What the Spirit Really Wants for You ~ blog

Last week we focused on how we can be filled with the Spirit.  It is God’s will for us to live a life of sexual purity and in this day and age of omnipresent porn being filled with the Spirit is a command that we desperately need to obey.

Living the Christian Life is IMPOSSIBLE

Apart from Being Filled with the Holy Spirit.

Let me be a little more specific.  It is certainly possible to be a Christian and not be filled with the Spirit.  I would dare say that is how most Christians live … walking in the flesh and losing the battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. There is no halo over the heads of those who are filled with and walking in the Spirit.  One does not LOOK different on the outside if they are being filled on the inside.

However, listen to their words and watch their actions and over time you would be able to tell. If you are giving in to your sexual sins, you are walking in the flesh. If you are looking at others and imagining them in a sexual way, you are walking in the flesh. If you are given to anger, lying, fits of rage, greed, gluttony, laziness, jealousy, creating discord, being intoxicated … on and on and on I could go.  These are signs you are walking in the flesh.

Here is what Jesus said to His disciples the night He was going to be captured and crucified in John 14:16-17;

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;  that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.

Then in John 16, Jesus re-emphasizes that it is an advantage to the disciples that He leaves because then the Spirit will come and indwell every person who becomes a believer.  So, just to be super clear ever Christian …

  • Has the Spirit of God dwelling inside of them.
  • He wants us to ask Him to fill us.
  • He has the power to change us when we are being filled with and walking in the Spirit.

Being filled with the Spirit is as critical for us to be able to live the Christian life as breathing air is critical for us to be able to remain alive.  Sure, one can look nice and act nice on our own for periods of time.  However, when we are being tempted, we learn if we are truly being filled with and submitting ourselves to the Spirit or if we are walking in the flesh. Here is the good news

What the Spirit really wants to do is TRANSFORM us!

The Spirit does not just want to help us act more like Jesus.  He wants to transform us and literally make us more like Jesus.  And as we continue to walk in the Spirit while being filled with the Spirit, He is literally conforming us into the image of Christ. Or to put it another way, He is actually transforming us into Christ-like Christians from the inside out.

We begin acting more Christ-like because He is changing our minds and hearts to literally being more like Christ.  Our outward sinful behavioral patterns begin to decrease because the internal transformation being done by the Spirit is increasing.

Becoming a Christ-like person is not behavioral modification …

it is Behavioral Transformation.

And it is the work of the Holy Spirit that brings that about.

How does this happen?  Now is where the hard work begins.  And before I get to that … we need to understand where we are right now and what needs to begin to happen.

Most of us come to the end of ourselves because we have become addicted to sexual sin and we discover that we are sexually broken people.  So, it is not like me going to the gym when I was 22 years old, weighing 150 pounds, and very physically fit.  I could run a 6-minute mile no sweat … literally.  I had been extremely athletic for the 8 years of High School and College. Starting an exercise regimen back then would have been easy.

Our reality needs to be taken into consideration when we begin to think about being filled with and walking in the Spirit.  Our present condition might be that we are not only couch potatoes with years, with bad eating habits, but we have a broken leg, sprained ankle with plantar fasciitis and gout.  Plus, we are going to have to go through withdrawal for about 90 days.

Years, if not decades, of sexual sin, has taken a toll on our minds and bodies.  Our flesh has grown strong and we have hardwired our brains so that it only takes one image, one thought, or one glance and we are ready to act out. The physical and spiritual impact of years of sinful repetitive behavior is not erased by one sincere trip to the altar at the front of our church.

Healing from our sexual brokenness is a long and slow process for most of us.  Unlike everything being put right by Iron Man snapping his fingers.  This process of transformation comes by living one day at a time and walking in the Spirit moment by moment.

More tomorrow on How Do We Walk in the Spirit.

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