Key Verses: John 15:26-16:4, 26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning. 1 “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you."
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Theses are good principles. To reduce, we live thoughtfully, practicing self-control and moderation. To reuse, we get creative, meeting various needs with the resources already at our disposal. And if trash can't be avoided... recycling takes old things, stripping away the impurities, and creates something entirely new.
Take a look at the recycling logo. The triangle is made up of three identical arrows painting from one to the next. It's a great modern image of the holy Trinity. God is one, like the triangle; He is also three, like the arrows. Just as no arrow is bigger than another, neither is God the Father, Son or Holy Spirit any greater or less than the other. They are all God.
In John 15:26-16:4, among other places, we catch a glimpse of the mysterious nature of the Trinity. Keep in mind the picture of the recycling logo while you read verses 26-27. Visualize Jesus as the bottom left arrow in the logo, God the Father up top, and His Spirit in us on the right. Christ is in the process of explaining that His time on earth is coming to an end; He will soon go up to the Father. Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit down from the Father to the disciples. The Holy Spirit would then testify about Christ. When the Spirit points people to Christ, Jesus points them to the Father, who sends the Spirit to people. Do you see the cycle?
Jesus went on to clarify in 16:1-4 that life was about to get messy. Since the world would try to rid itself of Christ and His followers, God sent us the Helper, the Spirit of Truth. He will enable us to live thoughtfully, keeping the commands of Jesus in mind. Christ-followers are expected to live set apart from a world full of garbage. Everything we have can be used to point people to the love of Christ. Once that starts happening, our lives get caught up in an endless cycle of testifying to the redeeming power of God. He takes our lives, cleanses us from sin, and makes us brand new.
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