Jesus With Us

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 2:38

Roald Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer who was the first to discover the magnetic meridian of the North Pole and to discover the South Pole. On one of his trips to the top of the world, Amundsen took a cage containing a homing pigeon—and released it near the North Pole. When his wife saw the pigeon circling their home, she knew her husband was alive!

That is a perfect picture of how God demonstrated His love for believers in Christ—by sending the Holy Spirit. First He sent the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, to indicate His anointing of Jesus (Luke 3:22). Then He sent the Spirit as a gift to the church at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Jesus called the Holy Spirit the paraklete (“one called alongside”), sometimes translated as “Helper” (John 14:16). Just as Jesus loved and encouraged His disciples by being with them, so the Holy Spirit loves and encourages Jesus’ disciples by being in them.

Jesus may be absent from us physically, but His presence is within us spiritually by the power of the Holy Spirit.