Free Filled with the Spirit: Understanding God's Power in Your Life by Joyce Meyer Page B

of the Holy Spirit.
    Some of the other various roles and functions of the Holy Spirit in our life are:
    He prompts us to pray and teaches us how to pray.
    He strengthens us in our time of need.
    He alone can minister to our inner man when we are hurting.
    The Holy Spirit also prompts us to make correct choices, but He will
never
force us to make them. He must be
allowed
to be in charge. We cannot change the things in our life that need to be changed, but the Holy Spirit can.
    The Holy Spirit Remains with Us Forever
    And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby), that He may remain with you forever —
    The Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive (welcome, take to its heart), because it does not see Him or know and recognize Him. But you know and recognize Him, for He lives with you [constantly] and will be in you.
    John 14:16,17
    Here in John 14, and later in John 15 and 16, Jesus makes reference to the Holy Spirit and His ministry among believers — and that ministry has not changed. It is important to understand His ministry so we can appreciate it and cooperate with it.
    The present-day ministry of the Holy Spirit is so powerful and so precious. Since we are believers in Jesus Christ, He is already in us and with us, but He wants to come and dwell in us fully and completely.
    First Corinthians 6:19 tells us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are His house. The Spirit wants to indwell the entire house and not just one room or a portion of it.
    As Jesus told His disciples, the Holy Spirit wants to come and take up residence within us for a purpose. Remember that He wants to comfort us, counsel us, intercede for us and pray through us, be our Advocate or Lawyer, strengthen us, and stand by us and help us in everything we face or go through in this life. And as we saw when He descended upon Jesus at His baptism, the Holy Spirit wants to come and remain with us forever.
    That was a key issue for the disciples because they were used to the Holy Spirit coming upon them in certain situations and then leaving when that situation was over.
    For example, in the tenth chapter of Luke, we read how these same disciples received a mighty anointing of the Holy Spirit when Jesus sent them out two by two into all the surrounding towns to minister in His name. He told them to preach the Gospel, cast out devils and lay hands on the sick. They came back tremendously excited because even the demons were subject to them in Jesus’ name. Jesus explained to them that He had given them authority and power over all the power of the enemy. In other words, the demons were subject to the disciples through the anointing and the power of the Holy Spirit that was upon them.
    Then in John chapters 14, 15 and 16, Jesus told His disciples something different. He referred to the time when the Father would send the Holy Spirit upon them to remain with them forever.
    It was not as though the disciples knew nothing of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus was telling them, they would know and recognize the Spirit when He came because He (Jesus) had been with them. The good news was that now He would
always
be with them through the Holy Spirit to work His ministry in them forever.
    And that same promise is made to you and me today.
    The Holy Spirit as Teacher and Guide
    But the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will cause you to recall (will remind you of, bring to your remembrance) everything I have told you.
    John 14:26
    It is the Holy Spirit Who teaches us. He is also the One Who causes us to remember what we are taught.
    In John 16:12 Jesus told the disciples,
I have still many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them or to take them upon you or to grasp them