Posted by: William | November 22, 2007

First and Finally, Walk by the Spirit

Do you ever find yourself waist deep in sin and say to yourself, “I can’t believe I’m here again?” Or maybe watching another relationship go down the drain? Or how about a meeting for your ministry where all anyone can talk about is how many people showed up for the service? Every time this happens to me (and it’s more often than I’d like to admit), I always end up thinking something to the effect of, “how did I end up here, when I was so good out the gate!”

I was reading today in Galatians and some of Paul’s words hit me. Galatians 3:3 says, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” I imagine it must be a dozen times a day or more God says this to me. Of course I can’t hear him through my thick… thick… thick skull. Yes Paul, I am so foolish! How many formulas have I and the church concocted to evade sin? How many dating systems to get the relationship right? How many new church models to make new believers! Now for the real question, how many of them really have worked? I’m going to go with zero on this one.

Instead of working up a new system, what I ought to do first is “walk by the Spirit” so that I will not “carry out the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). Maybe that will lead me into a new system which would be good if it came from the Spirit. The truth I need to remember is that “the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit” and when I make “provisions for the flesh” (Romans 13:14) I will most likely be lead away by its lusts because my heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). If I would only remember to walk by the Spirit.

But I repeatedly display that I believe that I can “complete in the flesh what was begun in the Spirit,” to put it as Leonard Ravenhill did. This is why I end up entangled in mess after mess. This is why we create system after system after system to finish what the Spirit began! If only we would stop and first and finally walk by the Spirit.

Posted in Christianity, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Religion, Theology, bible, church, exhortation, faith, sin | Tags: , , , , , , ,

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Responses

Wonderful article. REally enjoyed it. Thank you. Let us walk, as you say “first and finally” by the Spirit.

By: joshuasthoughts on November 22, 2007
at 12:55 pm

Good focus..I would add…perhaps it would be better to say “I simply do not know how to do this ,Lord,as you can plainly see how often I have tried and yet failed so often and miserably! I have begun to think I may never have known how to do this at all… I will become as a little child and ask you please will you do this for me ,through me ,within me as I know not how to begin” I suspect we would all hear Him say…’I was waiting to hear you say that!’ I believe this type of reliance is hard for folks who were brought into the kingdom within the church system…I was fortunate in that I was soveriegnly converted by the Presence of the Living God Himself and then led immediately to walk according to heavenly principle /divine will by the Holy Spirit…As He revealed Jesus Christ to me in amoment by moment walk based upon obediance to what God was saying for me to do every step of the way..it caused me to appear very strange to everyone else who knew me before that…I was so changed and every detail of life slowed to a snails pace as He took my training in hand Himself.Although this beginning caused me to be very different from most all of those who were conformed to an image of what it meant to follow Jesus that they had learned from man about Him….once I was invited into a fellowship by a friend,I was thrilled to find a family that I thought would be mine forever,I applied everything i was taught and studied the bible at every opportunity,I tried for a time to be more like everyone else as I was often found fault with,until I realized that I’d been given the better way,that I would never quite fit this other man made mold and would always be different and grew to appreciate the uniqueness and perfection of how the Master Potter had created me to be in Christ..the true Author and Finisher of our faith. May He give you that childlike heart to surrender all that you have come to believe constitutes ‘walking by the/in the Spirit of the Living God so that when He makes you to be so very very different you will not fear and whether all who have ever known you before draw back from you or embrace you ,that you will not choke or draw back from going even deeper and further still…that you will risk all that you are for the hope of knowing Him deeper, obeying Him more fully,a vessel of His merciful love so full of His Presence that Christ in you does it all for you, through you to impact and change all that you touch in thought(prayer)word and deed for the highest good,for the sake of His kingdom ,now and to come. May you recieve this prayer in the Spirit in which it was given…and walk truly in the Spirit as you never have before! Blessings abound to you and all who are with you! More of Him less of us!Surely only He can do this in truth…so we will ask and trust Him to fulfil His word in our lives, giving thanks,Amen.

By: destinysweet on November 25, 2007
at 11:23 pm

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