Change From Within

Holy Spirit Penetration

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.

John 14:17

Our theme for the week has been change: the need for personal change, the possibility of real change, the availability of change at the foot of the Cross. Today, we acknowledge that change can happen in our lives: the persistent sins can stop, the personality struggles can cease, and the problematic wounds can be healed. Change comes not because we believe in ourselves more or that we are try harder or that we are more sincere.  Real change happens in our innermost beings because there is a Person and that Person can enter our hearts, forgive our sins, soften our wills, and give us new life. That Person is the Holy Spirit, he is THE true change agent.

There is a sense in which we may say that the teaching ministry of Jesus had proved a failure. Several times he had urged his disciples to humble themselves like a little child, but Simon Peter remained proud and self-confident. Often he had told them to love one another, but even John seems to have deserved his nickname ‘son of thunder’ to the end.

Yet when you read Peter’s first letter you cannot fail to notice its references to humility, and John’s letters are full of love. What made the difference? The Holy Spirit. Jesus taught them to be humble and loving; but neither quality appeared in their lives until the Holy Spirit entered their personality and began to change them from within.

John Stott, Basic Christianity, Revised (London: IVP, 1971), 100.