Status Updates From Encuentros con Jesús: Respu...

Ch6Q: How did Jesus become our Savior? How does He intercede for us?
Answer (summarized): To God like a skilled lawyer who speaks in our stead, only He not only speaks, but makes a case that everything we owe has been paid. Through the Spirit helping us understand Jesus' work, He also intercedes to us, helping us understand how rich we are largely through our practice of "means of grace" as His means.

Ch6Q: How did Jesus become our Savior? How does He intercede for us?
Answer (summarized): To God like a skilled lawyer who speaks in our stead, only He not only speaks, but makes a case that everything we owe has been paid. Through the Spirit helping us understand Jesus' work, He also intercedes to us, helping us understand how rich we are largely through our practice of "means of grace" as His means.

The Holy Spirit tells you the Father loves you; your eternal bliss is guaranteed. In other words, Christ gives us true things to think about that overcome the darkness of this life, while the world can only say, "Just hum loudly and look away."

Or if you attend these things in a thoughtless, perfunctory way, you will be technically present but closing your ears to his instruction, comfort, counsel, and advocacy.

How can you listen better? That's a big subject, but if you are a believer, then the Holy Spirit will do his work as you use the "means of grace"-reading and studying the Word by yourself and in community, prayer, worship, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. If you don't use the means of grace, you are not giving the other Advocate scope to do his work.

If you're that upset about your status with other people, if you're constantly lashing out at people for hurting your feelings, you might call it a lack of self control or a lack of self-esteem, and it is. But more fundamentally, you have totally lost touch with your identity. As a Christian, you're a spiritual billionaire and you're wringing your hands over ten dollars.

You are forgetting that the only eyes in the universe that matter see you not as the "phony little fake" you have sometimes been, but as a person of captivating beauty.

This week...Something you wanted to happen didn't go the way you wanted it to.
These are real losses-of your reputation, of your material wealth, of your hopes. But what are you going to do, if you're a Christian? Will this setback disrupt your contentment with life? Will you shake your fist at God? Toss and turn at night? If so, I submit that it's because you don't know how truly rich you are.

Before he died, the Holy Spirit had not been released into the world in this powerful way, and you can only know Jesus fully through the Spirit's influence...In other words, right here and now, through the Holy Spirit, you can see Christ and know his presence and his love better than the apostles could in that moment in the upper room.

Though he is "the Spirit of truth," he does not merely teach and inform us; he calls us to live according to what he is telling us.

The first Advocate [Jesus] is speaking to God for you, but the second Advocate [the Holy Spirit] is speaking to you for you.

Jesus Christ can say, in effect, "Father, my people have sinned, and the law demands that the wages of sin be death. But I have paid for those sins. See, here is my blood, the token of my death!...Now, if anyone were to exact two payments for the same sin, it would be unjust. And so--I am not asking for mercy for them; I'm asking for justice.

(More on answer for ch6) No matter how hard we try to live upstanding lives, we cannot secure anything we are striving for. This is due to evil outside and within — in fact, this very commitment to doing A to get B is at the heart of our pride and the Enemy’s greatest strategy to keep us from satisfaction. Christianity IS a fight — not to win but to rest IN the win! To be buried in the truth that (see answer).

Ch6Q: How did Jesus become our Savior? How did he overcome evil?

Answer (summarized): Jesus “is there to help us face the reality of evil both inside and outside ourselves, having done it himself as a man” and having won!

Satan wants to destroy our grasp on the truth. But even more, he wants to affect the beliefs of our heart…What the heart trusts, the mind justifies, the emotions desire, and the will carries out. If Satan can get you to consent with your mind to a God of loving grace but get your heart to believe that you must do X, Y, and Z in order to be a worthy, lovable, and valuable person, he will be most satisfied.