He's Already Here
Make Room: Living Like the Holy Spirit Is Actually Here
We have a way of filling our lives. Move into a new house and you’ll have empty cabinets for about five months. Give it a couple of years and you’ll find 17 extension cords in the garage, three busted lawn chairs, and a box labeled “Miscellaneous 2014” that you’ve never opened but can’t bring yourself to throw away. And when we run out of room, our solution is rarely to clear things out. We buy more bins. We vacuum-seal our sweaters. We rent storage units and pay rent for our stuff to live somewhere else.
That same pattern shows up in the rest of our lives. Every opening on the calendar gets filled. Every quiet moment gets claimed by a notification. We’ve grown so used to being needed, solving problems, and staying in motion that silence feels like something to fix. None of the things filling our lives are necessarily bad. Jobs, kids, grandkids, bills, and relationships are all part of a normal life. But here’s a truth worth sitting with: just because something fits into your life doesn’t mean it goes there. And just because our lives are full doesn’t mean they’re full of what matters most.
For the last several weeks, we walked through the life of Abraham and asked whether God can be trusted, both in what He promises and in His timing. That question leads naturally to another one. If God really can be trusted, what would happen if we actually made room for Him to lead? Not just in a crisis, after the job falls through or the relationship breaks, but on the front side of our decisions, where He wants to guide us, change us, and even interrupt us.
Many of us treat God like an app running in the background on our phones. We’re glad He’s there, we want Him working on things when we need Him, but He doesn’t need to be on the main screen. And if He asked to send us notifications, a lot of us would tap “Not Now.” We’ve got this handled. We’ve been this way before.
That was never the life Jesus described. In one of His final conversations with His disciples before His arrest, Jesus told them He was leaving. These were men who had eaten with Him, watched Him heal, and asked Him questions whenever they were confused. They had also spent a fair amount of time arguing about who was the greatest. They weren’t ready. Yet Jesus left them in charge anyway, knowing exactly who they were, and He gave them a promise in John 14:16-17: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth… you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
The word advocate is the Greek word parakletos. It means helper, counselor, one who comes alongside to encourage and represent. And the word “another” matters just as much. The disciples knew what it was like to have Jesus as their teacher and guide. Jesus was promising someone who would carry that same role in their lives, not occasionally, not only in emergencies, but with them and in them. The God who created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead has made His home in His people.
Most of us believe that. The challenge is that our belief in the Holy Spirit’s existence often doesn’t match the weight we give His presence in everyday life. We walk into a difficult conversation and immediately start scripting what we’ll say. We face a big decision and start calculating every outcome. We get frustrated and respond the way we always have. Thinking things through isn’t wrong. God gave us brains, and some of us could use them more often. But we have access to the help and presence of the Spirit, and it’s possible to love Jesus, read our Bibles, come to church every week, and still live most of our lives as if the outcome rests entirely on us.
Part of what makes this hard is our backgrounds. For some of us, the Holy Spirit has been like the relative in the family reunion photo: clearly part of the family, but nobody’s quite sure who he is or what he does. For others, especially those of us raised in charismatic or Pentecostal churches, we’ve seen some amazing things attributed to the Spirit, and also some things God probably doesn’t want His name on. Either way, the risk is the same. In trying to avoid the strange things associated with the Holy Spirit, we can end up distancing ourselves from the very person Jesus promised would be with us.
Jesus gives us a better picture in John 15:5: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Not very little. Nothing. A branch doesn’t wake up deciding to be the best branch it can be and strain to produce fruit. Fruit is the natural byproduct of staying connected to the vine. We often try to produce patience, love, and forgiveness through sheer willpower, and then someone cuts us off in traffic and we find out the fruit of the Spirit has a speed limit. The answer isn’t trying harder. It’s staying connected. Paul says it this way in Galatians 5:16: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Walking is everyday language. It’s consistent, ordinary, ongoing dependence.
It also helps to remember that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a resource. Jesus didn’t hand His disciples a spiritual battery pack to power their plans. He gave them a relationship. We all have that friend who only calls when there’s a couch to move, usually upstairs. If you own a truck, you know exactly what that’s like. Too often we treat the Spirit the same way, calling on Him for help with a problem, guidance for a decision, or power for something difficult, without living aware of His presence the rest of the time. He’s the one who convicts us when our attitude is off, prompts us to encourage someone we’d otherwise walk past, and gives wisdom we couldn’t come up with on our own. That doesn’t mean every passing thought is divine revelation or that we need a word from God about which cereal to buy. It means we live attentive to a God who is already present and active.
Acts 16 shows us something surprising about what that looks like. Paul and his companions were trying to preach the gospel, about as good a goal as there is, and twice the Holy Spirit stopped them. First from preaching in Asia, then from entering Bithynia. We aren’t told how. A prophetic word? Closed roads? An inner sense? Luke doesn’t say. We only know they were redirected and they responded. That night Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia begging for help, and they left at once. Macedonia became a major part of the story of the early church.
Two things stand out. First, sometimes the Spirit redirects us away from something good, not something wrong. That’s harder to accept, because good plans are easy to defend. Some of the hardest decisions aren’t between good and evil but between our good idea and God’s timing. Second, Paul didn’t get the whole itinerary up front. He got the next step. Many of us want the full PDF from God, complete with hotel breakfast details. But if we had every step mapped out, we’d stop coming to Him for the next one. The step-by-step nature of His guidance is part of how He keeps the relationship alive.
That doesn’t mean every plan that falls apart is a spiritual redirection. Sometimes it just wasn’t a great plan. Sometimes the other candidate was more qualified. Being led by the Spirit isn’t an excuse to abandon commitments or ignore wise counsel. But some of us have become so afraid of getting it wrong that we’ve stopped expecting the Spirit to lead at all. Learning to hear Him is a little like learning to ride a bike. You will fall sometimes. Each miss teaches you something about how you were listening, or how you weren’t.
Most of us don’t mind being used by God. We’d just prefer He do it on our schedule, on a day when we’ve got some extra space. Being available sometimes means having a conversation we weren’t planning on, slowing down for someone when we already have plenty to do, and listening a little more deeply instead of racing through. It can mean saying no to something good because God is leading toward something else.
Jesus ends this part of His conversation with a remarkable pairing in John 14:26-27. He promises that the Spirit will teach us and remind us of everything He said, and then He says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” Surrendering control can make us nervous. What will He ask me to change? Will I have to move? Will I have to give something up? Maybe. But the one asking us to trust Him is the same one who promised to be with us through it. Making room for the Spirit isn’t meant to turn life into a spiritual scavenger hunt where we wake up terrified of missing some secret instruction. It’s an invitation into dependence, relationship, and peace.
Many of us are carrying real weight right now: situations we can’t control, people we’d love to fix but can’t, and responsibilities that feel bigger than we are. Somewhere along the way, we started living as though everything rests on our shoulders. Jesus never asked us to carry it alone. So the question for this week is simple and honest: if God is trustworthy, why am I trying to manage so much of my life without Him?
Here’s a place to start. Tomorrow morning, before you pick up your phone, pause and pray: “Holy Spirit, make me aware of what You’re doing today. Use me where it fits Your mission. Help me recognize You and respond when You lead.” Then go about your day, aware that He might interrupt you with a conversation, an opportunity, or a nudge to be bold. Stay connected to the vine, and the fruit will take care of itself.
That same pattern shows up in the rest of our lives. Every opening on the calendar gets filled. Every quiet moment gets claimed by a notification. We’ve grown so used to being needed, solving problems, and staying in motion that silence feels like something to fix. None of the things filling our lives are necessarily bad. Jobs, kids, grandkids, bills, and relationships are all part of a normal life. But here’s a truth worth sitting with: just because something fits into your life doesn’t mean it goes there. And just because our lives are full doesn’t mean they’re full of what matters most.
For the last several weeks, we walked through the life of Abraham and asked whether God can be trusted, both in what He promises and in His timing. That question leads naturally to another one. If God really can be trusted, what would happen if we actually made room for Him to lead? Not just in a crisis, after the job falls through or the relationship breaks, but on the front side of our decisions, where He wants to guide us, change us, and even interrupt us.
Many of us treat God like an app running in the background on our phones. We’re glad He’s there, we want Him working on things when we need Him, but He doesn’t need to be on the main screen. And if He asked to send us notifications, a lot of us would tap “Not Now.” We’ve got this handled. We’ve been this way before.
That was never the life Jesus described. In one of His final conversations with His disciples before His arrest, Jesus told them He was leaving. These were men who had eaten with Him, watched Him heal, and asked Him questions whenever they were confused. They had also spent a fair amount of time arguing about who was the greatest. They weren’t ready. Yet Jesus left them in charge anyway, knowing exactly who they were, and He gave them a promise in John 14:16-17: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth… you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
The word advocate is the Greek word parakletos. It means helper, counselor, one who comes alongside to encourage and represent. And the word “another” matters just as much. The disciples knew what it was like to have Jesus as their teacher and guide. Jesus was promising someone who would carry that same role in their lives, not occasionally, not only in emergencies, but with them and in them. The God who created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead has made His home in His people.
Most of us believe that. The challenge is that our belief in the Holy Spirit’s existence often doesn’t match the weight we give His presence in everyday life. We walk into a difficult conversation and immediately start scripting what we’ll say. We face a big decision and start calculating every outcome. We get frustrated and respond the way we always have. Thinking things through isn’t wrong. God gave us brains, and some of us could use them more often. But we have access to the help and presence of the Spirit, and it’s possible to love Jesus, read our Bibles, come to church every week, and still live most of our lives as if the outcome rests entirely on us.
Part of what makes this hard is our backgrounds. For some of us, the Holy Spirit has been like the relative in the family reunion photo: clearly part of the family, but nobody’s quite sure who he is or what he does. For others, especially those of us raised in charismatic or Pentecostal churches, we’ve seen some amazing things attributed to the Spirit, and also some things God probably doesn’t want His name on. Either way, the risk is the same. In trying to avoid the strange things associated with the Holy Spirit, we can end up distancing ourselves from the very person Jesus promised would be with us.
Jesus gives us a better picture in John 15:5: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Not very little. Nothing. A branch doesn’t wake up deciding to be the best branch it can be and strain to produce fruit. Fruit is the natural byproduct of staying connected to the vine. We often try to produce patience, love, and forgiveness through sheer willpower, and then someone cuts us off in traffic and we find out the fruit of the Spirit has a speed limit. The answer isn’t trying harder. It’s staying connected. Paul says it this way in Galatians 5:16: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Walking is everyday language. It’s consistent, ordinary, ongoing dependence.
It also helps to remember that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a resource. Jesus didn’t hand His disciples a spiritual battery pack to power their plans. He gave them a relationship. We all have that friend who only calls when there’s a couch to move, usually upstairs. If you own a truck, you know exactly what that’s like. Too often we treat the Spirit the same way, calling on Him for help with a problem, guidance for a decision, or power for something difficult, without living aware of His presence the rest of the time. He’s the one who convicts us when our attitude is off, prompts us to encourage someone we’d otherwise walk past, and gives wisdom we couldn’t come up with on our own. That doesn’t mean every passing thought is divine revelation or that we need a word from God about which cereal to buy. It means we live attentive to a God who is already present and active.
Acts 16 shows us something surprising about what that looks like. Paul and his companions were trying to preach the gospel, about as good a goal as there is, and twice the Holy Spirit stopped them. First from preaching in Asia, then from entering Bithynia. We aren’t told how. A prophetic word? Closed roads? An inner sense? Luke doesn’t say. We only know they were redirected and they responded. That night Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia begging for help, and they left at once. Macedonia became a major part of the story of the early church.
Two things stand out. First, sometimes the Spirit redirects us away from something good, not something wrong. That’s harder to accept, because good plans are easy to defend. Some of the hardest decisions aren’t between good and evil but between our good idea and God’s timing. Second, Paul didn’t get the whole itinerary up front. He got the next step. Many of us want the full PDF from God, complete with hotel breakfast details. But if we had every step mapped out, we’d stop coming to Him for the next one. The step-by-step nature of His guidance is part of how He keeps the relationship alive.
That doesn’t mean every plan that falls apart is a spiritual redirection. Sometimes it just wasn’t a great plan. Sometimes the other candidate was more qualified. Being led by the Spirit isn’t an excuse to abandon commitments or ignore wise counsel. But some of us have become so afraid of getting it wrong that we’ve stopped expecting the Spirit to lead at all. Learning to hear Him is a little like learning to ride a bike. You will fall sometimes. Each miss teaches you something about how you were listening, or how you weren’t.
Most of us don’t mind being used by God. We’d just prefer He do it on our schedule, on a day when we’ve got some extra space. Being available sometimes means having a conversation we weren’t planning on, slowing down for someone when we already have plenty to do, and listening a little more deeply instead of racing through. It can mean saying no to something good because God is leading toward something else.
Jesus ends this part of His conversation with a remarkable pairing in John 14:26-27. He promises that the Spirit will teach us and remind us of everything He said, and then He says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” Surrendering control can make us nervous. What will He ask me to change? Will I have to move? Will I have to give something up? Maybe. But the one asking us to trust Him is the same one who promised to be with us through it. Making room for the Spirit isn’t meant to turn life into a spiritual scavenger hunt where we wake up terrified of missing some secret instruction. It’s an invitation into dependence, relationship, and peace.
Many of us are carrying real weight right now: situations we can’t control, people we’d love to fix but can’t, and responsibilities that feel bigger than we are. Somewhere along the way, we started living as though everything rests on our shoulders. Jesus never asked us to carry it alone. So the question for this week is simple and honest: if God is trustworthy, why am I trying to manage so much of my life without Him?
Here’s a place to start. Tomorrow morning, before you pick up your phone, pause and pray: “Holy Spirit, make me aware of what You’re doing today. Use me where it fits Your mission. Help me recognize You and respond when You lead.” Then go about your day, aware that He might interrupt you with a conversation, an opportunity, or a nudge to be bold. Stay connected to the vine, and the fruit will take care of itself.
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