Walk In The Spirit 5: Key Steps

Hello people of God. It is a new week and I am delighted to write another post in Vignettes of Grace. 

For a little over a month my posts have centered largely on the need for us to walk in the Spirit. I was pleasantly surprised to get a message from one of the readers on this blog with the following questions:

“How do we walk in the Spirit? How do we live in full conformity with the Spirit? What practical steps should we take?”

I therefore crave your indulgence to provide answers to these questions in my post this week as I believe it would probably be helpful to a number of people.

It is very important to clarify from the beginning that walking in the Spirit does not refer to a “mystical” or “trance-like” experience in which the believer mysteriously lives and behaves like an “other-worldly being”. As you will notice in the whole section of Galatians 5 that we have been considering all through this period, there is no insinuation of such a pattern of life.

Walking in the Spirit as I wrote in last week’s post means to live in accordance with the Holy Spirit or to say it in another way, walking in the Spirit means living under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

I will now share some key steps I that I have found helpful in doing this in my own life:

A. Maintaining a conscious awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit: Many believers do not have a knowledge of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives and this makes it difficult to achieve the goal of living under His direction. This topic on its own is one that needs to be properly understood and it is not the focus of my post this week but I will mention that every single believer in Christ has the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9). We need to be consciously aware of His presence in our lives. 

B. Consciously relying and depending on the power of the Holy Spirit: The Spirit of God is present in us to empower us to accomplish God’s purposes and plans through and in us. Many times we attempt to live out the life God has called us to in our own human strength. The new life in Christ is to be lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. This means that to walk in the Spirit, we have to acknowledge our own helplessness in ourselves and recognize the ability of the Holy Spirit in us to enable us to accomplish all God’s desires. One of the things the Holy Spirit does is that He produces within us strong desires in accordance with God’s will just as God promised in Ezekiel 36:26 & 27. 
  
C. Praying: Prayer has so many effects in our lives (James 5:16b, Jude 1:20) and one of the effects I have seen is that it helps in the area of living under the direction of the Spirit. I find that periods of my life when I have been “prayer less” have been the times when I have also struggled to live in accordance with God’s desires. Prayer is also one of the practical steps to consciously express our reliance and dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit. 

D. Acting in faith in accordance with the revealed word of God: This is a very important step in walking in the Spirit. We must understand that the Spirit of God will never direct us to act contrary to the word of God revealed in the Scriptures to us. The Scriptures reveal God’s desires and directions for our lives. When we act in conformity with the things that are clearly revealed (in reliance and dependence on the Spirit’s ability in us to accomplish them), we can be sure that we are keeping in step with the Spirit of God. As we do this continually, it creates and reinforces a pattern of obedience to God’s Spirit and makes it easier to keep following the Spirit’s direction. But this will mean that we must fill our minds with the word of God and have our minds renewed consistently (Colossians 3:16a, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23, Colossians 3:10). Sometimes believers in Christ express a desire to walk in the Spirit and at the same time place a very low premium on the word of God. This sort of outlook usually leads to errors and a failure to actually live under the direction of the Holy Spirit. We must understand that they go hand in hand. The Holy Spirit utilizes the agency of the word of God to direct us in addition to the strong desires He produces and the empowerment He supplies in our lives.
 

These are the key steps I have identified to be helpful in the quest to walk in the Spirit. I trust that God by His Spirit will impress these truths in our hearts and cause us to live in the reality of all that He desires for us.

My song for the week is another song by Hillsong Worship, "Love On The Line". 

Kindly come back to the blog next week when we will proceed in our journey through the epistle to the Galatians as we look at more practicalities of the inward working of God's grace in us.

Please feel free to drop your comments or contact me through my email address unjoule@gmail.com for any further clarifications.

Have a splendid day and a beautiful week.

"Love On The Line" by Hillsong Worship 

Walk In The Spirit 4

Good day folks. It is another wonderful opportunity to bring you this latest post in Vignettes of Grace.

In the last few weeks we have been going through the lovely chapter 5 of Galatians looking at the issues of the conflict between the Spirit and the flesh, the ascendancy of the Spirit and the glorious nature of the fruit of the Spirit. I do hope it has been richly rewarding for you.

To bring our considerations in this section of the epistle full circle, I would direct us this week to verse 25:

“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” Galatians 5:25 King James Version

“If” is the title of a poem written in 1895 by Rudyard Kipling and the words of the poem have inspired so many people since its publication. Very well known in Britain, several lines of the poem are found in framed photographs and are written on walls in public places most notably on the walls of the players’ entrance at the venue of the world famous Wimbledon tennis championships.

The word “if” is a conjunction that we use many times to indicate conditionality and also on many occasions it connotes suppositions and uncertain possibilities. It paints a picture of hypothetical situations; situations that we should just imagine as possibilities but yet not certain occurrences. Such are the scenarios Kipling eloquently describes in his poem-imagined possibilities as evidence of complete transition from childhood to manhood.

However, the King James Version rendition of our verse in focus (as well as many other versions) in using the conjunction “if” often conveys to our minds a less forceful and precise message than intended. The message of Galatians 5:25 was not to conjure any sort of hypothetical situation or uncertain possibility. Rather, it is actually a very direct call to action based on an unchanging reality of our spiritual existence as believers in Christ. The word translated “if” would be better rendered “since” as we find in a few translations:

“Since we live by the Spirit…” New International Version

“Since we are living by the Spirit…” New Living Translation

We already live in the Spirit. That is one of the benefits of grace. Once in our lives we were dead in sin and trespasses, yes. But we have been made alive by the Spirit of our God and we now live in the Spirit. That is a simple fact, it is an unchanging reality. Based on that fact, God is now calling us to action- He calls us walk in the Spirit. Since believers in Christ are actually alive in the Spirit, we are instructed to walk in the Spirit.

Have you ever watched a military parade or perhaps been a part of one in the past? Then you will appreciate the import of the term “walk” in that phrase. It describes the act of marching in military rank, keeping step and falling in line. In a military parade, every foot is lifted and dropped in conformity, every salute is executed with a near perfect accuracy and there is no room for any form of disorderliness. This is what God is calling us to.

My message this week is since we live in the Spirit, let us keep step, and let us fall in line with the Spirit. Let us march in accordance with the Spirit. Let us live in full conformity with the Spirit. There is no room for a “sluggish foot drag”.  Let us yield fully to the influence of the Spirit and to His guidance. Let us with military alertness and dispatch keep ourselves aligned to Him. 

My song for the week is “Broken Vessels” by Hillsong Worship.

From next week we will move to the last chapter of Galatians but remember that the reality of life in and by the Spirit is another snapshot of the amazing grace of God. Have a nice day and a great week.  

"Broken Vessels" by Hillsong Worship  

Walk In The Spirit 3: The Spirit's Fruit

Hello people. How was your weekend? Hope it was a very restful one. It is a brand new week and it is a fresh opportunity to walk in the glory of God’s grace.

We have been considering the sharp contrast between life in the flesh and life in the Spirit and we now arrive at Galatians 5:22 & 23 in this exciting journey:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” English Standard Version

These verses contain a list of godly attributes that characterize people who possess God’s Spirit. These characteristics are inextricably linked with each other and God’s people are energized by His Spirit to exhibit these qualities. A careful look at each of them reveals that the essential nature of the fruit of the Spirit is the reproduction of the life of Christ in the believer because Jesus Christ (while on earth) epitomized each of the attributes listed.

Permit me to say a little about each of them:

• Love: not an emotional affection, physical attraction, or a familial bond, but respect, devotion and affection that leads to willing self-sacrificial service. Love heads this list of virtues because it is the stark opposite of the self-centredness of most of the items on the list of the works of the flesh.
• Joy: happiness based on unchanging divine promises and eternal spiritual realities. It is the sense of well-being experienced by someone who knows that all is well between himself and God (1^st Peter 1:8). It is not a result of favourable circumstances (1^st Thessalonians 5:16, Philippians 4:4). Rather it defies the circumstances.
• Peace: in the context of an individual, it refers to an inner calm and unblended tranquility that results from confidence in one’s relationship with Christ (Romans 5:1). It denotes “binding together” or a wholeness not dependent on external circumstances. In a community context, it means the cessation of hostilities- the end of all fights and strife.
• Patience: also termed longsuffering or forbearance. It is the ability to endure injuries afflicted by others, a willingness to accept painful or irritating situations and a positive endurance with unchanging devotion to God and His ways (Ephesians 4:2).
• Kindness: tender concern for others and an active pursuance of their good.
• Goodness: closely linked to kindness. It describes an attribute of moral and spiritual excellence that is manifested in active kindness.
• Faithfulness: loyalty and trustworthiness and faithfully living out our trust in God.
• Gentleness: meekness. A humble and gentle attitude that is patiently submissive in every offense with no desire for revenge or retribution. It manifests as submission to God’s will and teachability (Colossians 3:12, James 1:21).
• Self-control: restraining of passions and appetites. The self discipline of an athlete (1^st Corinthians 9:25).

Just like the list of the works of the flesh, this list is not exhaustive but representational. The ending phrase of verse 23 shows that: “…against such things there is no law.” Colossians 3:12 mentions compassion, humility and forgiveness which are not directly mentioned in this list in Galatians but are implied because like I pointed out earlier, all these attributes are inextricably linked. In fact, 1^st Corinthians 13:4-8 pictures most of these attributes as qualities of love. 

It is imperative to add that unlike the gifts of the Spirit in which each individual believer only has a sub-set of the entire range of gifts according to God’s sovereign will and purpose (see Romans 12:6-8, 1^st Corinthians 12: 28-30, Ephesians 4:11, 1^stPeter 4:10 & 11), the fruit of the Spirit is to be displayed by ALL believers in Christ. In fact, Galatians 5:22 uses the singular term “fruit” and not plural “fruits” and the intention is to illustrate that every believer in Christ should manifest all these characteristics and not just one of them or a few of them.

The Spirit of God bears fruit in our individual lives. If people are to see what heaven is like, they should see it now in the way we as heavenly citizens live our lives together here on earth. What will they see in you? The works of the flesh or the life of Christ? I am not referring to natural dispositions we were born with or family values that we imbibed as we grew up. I am referring to the product of the power of the Spirit of God in our lives.

Remember that for those who belong to Christ Jesus, the flesh with its passions, lusts and desires are crucified (verse 24). If the flesh then is crucified already, why shouldn’t we live in step with the Spirit? Don’t hold on to your old self anymore; let the Spirit have His way not only today or this week, but all through your days. As we yield to His control, depending on His power, we will see visible manifestations of His presence as He produces these godly attributes in our lives in an ever increasing fashion.

My song for the week is “Thrive” by Casting Crowns. Just as the song says, God did not call us to live ordinary lives. We were made to thrive and allowing the Holy Spirit to bear His fruit in our lives is one aspect of thriving in God!

I look forward to sharing more with you on Vignettes of Grace, remember you can always share these posts with your friends and family. Have a lovely day and a beautiful week. 

"Thrive" by Casting Crowns