Look for the Paraclete Walking Alongside

 

I went to the Wednesday Bible study for the first time. It is studying the gospel John at the moment. I really liked the passage we discussed. Most of it was in John 14, but you really have to start with John 13: 31 to get the whole context. Following are a couple of my take away notes as I understood the discussion.

Jesus brought us peace through the Holy Spirit (Paraclete) whose name literally means the one who walks alongside.

We will not be orphaned or without guidance or leadership. And we must minister to the orphans in the world. We decided orphans are those without a church family and we must learn how to be their sanctuary and mentor so they can come into the family and be adopted and no longer orphans.

If we love Jesus we will follow his command, which in an earlier section was “Love one another as I have loved you”. Impossible to do to perfection, but something we should strive for. Jesus/ God has always loved us and always will. In this section, Jesus tells us to love Him and His Father will love us. That was a bit confusing because we know God loves us and nothing we do can stop that. We figured it is because if we don't love Jesus, God will still love us, but we cut ourselves off from the potentiality of our lives and what God can do in them and the peace we can have in them if we love God and strive to keep his commandments.

We are in eternity now. The Kingdom is here now. So we want to live in the Kingdom now by accepting salvation. We think of salvation as sending us to Heaven when we die. Salvation is also in this lifetime, with the peace offered by the Holy Spirit. We can't understand the peace offered by the Holy Spirit, only live in it.

Look for the Paraclete walking along side.