To Encourage You

John 16:14 “He (i.e., the Holy Spirit) will glorify me (i.e., Jesus), for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

How often do you and I use the word “I” when we speak?   If God is truly working in our lives, it’s likely that we won’t use it much.  In John 16 Jesus explains to the disciples that even the divine Holy Spirit wouldn’t glorify Himself when speaking to them.  He would glorify Jesus.  Surely, then, if the Holy Spirit is at work in and through our lives, how much less will we glorify ourselves and be the subject of our own conversations? 

Throughout Acts the apostles demonstrated how everything in their lives was about Jesus, not themselves.  In Acts 15:12 Barnabas and Paul “related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.”  In Acts 14:27 these same two men “gathered the church together” and “declared all that GOD had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.”  Same thing in Acts 21:19 where Paul greeted the church at Jerusalem as he “related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.”  And in Romans 15:18 Paul said, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed.” 

The love of God “does not boast” (I Corinthians 13:4), and if that love is being demonstrated in our lives, we will not boast.  God’s love wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit will constantly point to Jesus, and never to “me, myself, and I.”  May God help us to examine our speech and make it more about Him and less about ourselves.