The Holy Helper

Turn in your Bibles to Acts, chapter 26, verse 22, and this is and I'm going to breathe out of the amplified if you don't mind this is Paul standing before a grippa, king of Grippa, and he's giving his testimony.

Acts 26:22

He is under arrest, he's the Roman prisoner and he's giving his testimony.

And in verse 22 he says this to King of Grippa this day I have had the help which comes from God as my ally.

I've had the help which comes from God as my ally.

And then, in Hebrews, chapter 13, I wanted to read to you out of verse 5 and 6, 5, the second part of verse 5, for he hath said I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man shall do unto me.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

And so I wanted to talk tonight about the Holy Helper.

The Holy Helper, you know.

And then you know, after he said this, this day, if I received help from God as my ally, then he went on and talked about what he, what he did.

After that, he just didn't sit around, you know, in his jail cell he continued, you know, he continued as if God was helping him.

He gave something for God to get involved with.

He kept on taking action, he kept on testifying, he kept on teaching and preaching and writing epistles, he kept on laboring and being a witness.

I mean, right after this chapter is the great chapter where he is in that great storm on the sea and and so he, he knew that God was his ally out there in that stormy water and, and we know the story, I mean, everybody that sailed with him was saved, all the lives were saved, but the ship was lost and they went to shore on broken pieces of the ship.

And then he went, landed on the Isle of Malta where he shook off a viper into the, into the fire.

I I'm sure that that that this idea that God was his ally was participating with him.

The Holy Ghost was Paul's Holy Helper and in fact it was so strong on him that as he testified to King Agrippa, agrippa told him.

He said Paul almost thou persuades me to be a Christian.

We don't have any record of Agrippa actually becoming a Christian.

But one thing about it when he stands before God, in the end time he'll have no excuse he was.

He was given a witness by one of the greatest there is, one that wrote three quarters of the New Testament.

So notice that out of this, when we need help and who doesn't?

You know, we all need help from time to time, and but help is available from God.

Help is available from God.

I just think about Hebrews 4.

16 says to come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and to find the grace to help in time of need.

Notice the word boldly associated with the help.

I mean, you know it, the weaker we are in them, in, the whineier we are.

Yeah, the faithful.

Take the wine out of your voice, get the wine out of your voice and expect help, because God said he was, he was your Holy Helper.

And and so here in Hebrews 13 I want to read that in the amplified, if you don't mind Hebrews 13, five and six.

We read it in the King James a moment ago, but this is so powerful.

Listen to what the King the amplified says in verse five.

It says for God himself has said I will not in any way fail you, nor give you up, nor leave you without support.

I will not.

I will not.

I will not, not in any degree leave you helpless, nor forsake, nor let you down.

Relax my hold on you, assuredly not.

How strong is that?

And then it says so.

We take comfort and are encouraged and confidently and boldly say the Lord is my helper.

I will not be seized with alarm, I will not fear or dread or be terrified.

What can man do to me?

Praise God.

Oh, I tell you, we had a note from one of our distant members.

You know, harold and Sidney Green.

We, if you happen to listen to this, we love you here in Houston.

We wish you were back here, but I know you're where you're supposed to be, up in Carolina, I think North Carolina.

But anyway, sidney wrote us a testimony recently and she was talking about how she was just going through a severe attack.

I mean she says physically, mentally, emotionally.

She was just, she was so, so attacked, so viciously that she had all kinds of thoughts going through her mind, but I mean she knew how to fight.

Thank God, you know, sidney, you just, you just received God.

You received help from God as your ally.

I mean he is the holy helper.

You experienced that help.

And then she went one more time and witnessed to her sister in the midst of this attack, which I think the attack was probably because of your sister, I think that.

I think that attack on you was trying to keep you from reaching out one more time to your sister, and she had been witnessing to her for quite some time and unsuccessful with getting her, you know, to just reach out to God and say a sinner's prayer.

She's a, she's in church, but she's in a religious church and really not born again.

And so she overcame this terrible attack on her mind and her body and then she reached out to her sister one more time and then, a couple of days later, her sister had prayed the prayer and she had received Jesus as her Lord and Savior.

So I tell you praise God, sidney.

I tell you, no matter, we all need help.

That's my point, and I hope you don't mind me using you as an example, because we all need help.

From time to time we all come under attack, and the Bible says in the last days, satan will attempt to wear out the saints and he brings attack sometimes, and sometimes it's unrelenting, and so we need to learn how to boldly confess that the Lord is my helper, he's my ally.

I will not, I will not, I will not give up on you, I will not forsake you.

Praise God, it couldn't be any any any more clear.

But the Holy Helper responds to holy boldness.

Holy boldness, I mean.

Well, you know, sometimes, I just see, it's when you feel the worst that you need to be the boldest.

The righteous are bold as a lion and you need to be able to adopt that.

Well, I just didn't feel, see, don't worry about how you feel.

Just you know, put on that boldness and speak boldly and you'll watch your spirit begin to catch on to the Holy Helper and he begins to flood in and begin to help you.

And this is a very familiar verse John 14.

Jesus is speaking on the night before he was crucified and he's teaching them about the Holy Ghost.

And he said in verse and they were sad because he was gonna leave them, they just didn't understand the whole thing about the crucifixion and he's gonna leave them, and so they're sad.

And in John, in John 14, 16, he said and I will pray the Father and he will give you another comforter, an identical, a duplicate comforter, that he may abide with you forever, and even the spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive because it sees him not and either knows him.

But you know him, for he twels with you and he shall be in you, I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.

So that word there in translated comforter is the Greek word paraclete, and really comfort and comforter is a poor translation, it's not as accurate as it could be.

And the Amplified says counselor, helper, intercessor, advocate, strengtheter and standby, and that's good too.

That is a good explanation of what the comforter is.

But sometimes when we hear the word comforter we think of like comforting someone that's in distress, you know, kind of speaking nicely to them and patting them on the head, drying their tears, and really in the Greek that's not what the Greek really means and that's why comforter is not the best word.

In the Moffitt translation it translate comforter.

It are paraclete as helper.

He is a helper and really in William Barkley in his study Bible talks about that word paracleteus and it means a one called in as an expert.

For instance they would use this word like for someone that was standing trial and the defense would call in an expert witness to help them, one called in to consult in a problem situation, for instance a business.

Sometimes you have to hire consultants.

You know we've hired a consultant to help with our newest my God votes Some of you are asking about that.

Well, we're not quite ready to roll it out.

We're working on it, but instead we've got John Grinercom and my Facebook page and Twitter page.

That's the initial part of this endeavor to wake up the church.

I'm just obeying God, but we needed an expert, we needed someone to consult with us, and so that's really the meaning.

Someone another meaning is one called in to encourage troops before a battle.

You know, and recently I was watching I love World War II and I like to study, I like to watch films and I saw some.

It happened to be a reenactment of Eisenhower and his days, as he was the supreme allied commander of the invasion of Europe, the Normandy invasion, and he had a lot of tough decisions to make.

I mean, they're sending men into battle and not those men.

It's very risky and you know, you saw President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

They had to make those terrible decisions in wartime and they had to weigh the risk to reward ratio of their decisions and they knew that men would die and women would die and it was just a matter of how many would die and they had to have the estimates, and so in this particular part of the history of this invasion.

It had not happened yet, the weather was not right.

He was having to wait on the weather and suddenly the weather forecast opened up and for the next day it was gonna be good.

So he did the go.

And so every minute that they went by and they delayed the invasion, it took the chance of it not being a secret and they lost the secret of their surprise, the element of surprise in this invasion.

And so he knew okay, now we're gonna go.

And the first group that took takeoff was the 102nd Airborne or 130th Airborne, 82nd Airborne.

They were gonna.

The paratroopers are gonna go in, some of them are gonna go in on gliders and they're going to go ahead of the Normandy invasion on the beaches.

They're gonna go in at night, which is highly risky, and his experts estimated that of those soldiers, 80% would die.

80% out of 10 of those soldiers that he is ordering to do this are gonna die.

And he said you know, I love my soldiers and I just wanted to go see them.

So he drove over to the airstrip where they were all gathered, the old big mob of them, and of course they're standing at attention.

Here's this five star general coming up, and these guys are 18 and 19 and 20 years old.

Oh, they had a few top kicks, you know.

They had guys that were veterans of the First World War, so they were their sergeants.

But most of the guys were young guys.

And he said that's all right, boys, be at ease, light them up if you've got them.

And he pulled out a cigarette.

He was a heavy smoker in those days They'd all smoke.

He smoked a cigarette with them and he went around and kind of talked to him individually and saw one of the sergeants talk to him were you in World War?

I, yeah, what battle and all this kind of thing.

He would just talk to him and he spent 15, 20 minutes talking to him outside the airplane they're fixing to get on and fly into battle.

Many of them are not gonna come back and he's thinking could be 80%.

He's hoping and praying it's not that bad.

And then he turned to him at the last and he said you know boys?

He said I want you to know, whatever sacrifices you make, it's gonna be worth it.

Whatever sacrifice you have to make, it's gonna be worth it.

And so he encouraged those men in battle.

See, that's the helper, that's who we have as an ally.

He lives on the inside, he encourages us every time we're facing some kind of battle, some kind of a situation where without him we would collapse.

But we're not.

Without him.

I will not, I will not, I will not.

Praise God, hallelujah, one called in to encourage you, one called in to give you courage.

See comfort and our modern way of comfort.

You know it's not full enough, it's not.

And if you don't understand who the comfort or who the paraclete is, if you don't understand the fullness of who the Holy Ghost is, you'll sell him way short in what he's capable of doing in you and for you.

Praise God, let's just lift our hands and thank God for the Holy Ghost.

Oh, he did not leave us alone, he did not, he did not, he did not.

We've got the comforter, we've got the expert witness, we've got the consultant that knows everything that's for somebody out there Maybe you're wrestling with something at work and hadn't been able to solve the problem?

Well, just let's reach out and get the Holy Helper involved.

And so there's a couple of ways, of two things that I wanna talk about, obtaining the Holy Help that you need, obtaining it.

And of course, the first one is just boldly say the Lord is my helper.

Boldly say don't, it's not even something you have to pray for.

You don't have to say, oh God, please help me.

No, he's inside already.

He's your ally.

Call on him in faith.

Boldly say the Lord is my helper.

I will not fear what the boss is gonna say.

I will not fear the consequences of my decision.

I'm gonna make a decision.

I'm gonna make the decision with the Holy Spirit helping me make that decision.

You see, when you can call it into being, you can speak it.

Instead of always praying for things we already have, we don't have to pray for help.

We have the helper.

He's already been given.

You see how silly it is to pray for something you've already got.

So let's train our faith and train ourselves to call upon the Holy Hell.

Remind yourself of the scriptures.

I mean Psalm 46-1,.

The Lord is my refuge and strength, a very present help.

He's not just present, he's very present in time of trouble.

Psalm 40-17, because you've been my help.

Therefore, under the shadow of our wings, I will rejoice, praise God.

I mean you can get so happy the fact that he's your ally and that he's your helper.

You can rejoice before you even really know what to do.

Praise God, psalm 70, verse five Lord, you're my help and my deliverer.

Amen.

Just so simple.

The Psalms are filled with these types of verses.

I just wrote three down.

There's many more.

But he's been given to you.

He's not on his way to you, he's not coming from some other place, he is on the inside.

They're greater when lives in you.

He is your ally, he's your holy helper and he is able to give you the help you need, whatever the help is.

There's.

No, do you think he's intimidated by your problem?

Do you think he's never seen something like this before?

No, he's seen plenty.

Most likely he's seen worse than what you're going through.

So let's encourage ourselves, let's let's speak with boldness and appropriate that help when we need it.

And then the second thing the key is very key is that the Bible says in James 2, 20 in the Weymouth translation faith without corresponding action is dead being alone.

So do something lest you do nothing.

I'm borrowing from brother Deerman now, and he was the director of missions at Lakewood for many years and he was so close to me and saw something in me and encouraged me at a time in my life when I needed somebody to encourage me.

And his favorite thing was he said you know we can't do everything, but we can do something.

And we must do something lest we do nothing.

That was his, that was his little group of sayings, and they were so true.

In other words, do something for God to get involved with, do something after you've appropriated his help and you've settled it.

He's your helper, he's your ally.

Then do something for the helper, the holy helper, to get involved with.

I mean, if you don't do anything, then he's not going to do anything.

He's a helper.

He's not to do it himself.

I mean, a ship can't be steered at the dock, it has to be moving through the water.

Well, pastor, I know, I just don't know what to do.

Well, do something lest you do nothing.

Inactivity as long as there's inactivity, there is no help.

As long as I'm gonna say it again, as long as there is inactivity, there is no help.

Well, I just don't wanna do the wrong thing, we'll do something.

Suppose you do the wrong thing, suppose you move in the opposite direction of where you're supposed to go, don't you think the Holy Ghost can let you know that, within a couple of steps, you're gonna know it and then you can stop and go back to where you started from and then go the other way.

By that time you're probably gonna know what the Holy Ghost wants you to do.

Another good prayer to pray is Holy Spirit, guide me, show me which way to go.

I'm gonna start moving and you guide my footsteps.

I like to keep moving and not ever stop and then let him guide me.

If I'm going the wrong direction, then I'll just start veering the other way.

Just don't stop moving, because when you stop moving the Holy Spirit stops helping.

So let's let him help us all the way through to the victory.

You know the Holy Ghost turns defeat into victory, praise God.

And so this corresponding action.

You know, even a cornered animal fights.

I mean, it may seem like there's no way out.

Yeah, there is a way out.

Just start barking, start eating your way through, start flapping those teeth together.

I mean even the tenderness most wounded animal.

If you come up to a wounded animal and try to help it, it's gonna snap at you.

They're not gonna let you touch them, and we ought to be at least that much fired in us.

We're not that weak.

Amen.

I think about the Four Leppers in Second King Seven.

You know, they were in the city there and they were being under siege by Syrian troops.

They were all out there and they had shut down all the food supply and food had started getting down, down, down and even, I mean, there was cannibalism.

Things were how.

It was bleak.

And these Four Leppers you know, they're at the bottom of the bottom, nobody cares about the lepers and they're sitting there and they're saying why sit we here till we die?

If we stay here we're gonna die.

If we go out there, we might die or they might be afraid of us and we might be able to pick up some scraps of food.

What have we got?

In other words, what have we got to lose?

So they started going and they went through the wall at night.

They dug through the wall and went out there in the dark where the Syrian troops were, and they found all their tents empty.

Everybody had left.

Suddenly, they left their clothes, they left the food, they left jewels, they left gold and silver.

Who takes jewels, gold and silver with them in a battle, I don't know, but the Syrians did and they left it all behind for the four lepers to pick up.

And they got filled.

I mean, they had all the fajitas they could eat.

They had frejales, refritos, they had everything.

I mean they had the guacamole, the whole thing.

And then they started feeling a little guilty.

They thought, man, if we keep eating like this and get all this money, I mean judgment's gonna fall.

We need to go back and tell everybody they don't have to be afraid, everybody's gone, come on out here, the siege is over.

And so they did.

They did the right thing and they went back and told them and of course there was a great victory and a great rejoicing.

And then over in 2 Kings 4, about the widow who's husband died without any life insurance.

That left her with all the debt and she had all the expenses of his funeral, probably, and she had all of his business debts and she couldn't pay it.

And the creditors were coming and they were gonna take the only assets that she had, and that was her two sons, and that meant death for her because without those boys to work and earn a living and help her, she's gone.

And so she cried to the prophet Elisha.

He said well, what have you got with you in the house?

And she said nothing except a little pot of oil.

But what is that he said go, borrow a bunch of jars and don't skimp, borrow as many as you can.

And I mean her house was filled with empty jars and he said, okay, now pour out.

And as she began to pour out of what she had into those empty jars, she filled every one of them.

I mean God multiplied that oil as she poured it out.

She had to do something.

The prophet had to get her to do something that God could help her with.

She had God as her ally and didn't know it, and the prophet had to get her in faith.

The prophet had to get her to move instead of complaining in wine.

She had to do something.

And I mean she filled all of those jars with oil and when she didn't have any more jars to fill, the oil stanched.

There was no more multiplication.

The helper quit helping and then she took the jars of oil and sold them and paid her debt, paid all the creditors off and lived off of the rest.

There was plenty left over for her to live off the rest until her sons could make a living, and so she had to do something for God to get involved with.

So those two secrets, I mean just claim your help.

He lives on the inside and then do something for that help to help you with.

Do something for God to get involved.

I tell you amen.

So in the spring of 85, I'll just tell one of my testimonies.

You've heard it, many of you have heard it, but we have new people listening all the time.

In the spring of 1985, houston was not going through a recession, we were going through a depression.

It was horrible and interest rates were sky high.

All the oil companies were laying off people, oil had fallen down to $6 a barrel or something, and all these medium-level executives which most of the suburban areas were filled with oil company and oil-related middle executives that were living in the houses that I built.

I was a home builder at the time and I had a $1.2 million worth of inventory for sale at the time.

All this happened, and I mean nobody was buying anything, and I mean I quickly got in financial trouble.

I had exhausted my personal savings.

My company couldn't pay me anything because it was paying interest as long as it could, and then it ran out of money and so I was at a standstill.

I didn't know what else to do, so I prayed okay, what's my next move?

What can I do for you to help me?

And so I just, I told the Lord one morning early in prayer.

I said, lord, I'll do anything, I'll go anywhere and I'll even change careers, but I want, you know, I want out of this situation.

I've got to provide for my family.

I'm willing to do.

I just don't know where to go, I don't know which way to go.

But I was.

I mean for me to say I'd be willing to move out of Houston.

I mean, I've lived here most of my life, born here.

I love my church here.

I didn't want to leave my church, lakewood church, john Osteen, my pastor.

But I prayed that prayer as God, as my witness.

30 minutes later the phone rang and it was a friend of mine that I had met through full gospel, businessmen and we'd gotten to be good friends and he was a spirit-filled Christian and he had accepted.

He used to work for the Woodlands and it was an executive there.

And then he got a better offer down in Corpus Christi and things were slowing down in the Woodlands.

So he just jumped and moved his family to Corpus Christi about six months before this and was doing well.

And so he calls me this morning, right after I prayed this, 30 minutes after I prayed this prayer, and says man, john, I've been praying for you lately.

I don't know what's going on with you.

Why don't you tell me what's happening?

Man, I've been really praying for you.

And so I said well, as a matter of fact, and I told him what I prayed, and he laughed.

I wasn't laughing, but he laughed and he said well, you know, maybe this is the Holy Ghost.

He said because I have a need.

Maybe this is why I've been thinking about you.

And he briefly told me that he was working for a commercial construction company.

They built office buildings and they had a residential section that he didn't know anything about residential, or he claimed he didn't.

And he said you know, we need help.

We're kind of stuck.

We've got this residential subdivision, we're on the hook.

Far it's got nothing to sell in and we need kind of some help to do to know what to do with this project.

Would you come down and take a look at it?

I mean, maybe there might be a place for you down here.

And nothing in me wanted to do that, but I did.

I just that was all I had open and I had prayed that prayer.

So I took a plane down the corpus and I toured the what they were doing in their commercial side.

Then we went to the subdivision.

It was in distress and I drove through it and looked at it.

We went back to the office and the Holy Ghost helped me give them a.

I said well, you need to do this, this and this.

It's kind of like Joseph giving the interpretation of the dream to Pharaoh.

And then, and then he said and then Pharaoh said well, who else would would be better qualified than the man who interpreted the dream?

Just go ahead, you'll be taking care of the whole thing.

That's what they did.

They made me president of that of that division of the company, the residential division of that company.

They made me president, gave me a six figure contract that took care of all my financial arrears.

And here I still had all these houses for sale.

One point Well, I said one point to is actually one point four million dollars worth of houses for sale.

And you know, when I, when we moved, gladys and I, my family, we moved down the corpus, we started that job and those houses started selling as soon as we left town.

It just seemed like all of them.

So I never did know for three years I never knew that the reason they were out was stuck was because I missed God to begin with.

But God was my ally, he was on my side, he was my helper.

He didn't give up on me because I missed him.

He didn't give, I didn't miss him.

You know, I didn't intend to miss him.

I just made a mistake.

How many of you have ever never made a mistake?

We all make mistakes.

That's when we need to help the most is when we've made a mistake.

And he's your ally.

He was our ally, he, he blessed us.

I mean, we were so blessed, we were so able to learn other new things down in corpus from other ministers of the gospel, and God turned the whole thing into our, into good.

So you know, there's help waiting for you.

That's my main encouragement tonight.

The holy helper, you need help, there's help waiting for you.

God, the holy helper, the holy spirit, is your ally.

Tap in to the help that he has for you with faith and action.

Lay hold on the holy helper.

Just receive that word tonight.

Praise God.

I know many are being helped tonight and maybe this, this message, was an answer to prayer.

So now you know how to activate your faith.