More To Learn

More to Learn

Read: John 16:12-15

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.”

John 16:12

“There is hardly ever a complete silence in our soul. God is whispering to us well nigh incessantly.”

—Frederick William Faber

IN WORD Jesus made it clear to His disciples that His teaching would continue long after His death and resurrection. Their instruction in His ways would not be confined to His earthly ministry. He never said: “Close the book on my teaching.” His clear purpose was, through His Spirit, to continue training them, speaking to them, guiding them, and revealing to them divine mysteries.

We must be careful of such a claim. Many have taken Jesus’ words of teaching and gone off on unbiblical tangents. That is emphatically not what Jesus has in mind. He does not give license to us or to cult founders to come up with new strains of pseudo-Christian theology. But neither does He tell His disciples that His presence will now consist entirely of words on a printed page. He is much more alive than that. The Resurrection was not from the grave to the printing press, it was from death to life. We know He lives not because He once spoke, but because He continues to speak to us.

Many believers are uncomfortable with the reality of the Holy Spirit, but Jesus made His presence foundational to the life of discipleship. We can only become disciples when the Holy Spirit behind the biblical words writes them on our hearts and lives them through us. He spoke to Paul, John, Peter, and others, and He still speaks. Do we have ears to hear?

IN DEED Never let your discipleship become simply a set of principles. The Bible is the backbone of our faith, but we tend to read it historically, as though Jesus is only an ancient teacher and not a living Lord. He will never contradict His Word, but the Word is not just a memory preserved. Jesus is alive. He continues to teach. He still disciples us. We still follow wherever He leads because He hasn’t stopped leading yet. When you read the Bible, do you read the words of history or hear the words of a risen Savior?