teaching all things?

John 14: 25-27
25"All this I have spoken while still with you. 26But 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. 27Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

I brought this passage up, and the question came up about just what might be meant by the Holy Spirit would teach all things. I am of the opinion that we will be all knowing about what has been written, thus for the disciples it would be a revelation, for us it would be more of an understanding today. SO of courts that brought up if we are all understanding, then why does their seem to be so much division, and lack of understanding.

To which I say, we are all understanding! The Holy Spirit reveals much to us all. The problem lies in us being human. I like the way a pastor friend of mine Guy put it. "We have fractured the cross of Christ". We are at odds with the devil, something that more and more people talk less and less about. When we look back at all of the fractures typically they start with the Church turning the faith on the people. Man starts to use the religion as a means to control and direct the people to their own ends, not God’s. So a Group splinters off, with the best intentions in the world, yet in comes the devil, working ever so diligently in the hearts of men, to twist, turn and divide us. Working to take the focus off of glorifying the Lord, and turn our attention to cutting us off from one another. Divide and conquer, it is the basic maneuver in any book of war…..and we are at war.

We are united in Christ; we are here to glorify God. At the core, that is the focus of all of the different denominations. Christ did not coin the phrase "Christian" man did. We are supposed to follow his teachings, and the Holy Spirit guides us in that direction, giving us all the understanding we need along the way. We as a whole however choose to spend more time looking at our differences than our common ground. As a result many have built up walls that separate and divide.

We use laws written by men, as justification of those walls. We use terms like Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and Protestant even non-denominational, as labels to divide. That is not the work of the Holy Spirit, or the teachings of Christ, this in my humble opinion is the pride of man, and the devil whispering in our ear that one is better than the other. What we can't do is pick each other apart over our differences, each of us has to work to first encourage everyone to assemble back at Calgary, we should kneel at the cross of Christ and remind ourselves that we all have one goal, and that is to glorify the Lord under one banner, as one group.

Understanding that it has taken a couple thousand years for us to get to this point, we will not break down these walls overnight, but they are walls that we should be chipping away at. I am at the end of a book written by John Piper, One thing I love about him is, if he did not come out and say he was part of a Baptist Church, I would not have guessed that he was. I believe that this is the direction that we need to go, and the way that we will be sucsessful. When men step forward within a denomination, and start focusing of the Lord; when men get back to professing our Faith, and quit using the pulpit as a device that divides, but use it as an inroad back to the core of Christ, that is when we will see walls tumble. When men start leading the charge with the battle cry of "Glory to God", instead of "we are_________ and Glory to God" then we will allow ourselves to see all that the Holy Spirit has to offer.

As for the scripture reading and one taking something from it, that others do not see, or might not totally agree with....I think that is part of it. It goes back to the 4 Gospels. Each has a different viewpoint of the life and times of Christ, and how that played out in their eyes. One might be very factual when giving the account, while another might be very emotional. Yet they all tell the same story, they might have different nuances, but the teachings, the goal, and the outcome are all the same. Let's say one person might tend to be very factual. A to B to C. While I tend to be very emotional...I feel, I believe, I think....I know when I read what a factual based person writes I see exactly where he is coming form, and at times he might make me feel "reined in" while I like to think that when he reads some things that I write, it stirs emotions a little higher for him.

It is not a matter of contradicting each other; it is more of a balancing out of each other. That is the Holy Spirit working. Because we rely on each other. I believe that the problems we run in to come from the very human emotion of feeling hurt. Instead of listening to each other, one might tend to shut down and withdraw from a conversation. Just like the denominations we turn it in to a conversation of right or wrong, instead of looking for merits of both sides and marching to the goal of Glorifying God. “Like steel against stone, one man sharpens another”. For the Holy Spirit to be allowed to fully be realized we have to first drop our "Jesus Face" and admit that none of us are always right. So the question returns, but Jesus said the Holy Spirit would teach us all things. It does teach, it does reveal, we have to realize that we are not the only ones in this fight, the Holy Spirit brings us together as a group to give Glory to God. For It to be sucsessful we have to allow many truths already shown to us to sink in. We have to resist the urge to put forward our pride first. When we start with humbleness we begin to see the reason why the Holy Spirit uses each of us to help, and no one person is given everything, or all of us given everything at once. Pride comes easily, humbleness does not.

One of the things Christ taught was to be the most, we have to be willing to be the least. For us to learn that lesson the Holy Spirit uses others to show us truths that we might have missed. When we take the time to understand that, we can see that yes the Holy Spirit will teach us all things, but we will have to humble ourselves before God, and before our brethren to receive the teachings. Thus our disagreements are not a bad thing, they are an opportunity to let the Holy Spirit work in all of us, to teach us all, and to give us the understanding that we all so badly desire.

Peace,
Rev. Thetford