To Encourage You

John 16:12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

John 16 was written as an account of Jesus speaking to the apostles. He was promising them that after the cross and His ascension back to the Father He would send them the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit would remind them what Jesus had said to them while on earth and reveal to them the meaning more fully.  And through the Spirit, He would say even more to them than He had said up to that time at such time as they were more able to bear it.  In essence, He was promising us that the New Testament would be given to the apostles by the Holy Spirit.  At that point, none of it had been written. 

Likewise, we can all be assured that Jesus always has more for each one of us than we can now bear. He is the infinite God speaking to finite men and women.   No matter how much we know about Him at this point in time, there is infinitely more that He wants to reveal to us and teach us.  What infinite novelty there is in this relationship!  Think about how there is always more that can be learned about another person.  Just when we think we know your spouse, for example, we can find that we really don’t know him or her as well as we thought we did. If that’s true for human beings, just think of the depth of the person of Jesus Christ. Again, He is infinite.

Yet, He wants us to know Him, to grow in our knowledge of Him, and to “leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity” (Hebrews 6:1).  So, are you growing in your knowledge of Christ? 

Unfortunately, I spent many years as a spiritual infant.  It was only as I began to seriously feed on God’s Word and spend time with Him in prayer, that spiritual growth began to occur in my life.  How about you?  Are you a spiritual baby? Do you know Jesus better now than you did 10 years ago, or 1 year ago?  As we hunger for and feed on God’s Word and obey that which we can understand, we can be certain that “He who began a good work in you (i.e., if you know the Lord and have put your faith in Him), will bring it to completion (Philippians 1:6).”

May the Lord help us to grow in our knowledge of Him.  May He open our eyes to behold increasingly wondrous things in the infinite testimony He’s given us about Himself in His Word (Psalm 119:18).