Samara’s Reviews > Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life's Biggest Questions > Status Update

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).

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.

If you think of your heart's identity as an engine, you could say there is a kind of fuel that powers it cleanly and efficiently—and a kind of fuel that is not only polluting but also destroys the engine. …Whenever you're running your life on those fuels, Satan's got you where he wants you. The one thing he does not want is that God's words
"You are my beloved child" power the engine of your life and

As we have seen, evil is deep within us. And if he had come to end all evil on the spot, he would have ended us. Instead, he is a king who comes not to a throne but to a cross.

As we have seen, evil is deep within us. And if he had come to end all evil on the spot, he would have ended us.

The system[s are] far more evil and destructive than the thousands of fairly ordinary individuals who made it up. There's some kind of force out there that magnifies, complicates, and perpetuates the bad things that are happening in the social and psychological systems of the world…And you can attribute some of that evil to actual demonic forces.

The Bible says that evil is both natural and supernatural, that evil is both inside of us and outside of us, that evil is both individual and socially systemic. There's no human way to get fully away from it or even get to the bottom of it in our under-standing.