John 14:26Plain English VersionLater the father will send the Holy Spirit to help you. He will be your teacher, in my place. He will help you remember all the things I told you, and he will teach you everything you need to know. See the chapter |
While Joseph thought about that, he went to sleep and had a dream. He saw an angel messenger from God. The angel said, “Joseph, you are from the family of David. Look, you can go ahead and marry Mary. Don’t be too frightened to do that. You see, her baby is from the Holy Spirit, not from another man.
John kept on talking to the people. He said, “If you say you are sorry for the bad things you did, and if you turn to God, then I will baptise you with water. But somebody is coming soon, and he is more important than me. I’m not even good enough to carry his shoes. I’m just nothing. He will put the Holy Spirit in you, that is, he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.
You see, you might be bad, but you always give good things to your kids. Well, your father in heaven is a lot better than you, so you can be sure that he will always give you good things. He will send the Holy Spirit to everyone that asks him.” (We have not yet translated 11:14-36. You can read about that teaching in Mark 3:20-27; 8:12; Matthew 5:15; 6:22-23; 12:41-45.)
Then God took him up into heaven. He is there now, sitting right next to God, on God’s right-hand side, the place where the most important person sits. And God gave Jesus the Holy Spirit, and today Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit, just like God promised. That’s the reason why you are seeing and hearing us talk in lots of languages today.
I did everything in a way that showed you that we all have to work hard to get enough money, not just for ourselves, but to give some to people that don’t have the things they need. We have to remember that our leader, Jesus, said, ‘If people give things to you, that can make you a bit happy. But if you give things to other people, you will be properly happy.’ ”
We belong to God. He doesn’t give us rules about the things that we can’t eat or drink, but he wants us to have his spirit in us so that we will do the things that are right, and we will always feel good and quiet inside ourselves, and we will always be happy. If we live like that as we work for Jesus Christ, then we make God happy. And other people are happy with us too.
and he picked me out to be a worker for Jesus Christ. My job is to tell the good news about Jesus to people that are not Jews. After I tell them that good news, God’s spirit works in them to make them good and right, and God is really happy with them. It is like I give them to God, like a really good gift.
His spirit told them that the message wasn’t for themselves, but it was for you. That all happened a long time ago, and now God’s people have told you that good message about Jesus. The Holy Spirit from heaven gave them power to talk to you. This is all very wonderful. Even God’s angels in heaven don’t know all about the things that God does to save people, and they want to find out more.