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Paging You
Just when you're ready to fall asleep in that business meeting, your pocket starts bleeping. It's loud. Everybody looks at you with glares because they think you forgot to turn off your cell phone. But it's not your cell phone, it's a pager. You pick it up, press one of the tiny buttons and check the message on the screen. "Uh, I gotta take this," you explain, "It's from the top." Everybody gasps in admiration. Yes, you have just been paged by God.
Your own personal pager, God the Holy Spirit.
For just $5 a month, Pure Vision Ministries will send a regular supply of 20 Bible verses to your pager, anywhere in the United States. Not only will the messages lift you up, but they'll let you share God's Word with others. Can't you just hear it? "So, who paged you?" "God." "What does he want?" "Actually, he just wants to remind me of something." "What?" The door of opportunity opens.
Yes, it's true. But if you don't want to spend the money on the pager (though it's not a bad deal, wouldn't you say?) you've still got a good connection with God's directions, reminders and encouragements. Your own personal pager, God the Holy Spirit.
Known sometimes as "the forgotten person of the Trinity," God the Holy Spirit can easily be lost in the shadows of God the Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, and left behind in the praise of God the Son, the cross-sufferer and Redeemer. But the Holy Spirit is no less important in God's work of salvation.
- The Holy Spirit calls unbelievers who are dead in sin to be reborn into a new life of faith and good works pleasing to God.
- The Holy Spirit lives in believers by our baptism, taking up a supernatural dwelling in us that pumps adrenalin-like spiritual desires through our body and soul that overcome evil desires and temptations.
- The Holy Spirit connects believers with the comfort and peace we have through the work of the Father and the Son, like a power plug snugly fit into the outlet of God's grace.
- The Holy Spirit enlightens believers with better understanding of Scriptural truths, and with spiritual gifts that enable us to serve meaningfully.
- The Holy Spirit performs constant maintenance on believers to keep us in running condition for heaven's paths of righteousness and ultimately eternal life in heaven, using the tools of God's Word and the sacraments to strengthen us and keep us in the faith.
Jesus explains, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever - the Spirit of truth ... he lives with you and will be in you ... The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you ... When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth ... he will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you ... I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (various verses from John 15 & 16)
He is the Almighty pager.
