Yes, God put ministers in the Church to teach and help people. But will they always be there in your time of need? No! But if you are born again, the Holy Spirit is always in you as a Comforter to help and comfort you in any need.
If you depend upon Him to comfort you, He will do it. You'll have comfort from within. People won't be able to understand how you can be so composed and at peace in times of trouble. But you'll know why. Thank God, the Comforter lives within you!
Second, the Holy Spirit is your Counselor. He'll counsel with you. And the Scriptures say "He will lead you into all truth." (John 16:13)
Third, He's your Advocate. The word "advocate" means lawyer or one who pleads your cause. As an advocate, He'll help you. He knows how to plead your case.
Fourth, the Holy Spirit is your Intercessor. This has to do with your prayer life. Romans 8:26 says, "Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."
Paul is talking about what the Holy Spirit will do to help Believers in prayer as He dwells inside them. Notice Paul, writing to the Romans, is talking to people who are not only born of the Spirit, but who are also filled with the Spirit.
Fifth, the Amplified translation of John 14:16 goes on to say that the Holy Spirit is your Strengthener. Have you ever thought about looking on the inside for strength? Or are you waiting for God to send something down from Heaven on you to strengthen you? Are you singing, "Come by here, Lord! Come by here!" when the Holy Spirit is already dwelling within? He will give you strength!
Sixth, the Holy Spirit is your Standby. He's just standing by waiting for you to ask for His help. Maybe the reason He hasn't done anything for you is that you haven't asked Him. He is standing by to help you any time you need Him.
Often instead of trusting and depending on the Holy Spirit, we try to figure out a solution to our problems in the flesh. We often pray primarily out of our heads, which are sometimes confused, perplexed, and worried. We worry before we pray, while we pray, and after we pray. When we pray like that, our praying doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Instead of letting the Holy Spirit help us and comfort us, too often we depend on our flesh and our own mental capacities to find answers to our needs. At times I've done that. When I was a young Christian, sometimes I prayed for hours about a problem when I knew what the Word said about it all the time. I just wore myself out for nothing. It was like a dark cloud hanging over my head, when my answer was in the Word all the time.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been so mentally upset and concerned about things that have happened that you felt like someone had mentally beaten you? When that happens, you're trying to figure out the solution in your mind. Your mind is confused, and you're just wearing yourself out mentally.
But the Holy Spirit is not in your head. He's in your heart - in your spirit. Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost because your body is a temple of your own spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in your spirit.
It's so wonderful in the midst of perplexity to have the Holy Spirit right there in your spirit standing by you. You can actually find rest in the midst of the battle with Him on the inside of you. You can come to the place where you just laugh out loud when nothing seems to be going right. When you wake up in the night, instead of worrying, you can just start laughing. You can laugh because you have inside information.
Years ago, a woman came to our home early one morning who needed to learn how to call upon the Holy Spirit inside of her. Sometime before she had been healed of sugar diabetes and from a tumor in her body. I had sent a prayer cloth to her through her sister, who was a member of a church I had pastored. The woman came to our parsonage for prayer. To make a long story short, she said she was sick again, but that if she could get back to God, she didn't care if she lived or died.
When she said that, I thought she must have committed some awful sin. I told her God would forgive her of whatever she had done wrong. She looked at me and said she hadn't done anything wrong. I asked her what made her think she had lost the victory. She said that she didn't feel like she had the victory.
Actually, there was nothing wrong with this woman except that she was walking by feelings and not by faith. I told her that if I always went by my feelings, I would sometimes have to ask the congregation to pray for me when I got up to preach because I don't always feel like a Christian. Many times I don't feel a thing. Thank God our salvation isn't based on feelings, it's based on the Word of God!
The woman looked at me in astonishment and said, "You mean, preachers feel that way sometimes too?" I told her, "Preachers are human just like you are." She asked me, "What do you do when you feel spiritually dry?" I told her, "Just sit there and watch what I do."
Then I shut my eyes, lifted my hands, and said the following prayer:
Heavenly Father, I want to thank You today because I am your child. I've been born again and I'm a child of God. Second Corinthians 5:17 says that I'm a new creature. I'm your very own child and You are my very own Father, for I'm born of God. I want to thank You because You're living with me and in me. I want to thank You for the gift of the Holy Ghost. I want to thank You because He is in me. First John 2:27 says that the anointing abides in me. That anointing is in me and I want to thank You for it.About that time way down on the inside of me I felt that fire and that thrill of the Presence of the Greater One dwelling on the inside of me. I felt something start to bubble. I had been stirring up the fire of the Holy Spirit in my spirit. I began to laugh and talk in tongues.
The woman said, "Your very expression changed and lit up as you were speaking!" I told her, "I can understand that. I began to feel differently as I talked to the Lord." She asked, "Can I do that?" "Certainly you can," I answered. So the woman did the same thing that I had done, and then she began to laugh and talk in tongues. She exclaimed, "I've had that joy inside me all the time! I just didn't know it!"
That's the trouble with a lot of folks. They have the victory inside of them and don't even know it. They've been going by their feelings and struggling in the flesh with their problem, when all they need to do is stir up the anointing within them.
You always have the anointing - the Holy Spirit - within you to help you pray and to help you in every area of life (1 John 2:20). The Bible says He abides in you (1 John 2:27). Someone still might say, "But I don't feel Him." The Holy Spirit is in you just as much when you don't feel His Presence as He is when you do feel His Presence. If He came and then went, He wouldn't be abiding within you.
First, you have to believe the Bible because it says you do have Him abiding within. Second, you have to do what Paul told Timothy: "Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou STIR UP THE GIFT OF GOD, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands" (2 Tim. 1:6). What was Paul talking about when he said "stir up the gift of God that is within you?" He was talking about the gift of the Holy Ghost.
You see, in 2 Timothy 1:6, Paul talks about the gift of God being given through the laying on of hands. Then in the next verse he says God has given us a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind - the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 1:7). Combine these verses with First Corinthians 6:19, which tells us our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost who is in us. It seems quite obvious to me that the gift of God Paul is talking about in Second Timothy 1:6 is the Holy Ghost.
In First John 2:27 when John talked about the anointing abiding within the believer, he was referring to the Holy Spirit. And Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit, calling Him the Comforter, Counselor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, Strengthener, and Standby (John 16:7 AMP).
How does all this apply to our prayer life? It is through praying in the Spirit that we stir up our inner fire. We must maintain the glow in our prayer life. We don't need to pray that God will give us the Holy Ghost. He is already inside of us to be our Comforter, Counselor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, Strengthener, and Standby!
The New Testament says the Holy Spirit abides in us (John 14:17,23). We just need to recognize that fact and stir up the Gift of God within!
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications
Rev. Hagin served in Christian ministry for nearly 70 years and was known as the "father of the modern faith movement." His teachings and books are filled with vivid stories that show God's power and truth working in his life and the lives of others.
