able to prove that he is there for us. He's an advocate for us. He is our supporter. There's another scripture that I think I need to read because it's so important that we receive this and understand that these words need to go deep into our heart, into our mind, and that we must believe them as much as we believe anything else that we can think of. We've got to read these scriptures, believe them, and operate them, and There's a lot of folks that come to me for help, and I'll ask them, well, have you been praying about it? And they'll say, well, yeah, kinda. And then I'll say, well, what does God's Word say about that situation? And they'll say, I don't know. I've not gone to the scripture to find out. Well, for every single thing that we face in our life, the Word of God has the answer to it. If you're being challenged financially, the Word's filled with it. If you've got marital problems, there's advice in the Word of God that Paul gave out in 1 and 2 Corinthians. There's advice that... the Holy Spirit gave those in the Old Testament in the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs about wisdom and direction that a person who needs help can find that help and find that direction, that strength from the Holy Spirit if they'll just get that word in them.

15:20 So here's another scripture I want to share with you, Romans 8, 31. If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Now that, I believe, says so much about the Holy Spirit being the advocate. That means if he's on our side, quite frankly, what difference does it make? Who's against us? If God is for us, and he is, and he's on our side, and he is, and the Holy Spirit is our advocate, and he is, then what difference is it if someone tries to attack us, or tries to verbally say something against us, or someone comes up against us? We can just take authority over them in the name of Jesus, rebuke that thought, not accept it, not receive it into our heart or our mind, and move on with our life. Some of you might say, that might sound easy to do, but it's tougher, but it's only tougher if we try to do it on our own. If we try to do it underneath the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit and be led by Him and ask Him to help us and to lead us and to guide us and to pray for us and take it to the Father, then we have release that we have when we're under attack. Read the scripture again.

16:17 If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Which means they have no hope of achieving anything. And so it's important we receive that, we understand it, we believe it, and we live by it. That scripture is telling us that no one can bring condemnation against us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. So remember, that's part of the working of the Holy Spirit. That's why he is our advocate. Allow me to give you an example of what an advocate does. Twice a year, I serve as an advocate for an organization that is helping those individuals who have experienced kidney cancer. Now, I have experienced that in my life, and that's one of the reasons they contacted me. I'm a veteran, that's another reason they contacted me, and so I thank the Lord for that opportunity. I serve as an advocate for someone who supports and agrees with their mission, the mission that these people have. I think it's a great mission for research to find a cure for cancer. of the kidneys that is. I speak to my...

17:20 political representatives in the United States Congress in Washington DC. I have an opportunity to speak to their office, either their assistants or them, and have that chance to say, I want you to stand up and support research for kidney cancer. It's a wonderful organization and one that I've been a part of for several years now and I'm honored to be one of the representatives from Arizona to be able to speak to those in Congress. Now I'm an advocate for those who need help to find a cure. That's just what the Holy Spirit does. an advocate for those who need help to find help. They need to find a cure for what they're going through, whether it be emotional issues, whether it be physical issues, whether it might be financial or marital or whatever it might be. The Holy Spirit can help us to find a cure. These people ask me to speak because I lost one of my kidneys, so therefore I'm in a position to understand what it's like to go through that and I have compassion for that.

18:14 The Holy Spirit has compassion because he understands what Jesus went through when he was on the cross. Remember now that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the triune Godhead, are all one God in three persons. And the Holy Spirit knows what it was like, what Jesus went through, what he experienced when he went on the cross, and so he knew how to comfort Jesus. And I think that's just amazing that we can think that way. And if we can be an advocate for someone else, then I would... encourage you to do that. I want to be an advocate for this group because this group is doing something wonderful. The Holy Spirit wants to be an advocate for us because he wants our life to be wonderful. I hope that is a good example and I think it's one that really is close to my heart. Now in a similar way, the Holy Spirit deals with us in every area of our life as being an advocate. He is always available to us. Always. Jesus said that. He'll always be with you. As a pastor, I've heard Christians say that they can't find the Holy Spirit. It seems like they can't pray, and they can't seem to figure out exactly what the Holy Spirit has to say to them. And is He listening to them?

19:21 And do they have His voice? Well, a lot of times when we pray and we ask for the Holy Spirit to help us, if we don't have any patience, then we'll just think that, well, He's not listening to us and we've got to get the answer that we want. Many times we want the answer that we want rather than what the answer that's best for us. That's why I believe many times God says no to one of our requests because he has something planned that's even better and we've got to understand that sometimes and many times people think that's just because the Holy Spirit's not listening to us because we're not getting what we want. What we want is one thing, what we need can be something. totally different. Now I read this scripture before and I'm going to read it once again very quickly. Psalm 46 1 that says here that he is a very present help in our trials in times of trouble another translation says.

20:07 That means the Holy Spirit is there with us and he is a very present help because he is present in us each and every day. Now there are times when we may feel that God does not even hear prayers that just should automatically be answered. Well I know that God hears all of our prayers. Don't ever think that God doesn't hear your prayer because he does hear it. He always answers our prayers. He may say, yes. He may say no, he may say not now, or he may say that he has a better way. Whatever it might be, God hears our prayers. He is sovereign and we love him, regardless of what we're going through. We can't get upset with God. We can't get mad at God. We can't turn against God. I don't understand that when people say, I'm mad at God. Well, what good is that gonna do to be mad at God? I've never understood that. With all the trials I've had, the Holy Spirit has always helped me not to utter those words because there's no no absolute reason, there's no justification that we can be mad at God because he loves us greater than any love that anyone else has for us. And he isn't upset with us unless we're turning against him, unless we're not serving him. It says that he turns his presence away from people who are not following him or seeking him or need him if they're not following him. And so we've got to seek God.

21:26 And if we seek him, we'll find him. If we draw near to God, the Bible says that he will draw near to us, and he does that through the working and the inner working of the Holy Spirit in our life. In my own life, I've experienced times when I had to just simply trust God, trust his word, trust his promises. trust in miracles, believe for them even when I didn't see them at first, and believe that God is in charge. When I faced medical issues, numerous cancers, kidney failure, all of it required me running to God for help. I've had many surgeries and all these things, and every time these things have happened, God shows up and He deals with me and He helps me. Sometimes I wish it was faster than others, but there's never been a time in my life that God has ever deserted me. And it's the same thing with all of us. He'll never leave us, and He'll never forsake us. That means never.

22:19 That doesn't mean whether we're going through trials or not, doesn't mean whether we're going through a sickness or not. The Apostle Paul understood that. He learned that in prison. And I've used this example so many times, but it's such a great example, and that is, in the midst of Paul's trials, his greatest trials in prison, He wrote some of the greatest scriptures that we'll ever read. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were powerful scriptures, wonderful. They weren't written by Paul. Paul wrote the wonderful epistles, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. Those are all great. powerful scriptures that have such intense content. Well, all of those were written, the ones that Paul wrote, the epistles were written while he was suffering in the midst of his greatest trials and his greatest circumstances. And he at times said, you know, I've tried several times to get healed of a physical condition I've got, but regardless of whether God heals me or not, I'm going to serve him. Job said, though God slay me, I'll trust him. So when we're in the midst of trials, if I could stand in front of you, I'd say, please, please, please never Don't get upset with God. Don't get mad with God. Don't say that He doesn't love you or He doesn't care for you or that He's not hearing your prayers.

23:24 He is there. He wants to help you. Allow the Holy Spirit to comfort you. The Holy Spirit is your advocate. He wants to give you comfort and love, and He'll do that if we just rely upon Him. Even after saying all that I've said, and I'm not upset in any way, shape or form, I just want people to know that... God is always a very present help in times of trouble and he's that way through the Holy Spirit and he's that way as your advocate and as the one to give you comfort. Now after my comments, I know that there'll be those, I'm sure a few, that may say, why doesn't God heal everyone all the time? Well, only thing I can say is God is sovereign. God is looking at his eternal promises for us. We will live here for only a few decades on earth, but thousands of centuries in heaven for eternity. With that, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you once again for this podcast, for this opportunity.

24:19 And I thank you for the Holy Spirit living and dwelling in us. And I thank you for the so many times that he's helped us, carried us through. The Holy Spirit is our comforter. He's our advocate. He's the one that stands in there for us. He helps us pray when we don't know what to pray, how to pray, and when to pray. But Father, I pray now, Lord, for those who are listening in, that they would receive this teaching today in a very encouraging way, a way that gets them to realize that the Holy Spirit is there to be our help and to be our guide and to help us to deal with whatever we face here on earth. And I pray that you would bless them. And for anyone suffering with an illness or sickness or whatever or has a loved one that's going through it, I speak healing. And I ask for the divine healing touch of the Lord Jesus Christ would reach out and heal their body physically. Those with emotional problems, I pray that the Holy Spirit would bring the comfort to heal those emotional situations, God, and bless them and keep them, Father. I believe, Father, that this has been a message that will change people's lives and touch their hearts, and I'll be careful to give you praise for it now. In Jesus' name I pray. Well, I hope that you've enjoyed this podcast. I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it because the Holy Spirit is our comforter and he is our advocate. So I pray that this is a blessing to you. If you'd like to know more about quality Christian living, you can go to my webpage at davidcfriendauthor .com and when you get there, there'll be a list of all the podcasts I've done over the last four years. This was the 327th and I know that you'll find many different topics and subject matters as you go through that. In addition to that, there's a list of the books that I've written.

25:49 It might be of help to you. So I'm going to close this up now. But one last thing is, if you'd like to subscribe to my podcast, you can do that by going to cpnshows .com or wherever you listen to your podcast. Well, I'm looking forward to our next podcast, which has to do, obviously, with the Holy Spirit. And we're going to be talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And we're going to talk about the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And we'll see how the Holy Spirit leads us and guides us there. So you might want to let your friend and family members know. If you know a lot about it, that would be great. can listen in. If you're not familiar with what the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit are, then I hope this will be a blessing to you as we'll do that over the next couple of podcasts. So thank you once again for listening to the Quality Christian Living Podcast, and I want to just give a blessing to you before we wrap it up today. I just pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that his face will shine upon you and be gracious to you and give you peace. And I pray that you'll prosper and be in good health even as your soul prospers. So I just want to say, may God richly bless you. May you realize the power. May all of us understand the love that God has for us and that he placed the Holy Spirit inside of us to give us hope, to give us comfort, to give us a source of strength when we need it. And Father, I just thank you once again for this opportunity and Lord I need you to help me through all these podcasts on the Holy Spirit. I know of all the series I've done this far exceeds all of them in my interest and my desire and how the Holy Spirit has helped me put these together.

27:16 So in upcoming weeks I pray Lord that you would guide and direct the very steps that we take the thoughts we have and bless those who are listening in. May they gain knowledge in the Word of God. May they draw closer to you. May all of us learn how to walk and to live. in the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We'll be careful to give you praise and glory for it. Well, thank you again for listening in. I am your host, David Friend. This is Quality Christian Living. This has been podcast entitled, The Holy Spirit, Our Advocate. Thank you once again for listening in. See you next time.