John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Yesterday I said that I don’t get to pick and choose what is truth. Here Jesus is speaking to us about the Holy Spirit and He will only speak truth to us. In the end of this verse is a line which is often misunderstood. “He will show you things to come.” Sounds prophetic, does it not? Well it is but not in the sense most people think of prophetic.

A harbor pilot comes on board to guide your boat out of the harbor because He knows all the dangers in the harbor and how to avoid them. Once out of the harbor a vessel comes along side and picks up the pilot to return to the docks to guide another ship out.

This is the essence of what the Holy Spirit does for us in showing us things to come. He never gets off the ship and is right there in the wheelhouse to guide us through life’s dangers. Do we listen or ignore His warnings? Do we ever let Him take the wheel?

If you are like me, I like to drive, I am the master of my own vessel. I don’t particularly like that voice next to me yelling “look out”. Now if the advice were “Slow down, there is a bad accident that just happened around this next turn.” That I would appreciate.

Most of the warnings I get come in the form of reminders of how things went wrong the last time I did this thing I am thinking about doing. “You know how this will turn out.”