How To Walk In The Spirit (Pt. 1) Series

Intro

How do we walk in the Spirit? That is the question we will explore in this message.

To walk in the Spirit requires intentional decisions on a daily basis. In our previous message, we examined the latter part of Galatians 5. There Paul gave instruction on the difference between walking in the Spirit and walking in the flesh. His exhortation to believer in Galatians 5:25 is this: “If [since] we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”i Believers have the life of God in their regenerated spirit. That gives them the connection with God that empowers walking in the Spirit. However, walking in the Spirit requires decisions on our part to do so. Otherwise, Paul’s exhortation is meaningless. “If [since] we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” The NLT says, “If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives.” Are you following the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of your life? That obviously requires obedience to the written word of God. But it also entails hearing and following the directives of the Spirit in your daily decisions.

The hearing of those directives must occur in your regenerated spirit. “He who has an ear” (Rev. 3:6): You have an ear if your spirit is alive in Christ. Every born-again Christian has an ear to hear God. The question for each of us is: Are we listening? Are we paying attention to what God is saying to us personally and corporately? “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Walking in the Spirit follows this simple formula: Hear and obey. The more you obey, the clearer the hearing becomes. The more you ignore what the Spirit is saying in your spirit, the more difficult it becomes to know the will of God. The heart hardens every time we say no to God. But when we exercise of our God-given capacity to hear, we become better attuned to the sound of God’s voice. In the earlier days of radio, a knob had to be turned to pick up the radio signal. At first, the signal would sound vague with static and interference. But as the knob was turned to the precise frequency, the sound became clear. There was some trial and error in the process.

Hearing God requires some trial and error. Like many other things in life, you will never learn it without doing it. In the doing, we refine our ability to hear more clearly.ii Start where you are. When you make a mistake, humbly acknowledge it. And keep on improving. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit” is saying to you.

Hearing is a crucial part of walking in the Spirit. As an individual believer we must learn how to hear in our soul what God is saying in our spirit. A key to that is found in Jesus’s first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”iii A person who is “poor in spirit” feels his dependence on God’s guidance. He listens because he realizes the inadequacies of his own ideas and opinions. Proud people do not listen because they think they already know.

A key to waking in the Spirit is hearing God. A key to hearing God is the humility to listen for

and depend on what he has to say.

How do we walk in the Spirit? I want to address three principles that at least partially answer that

question. Today, we will deal with the first two. Next time we will consider the third principle.

Principle one is:

I. Set your ATTENTION on the activity of the Holy Spirit in your regenerated spirit.

Romans 8:5 says, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the

flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.” Paul is contrasting the

believer with the unbeliever. In the context, this statement is descriptive. All unbelievers live in

the flesh. They also walk in the flesh because they have no capacity to walk in the Spirit. But

take note of this: Their minds are set on the things (the desires) of the flesh. In contrast, all

believers live in the Spirit. Because their human spirit has been “made alive” in Christ,iv they

have the capacity to walk in the Spirit. We know from Galatians 5 and 1 Corinthians 3 that

believers do not always live in that capacity.v But that should characterize the way they live their

lives.

Our interest today is an enlightening truth embedded in Romans 8:5. A fundamental difference

between people living in the Spirit and those living in the flesh is what the person sets his mind