Spirit 2: Encourager, Truth, episode 61

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal and also help and hope for your own life journey. Today we continue surveying the amazing gift God has given us for our prodigal wilderness journey, his very own Holy Spirit. Last week we considered how the Spirit is an advocate and a comforter. This week we're going to look at two more roles of the Spirit, encourager and truth. Be sure to jot down points you want to remember and apply. You'll only learn and grow as you try to apply something, as you learn a new truth or are reminded of one you know.

0:51 Now, encourager, I love that word. That is actually, I think, my main gift in life is to encourage people. And it's really nice to know that this amazing Spirit of God is called Pericletos and there are several meanings. And how often do you find yourself saying the following, can I confront him one more time? Will I stand firm on the consequences we outlined? Can I go through with this intervention? Can I forgive again? I need more courage than I have. I have treasured those who encouraged me during the darkest, most challenging days of life with a prodigal. They listened, they shared from their experience, they reminded me of truths from God's Word that encouraged me. But they couldn't always be there.

1:53 That is one of the things the Holy Spirit does for us. He encourages us and he is always there. The important thing to see in this word is the meaning of encourage. It means to encourage, that is to put courage into. One of the roles that the Holy Spirit plays in our lives is to instill in us the courage we need for the moment as well as for the whole journey. Ezra, a priest and teacher during the end of the Babylonian captivity, had been appointed by God and the pagan king of the Persian Empire to go to Jerusalem to teach the returned exiles God's laws and to help reestablish temple worship. Though he had the full backing of the government, Ezra had no idea how he would be received by the fellow Israelites he had to face. Many had been born in Babylon and knew nothing of God's law. Many had been exposed to the idols and customs of Babylon. Would they be calloused, rebellious, sold out to the pagan world, self-absorbed? Ezra needed courage. He needed the encourager. He wrote, because the hand of the Lord my God was on me, I took courage and gathered leaders

3:24 from Israel to go with me. Note that he took courage. It was there in the Lord. It's there in the Spirit with us for the taking and then he helped himself to it. And so God will often have opportunities before us with our loved prodigals or with other things and they are too much. We don't see how we can do them. But he says, take courage. The Spirit of God will give you what you need. And so then we can do whatever it is is necessary, especially as we live through the hard days of a prodigal. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, the 120 disciples were filled with the encourager, the Spirit. They began to do and say things they had never been able to do before. They even had courage to withstand a trial and speak out and speak up for Christ. They knew something new. They had this one who instilled courage in them to do what God asked them to do. Luke reported when they saw the jail, the officials who were had arrested Peter and John, says when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and

4:55 they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Later, after they were warned, threatened, and released, they returned to the other believers and together they prayed, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness, with courage. We can ask the Spirit to give us courage to stand firm, to make hard choices, to keep loving unconditionally, to forgive all the things that we will be called on to do in our prodigal journey. And we can ask the Spirit to give our loved ones courage to turn from the path they are on, to withdraw from friends who misled them, to get help, to repent, to surrender to our loving God. I am so grateful our Father has provided for us needed courage in every challenge of this wilderness journey. The next one today is truth. Now, if you love a prodigal, you know about lies. Lies. One of the realities of living with and loving prodigals is lies. How many times have you heard, why don't you trust me? Or, you can trust me? Yeah, right. If our prodigal is an

6:28 adolescent, a driver's license opens the door for deception, we don't really know where they are going and what they are doing. And if your prodigal is using or abusing, we can be sure of one thing. If he is saying something, he is probably lying. They become masters of partial truth, deception, manipulation. They lie to our faces with utmost sincerity. There are also some other liars, you know, not just our prodigals, we lie to ourselves. We deny the severity of their addictions.

7:09 We are sure our good training will cause them to make good choices. We choose to accept their explanations rather than face unwelcome facts. We believe what they say they are doing and who they are with. We bail them out of jail, certain they will be grateful and change. But there is another liar, the father of lies. Satan assures us that we can trust our prodigal. Then, after trust is broken, he accuses us of being terrible parents. That is all our fault. He bombards us with hopelessness. Our loved one will never change. She is gone. The rest of our lives will be misery. Those are the things the evil one pounds into our heads. But there is one who speaks truth, the Spirit of truth. In John 14, 16, and 15, 26, Jesus assures us the Spirit of truth will live in us. And we also have this wonderful promise. When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.

8:30 Does that encourage you? He will speak truth to us and through us. He can also give us discernment regarding what our prodigals tell us. We can even know things directly from the Spirit that enable us to intervene or rescue. Our son was a prodigal in the early days of kids on the internet. And I would check his computer often to see where he had been. And he didn't like that. So he would change his password. And every time he changed his password, the Spirit would tell me the new password. That was pretty miraculous. The Spirit will reveal to us the lies we tell ourselves and enable us to walk in truth. The Spirit will confound the lies of the devil with the truth of God. Imagine we have God's Spirit of all truth living in us, teaching us, guiding us. So it makes sense to be filling our minds with the truth of God's word, giving the Spirit of truth all he needs to renew our minds and change our lives and give us the wisdom we need. But we can pray the same for our prodigals. The Spirit of truth is pursuing them. A few questions. When was the last time that you desperately needed courage? Could you

10:09 call on the Spirit of encouragement? In what area of untruth do you find yourself struggling the most? Your prodigal's lies? Your lies to yourself? Satan's lies that there's no problem or Satan's lies that the situation is helpless, hopeless. Then what truth do you think the Holy Spirit wants to impress on you right now to help end that struggle? The Spirit of truth is yours, living in you, walking with you, available to give you all the wisdom and discernment that you need. He is also the Spirit to encourage you to put courage in you and he also is in you and with you, walking through this journey with you, and he will give you the courage that you need to face the issues that are before you.

11:13 Next week we will look at two more gifts of the Spirit, freedom and peace. God bless you.