DAY 14- Remedy for Loneliness

If you have ever struggled with loneliness at any time in your life (and we all have) this chapter has great news for us all.  Our faith feels very different to those people in bible we read about because we say to ourselves, "at least they could SEE Jesus with their own eyes and talk to Him and have Him talk back to them."  That would be nice huh?  That day will come for us.  Just as a side note- did you know that Jesus says there is a special blessing for us that have "not seen Him" and yet believed? Pretty cool huh- but we'll get back to that later in this 21 day blog.  The benefit that we have living on this side of history of the bible is that we have the Holy Spirit.  Some times, depending on your background, even the mention of the Holy Spirit can open a whole package of weirdness.  But I want to ask you in this moment to set that aside and let's look together at what the bible says in this chapter about this whole thing.  In verse 23 Jesus says this: ..."Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.  My Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.  These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.  All this I have spoken while still with you.  But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. " Wow.  Isn't incredible to see that as we obey His word and accept Him as savior, that he actually comes and "makes His home with us"  living in us?  The NIV version of the bible calls him the "advocate" but I love what the Message version calls him, Friend.  If you use the word friend in these verses, it makes the message even sweeter.  To paraphrase:  The friend will come and will teach us and live in us and remind us of everything we've learned.  It is incredible to know that even in the midst of loneliness that we have a "friend" who can be closer than our skin that wants to help guide us and knows that we can't do this life on our own.So, the Holy Spirit doesn't have to be something that is weird, He's a loving guide that never leaves us.  And lastly, it is interesting to see that this whole process doesn't start with "getting it right," it starts with loving Him.  Let's offer Him our hearts in love today and we will find that obedience to Him is just a natural byproduct of that love.