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"The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name… will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I have said to you." John 14:26

When the sun is setting and the room grows gradually darker our ability to read or study in the clear light fades. Most of us have had this experience only to flip the switch of the nearest lamp to flood the words of our book in light. The Holy Spirit is like that.

People go about their business every day without the Holy Spirit’s aid. Reading the bible is just words without the Spirit of God. When we ask God to open this book to our heart and mind it’s like reading with the light on.

Many of you have heard the radio program Practical Family Living. Often you will hear the words: Invite Jesus in…to your pain, your experience, your concern… When we ask God to walk with us through something we are comforted with His presence and we can see the next step in His light. We are encouraged by the Psalmist: "Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from your law." (Psalm 119:18)

Sometimes we are afraid of the One who loves us most. Sometimes we don’t ask God for His illumination because we don’t want to see or do things His way. We want our freedom from what we perceive as oppression despite the assurance that there is no darkness in God.

Someone recently told me, "I don’t want to go to that extent (serving God) it is like going to jail." Well, dear one, we all are in someone or something’s jail or grip: our own, our group, the Village Voice, the Weekly Standard, the Internet/our favorite media …you name it… our ideas of the rightness of things bring with it a set rules and regulations no matter what we believe. My advice is to look at the life or the end result of the belief you are following. Gertrude Stein, friends with Matisse, Picasso, Wilder, and Ernest Hemingway and a favorite of her culture died with the words…What is the answer?…then again…what is the question?… according to Elizabeth Sprigge.

It is your God-given choice as to what your focus and to whom your service will be. Scripture encourages us to be enlightened by God in our search. Paul wrote: "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given us by God" (1 Corinthians 2:12).The things that have been freely given us by God have received their first breath by the Holy Spirit. Wayne Gruden said: "We should pray that the Holy Spirit would give us His illumination and thereby help us to understand rightly when we study Scripture or when we ponder situations in our lives." May we indeed pray for the light of the Holy Spirit and receive the understanding that God wants to give. Let the next step we take be into the footprint of the One who goes before us, making our crooked paths straight. It’s like walking with the light on.

Compliments of Practical Family Living, Inc.