“Fire the coach!” That’s what happens when a team loses too many times.

Put a group of baseball players together who know how to play the game, but don’t give them a coach for running the bases or telling them where to play on defense, and that team won’t go very far.

So it is in the lives of people.  You don’t have to be a Christian to have a good, moral life. God has given each of us a natural understanding of his will. Everyone in the world knows you can’t steal your neighbor’s house, spouse, or stuff. But this alone does us no good after we die—for no one can be morally perfect!

We needed a “Spiritual Coach.” The Bible calls our Spiritual Coach the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit uses the Holy Scriptures to bring people from being morally good to eternally saved.

Some people say, “Don’t I get some of the credit for the good I do in my life?”  The answer is, “No.”  God gets all the credit.  No one would have a desire to obey God or have the ability to obey God if they weren’t first changed or renewed by the Holy Spirit.  The Bible says, “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13).

The Holy Spirit uses the Good News that Jesus died on the cross to save us. This powerful Word changes hearts and lives. The Holy Spirit gives us the desire and the ability to live according to God’s will. So you can see, in this sense, that the Holy Spirit gets all the credit for the good we do. In fact, because of our sinful nature, we cannot even cooperate with the Holy Spirit to produce faith and trust in Jesus.

But after Jesus takes possession of our hearts, we have the ability and desire to serve. Even then it isn’t a 50-50 cooperation. We love to serve Jesus because the Holy Spirit living in us motivates us to love and serve Jesus.  He is the Spiritual Coach who trains us, directs us, and leads us on to victory for Jesus’ sake.

If I were the devil I would work very hard at ruining the work of the Holy Spirit.  I would try to keep people away from the Bible and make them think, “I’m good enough the way I am.”  Because if I could keep people away from the Bible, the tool the Holy Spirit uses to bring us and keep us in faith, then I could easily deceive them about their relationship with God, and they wouldn’t even know it!

Let’s recognize the temptation of Satan to try and entice us away from Jesus.  The Holy Spirit will continue to work hard to keep us as God’s children.  Let’s never fire our Spiritual Coach! Let’s enjoy his work in our hearts and lives.