WEEK 3 - SPIRIT EMPOWERMENT/FULLNESS
Having now turned from things that were grieving and quenching the Spirit, in this week we prayerfully welcome His fullness and power. May there be a sense of hunger and holy desperation as we pray for a fresh outpouring and infilling of the Holy Spirit on our lives and in our churches. Come, Holy Spirit!
DAY TWENTY - WALKING IN THE SPIRIT BY TERRY SMITH
Galatians 5:16
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
The Holy Spirit comes to live in us when we trust Jesus as Savior. Before this, we had only the sin nature, or the flesh, in us. It is the Spirit who brings to life within us the new nature. However, the flesh is not pulled out by its roots. In this life, both natures will always be in us.
The Spirit and the flesh are in conflict, and both want control. How do we overcome the influence of the flesh? In The Alliance we believe the answer comes in both a decisive and ongoing surrender to the Spirit. In Galatians 5, when Paul calls us to live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit, he’s referring to our ongoing daily experience of welcoming the Spirit’s control and experiencing the fullness of His power (see Galatians 5:16, 25).
Paul depicts the Christian life as a step-by-step walk in which we seek the Spirit’s strength and direction for our small daily choices and big life-decisions. I walk almost every morning. The path I take and the turns I make control my destination. In the Christian life, allowing the Spirit to direct our steps each day enables us to experience life in such a way that we look more and more like Jesus.
Even if we had a transformative experience with the Spirit in our past, we must ask ourselves if we’re living under the Spirit’s control right now. If so, we’ll find ourselves increasingly overcoming attitudes and behaviors that marked our old way of life—and experiencing the freedom and fullness of new life in Jesus.
PRAYER POINTS:
1. Acknowledge your inability to overcome the flesh.
2. Pray daily to surrender your whole life to the fullness and control of the Holy Spirit.
3. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you areas of your life that are not Christlike—then ask for His power to change.