Discover 5 Ways the Holy Spirit Helps Us
Discover how the Holy Spirit helps us daily. Our helper, the Holy Spirit, comes alongside us to bear our burdens, advocate, defend, give us strength and courage, teach, counsel, and comfort. Learn how the Holy Spirit opens our hearts to God, helps us grow and ripen for growth and maturity, and restores us to become more Christ-like.
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26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you.
7 But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am leaving; for if I do not leave, the [a]Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.
Who Is Our Helper?
There’s a good chance you need God’s help in an area of your life. If you don’t think you do, you just haven’t realized it yet!
However, I have some encouragement where you recognize you need help: Whatever the issue or struggle, God wants to help you.
Our Scripture points to the Holy Spirit as our helper. The Greek word for the Holy Spirit as our helper is Paraclete, which means “someone called to come alongside another person to help or assist them in any way they have need.” No friend like the Holy Spirit comes alongside us to bear our burdens, advocate, defend, give us strength and courage, teach, counsel, and comfort.
Christians are called on to live in two worlds simultaneously—a natural world and a spiritual world. Even after we experience a spiritual birth (born again or born from above), we have no clue how to live our lives. We must learn how to live and respond to God daily. We must be taught how to live like citizens of heaven while we are still inhabitants of the earth.
The Holy Spirit helps us learn to live the Christian life.
We can all agree we have too much to manage. But where we try our best to maintain all of our spinning plates; however, the best management we do is giving all of our life to God and asking Him to help because what we’re doing doesn’t work.
So, let’s look at how the Holy Spirit helps us.
How the Holy Spirit Helps Us
1) Open Our Hearts
One of my saddest experiences during the COVID shutdown was the closed signs everywhere. It was disappointing and disheartening. But, even more disheartening is all the people who live life with a closed sign in the window of their hearts.
One of the greatest miracles we can experience as human beings is an open heart to God. In Acts 16, God opens the heart of Lydia, a successful businesswoman who sold purple fabrics. The Bible does not say that the Lord prepared Lydia’s mind but that “He opened her heart” in response to Paul’s message about Jesus.
“The moment the Spirit of the Almighty strikes the heart of him that is without God in the world, it breaks the hardness of his heart and creates all things new.” -John Wesley (The Presence: Experiencing More of God, 117)
Justifying grace involves the Holy Spirit helping us open our hearts to accept God and what He has done for us. But unfortunately, neither Wesley’s quote nor the Book of Acts uses intellectual language to describe Lydia’s conversion, but experiential language.
“Yes, the nature of becoming a Christian involves our reason as the Holy Spirit brings the revelation of God to our minds through Scripture. But few people who reflect on the moment of their salvation would say that it was their “brains” that were touched by God. Salvation typically also includes a softening and stirring of the heart in the presence of God.” -John Wesley (The Presence: Experiencing More of God, 117)
We need the Holy Spirit’s help keeping our hearts open to God.
Many have closed their hearts because of something that has happened. However, we can’t live without facing affliction or being inflicted, whether infected by wounds, traumas, family tree issues, and sometimes church hurts. If you have a hurt, hangup, or heartache that has caused you to close your heart again, the Holy Spirit can help open it again.
2) Helps Us Grow
Dead things don’t grow; Only living things grow. Flowers grow, but rocks don’t. Puppies and kittens grow, but cars don’t.
How tragic would it be for parents if their children advanced in age but never grew bigger, stronger, or more capable? We’d all know something was drastically wrong. Christians are meant to grow; something is wrong when we don’t!
Many Christians have stayed green too long! The Holy Spirit helps us ripen for growth and maturity.
God wants to ripen and mature us. “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.” We need to pray more prayers like “God, make or grow me” instead of “God, give me.”
3) Restore Us
Before a relationship with Christ, our hearts could be described as “sin-sick,” meaning sin affected every dimension of our human personality. Sin permeates everything from how we think, see, talk, feel, and relate to every relationship (with God, self, and others).
When the Holy Spirit moves into our hearts and becomes a resident, He comes to restore, heal, and help us recover so we can think, see, talk, feel, and relate as Christ does. Hence, becoming a Christian means becoming more Christ-like.
In my family tree are five generations of alcoholism. In a sense, “To be human is to be addicted” because we all struggle with the tendency to replace God with something other than God. But when the Holy Spirit moves in, He begins to convict us of what doesn’t belong and evict everything we replace for God. (John 16:8)
Right desires are a part of our restoration where we want God to be resident within us and be President with control of every room of our hearts. Then, real heart change begins to occur that our tradition speaks of regarding sanctifying grace.
After God opened my father’s heart, he testified, “I haven’t stopped drinking, I’ve just changed bottles—now I drink from the spout where the glory comes out!”
There may be so much wrong in your life that you can’t imagine restoration or real heart change. Please know that restoration is not something you can do; it’s what God does in you as you surrender to Him. We are not a self-improvement project but God’s project.
4) Helps Clean Us
I cleaned Estes Chapel at Asbury Seminary 33 years ago. I would vacuum, pick up trash, polish the pews, & tidy the pulpit. As I cleanse the sanctuary, I would pray, “Lord, as I clean your sanctuary, will you clean mine?”
A lot of us know what it is to be in a sanctuary, but we need a sanctuary in us! The Holy Spirit cleans our hearts from sin. That’s what the Holy Spirit does for us in sanctifying grace.
“O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” Psalm 97:10
By giving us a holy distaste for sin, the Holy Spirit helps us to loathe sin, hate evil, and love holiness. Asbury Seminary President Dr. Timothy Tennent said, “Even sanctified people sin, but the difference is that in the life of a sanctified person, sin becomes your permanent enemy and no longer your secret lover.”
5) Helps Perfect Us in Love
The Holy Spirit teaches us to love as God loves – sacrificially, unconditionally, and eternally.
My pastor growing up was a man named Elton Jones. He told me of a Holy Spirit experience during college that greatly overwhelmed him and helped him love every human. After that day, he never hated anyone, no matter how they treated him. It was physically impossible for him.
When cruel words and actions have destroyed our love, abuse and bullying, persecution or abandonment, God’s AGAPE (His commitment love) can still thrive in us. The Holy Spirit supplies within us God’s unlimited love to want the best for those who hurt us, to pray for them, and even forgive them.
The Holy Spirit helps us demonstrate love to others.
Accept His Perfection
Brothers and sisters, we are called to grow, to go toward perfection. It will never be about perfect performance, but a perfect intention to love others like God loves us. We all need help – it’s available! Believe it, receive it!
TL;DR
We need the Holy Spirit's help to learn how to live as citizens of heaven while still on earth.
The Holy Spirit helps us open our hearts to God and grow in our faith.
The Holy Spirit also restores and heals us from the effects of sin and addiction.
To receive the Holy Spirit's help, we need to be open and willing to let go of our own control.
We can trust the Holy Spirit to guide us and give us the strength and wisdom we need to live our lives according to God's will.
Related Reading
Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit by Rev. Paul Lawler
How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit by Rev. Paul Lawler
Who is the Holy Spirit by Rev. Paul Lawler
