When the "Comforter" Makes Me Uncomfortable

I pray to the Father that He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever. He is the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him. But you know Him, for He dwells with you and shall be in you.

The Comforter who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance that I have said to you.

When the Comforter comes whom I will send to you from the Father (He is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father), He shall testify of Me.

It is the best thing for you that I go away, for if I don’t go away, the Comforter will not come to you, but if I go, I will send Him to you.
And when He comes, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment.
Of sin - because they don‘t believe in Me.
Of righteousness - because I go to My Father and you see Me no more.
Of judgment - because the prince of this world is judged.

I have many things to say to you but you cannot understand them now. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak of Himself, He will show you things to come. He will glorify Me and show you about Me -about how everything the Father has, I have.
A little while and you shall not see Me, and again, a little while and you shall see Me, because I go to the Father.
(John 14:16-17;26 John 15:26 John 16:7-16)

These passages from the Gospel of John show the purpose of God as He makes a change in the type of discipleship from an external to an internal form of guidance into truth. John 14:20 says exactly how this will take place. AT THAT DAY YOU SHALL KNOW THAT I AM IN MY FATHER, AND YOU ARE IN ME, AND I AM IN YOU.

So upon being born again by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Master, we receive a Comforter - the Holy Spirit of God. As I read the above Comforter verses, I picture the working out of it this way: Christ as the living Son of God comes to indwell my human spirit and to change my basic spirit nature from a Satan nature to a divine God nature. Christ lives in union with me right there in my human spirit. This is a fact. This is reality which occurs immediately at my new birth in Christ.

The problem is - I didn’t know that this is what happened WHEN it happened, I had to learn it and continue to learn more about it every day of my life. And not me alone. It seems to me that almost everyone is lacking of this “Christ in you” understanding at their new birth. Oh, they have some vague idea about how Christ is going to be avail­able when they need Him, and that they are going to do their best to follow Him, but that is usually the extent of a new believer’s understanding.

I see these words about the coming of a Comforter meaning that the Holy Spirit of the Trinity of God, who previously had been dealing with the person from an external position, now comes to actually indwell the human soul of the new Christian just as Christ indwells the human spirit. The soul is the intellect, the emotions and the will by which factors we choose, we decide, we act through our bodies.

The Holy Spirit COMFORTS our soul by teaching us that we are in a living union with Christ and that we have salvation in Him. The Holy Spirit is there to show us on a daily basis how this union with the indwelling Jesus Christ works out in practice. In general, the Holy Spirit deals with us internally to show us the facts that Jesus said in John’s gospel that we were unable to understand before.

And when we come to know these facts, we receive great COMFORT from the Comforter. But what about the process of coming to know and accept this truth? Does the Comforter always give comfort?? Or does the Comforter many times have to make us UNCOMFORTABLE in our life??

I have found in my own life that as I have come to the knowledge of my union with Christ, I have had a wonderful overriding COMFORT and peace. But there have been many times when the Holy Spirit has had to MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE! And the circumstances causing my uncomfortability or frustration have always been the same - it is when I drift away from the awareness of Christ living in me and temporarily begin to do my own thing in the world. John’s message from Jesus says that the Holy Spirit lives in us to constantly remind us of Christ. And the only way to give us our ultimate comfort is to make us uncomfortable when we forget who we are in Christ.
The 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews describes “chastening” or correction of the children of God when they tend to slip out of awareness of who they are in Christ. And, let’s face it, we live in a world that is constantly working to draw us away from that awareness. The world, the flesh and the devil – the culture of the world, the desires of the flesh and the temptations of Satan – all work on our humanity.

Let me paraphrase Hebrews 12 starting with verse 5 and going to verse 11:

My child of God, don’t get mad when the Holy Spirit makes you uncomfortable because of the way you are thinking or acting. That is why He is there: to make you see the frustration in not trusting Christ to live His Life in you. And the only way you can be frustrated is to be uncomfortable. God loves you as His child and He corrects you as any good Father does who loves His child. In order to learn the lifestyle of God’s Family (in which you will forever live) the Father has to use correction - and that correction involves making you uncomfortable in your errors. In fact, if you didn’t feel uncomfortable in ignoring Christ within you, the Father would be shirking His responsibility. You came to understand that when your human father corrected you, it was for your own good. How much more is the correction by discomfort and frustration by your heavenly Father for your own good - your eternal COMFORT! We gradually by correction become partakers of His holiness! Sure it hurts! Sure it makes you uncomfortable! There’s no human joy in being corrected. The pain can be short or even long-lasting humanly, but in the light of eternity it pales in importance. What is important is that our discomfort draws us back into the awareness of, as the saying goes, “what side our bread is buttered on” - what is the real purpose in our creation: to have a living union with the righteousness of God in Christ.

Yes, the Comforter is for our ultimate COMFORT. But along the way, the Holy Spirit makes us temporarily UNCOMFORTABLE so that we return to the peace and comfort of Christ. And in the next chapter of Hebrews, chapter 13, verses 5 and 8 give the basis for our eternal COMFORT on earth as it is in heaven:
I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU! JESUS CHRIST, THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TODAY, AND FOREVER!

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