Building with Brad...(7Oct08)

Life in the Spirit

 

If we try to stop sinning we go back under law, because in order to stop sinning we have to go back under the law in order to achieve it. And if we go back under the law we will very quickly realize that we cannot obey it and so again we stand condemned and crushed. If we do this then we are in fact saying that Christ was not enough. Gal 5: 4 "You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace" By trying to stop sinning ( trying to be justified) we are actually alienating ourselves from Christ.
Christ was enough and all we need to do is receive the promise given to us, The Holy Spirit. He is the fulfilment of the promise, He is the one who will produce in us the same behaviour and love of Jesus.
Why do we think that rules and our ability to perform under them are more effective about bringing change in our lives than The Holy Spirit. We belittle Him in doing this because He is more capable of regulating our lives and transforming us into the image of Christ.
He is the one that produces the fruit in our lives seen in Galatians 5 and in verse 23 it says that "against such things there is no law"

 

People who have lived chained for so long hear the message of the gospel of grace and they begin to be set free and sometimes they start to see the flesh manifest. This happens because for years they have tried to regulate their behaviour by the law and then suppress the flesh out of fear of the consequences of breaking the law. They are now set free from law and the flesh manifests. We need to introduce them to the Holy Spirit who lives in them and give Him room to move in their lives. When we as believers begin to co-operate with the Holy Spirit then the life of Christ begins to manifest in us.  We co-operate not through striving or performance but through surrender to Him, brought about by revelation of what God has done by His wonderful grace and our eternally secured position in Jesus Christ and the imputed righteousness and holiness given to us for free. WOO HOO.

 

And as we walk by the Spirit and build a more intimate relationship with Him, He begins to open our lives to an unimaginable lifestyle. The love, the life and the power of Jesus begins to appear in us and through us as normality, with out effort. Life becomes a joy and very exciting. We start to hear the Fathers voice more clearly and we begin to see what He sees and get glimpses into the supernatural realm. Impossibilities start to happen as normalities, and we find ourselves no longer living from the temporary realm hoping to one day reach heaven but we rather live from heavenly places bringing change into the temporary realm. Strange things happen by accident, people get healed without prayer, demons manifest when we talking to someone and they are set free, the presence and glory of God fills a room while we are having coffee and talking about the goodness of God. The amazing thing is we are not planning for it to happen, it just is because we are living life in the Spirit and thus Christ is living through us by the Holy Spirit.

 

This is exciting- I am feeling excited as I write this- this is real Christianity, not this superficial intellectual Christianity, but experiential Christianity, the way we were intended to live. To preach the good news and the Holy Spirit demonstrates the good news.
I cant see how God would give us the Holy Spirit, The Spirit Of Christ, and expect nothing to happen. Surly if we have Him living in us and the Kingdom is in Him, then powerful, supernatural activity of a powerful, supernatural God is going to flow as a norm. We have to keep remembering that we must not try to manufacture or earn anything from Him. We cannot earn the Holy Spirit, He is in us, we have received Him. We cannot perform healing and miracles through striving or doing the right things, they just naturally happen as we walk in revelation of our position and with a  supernatural God.