Sunny Side Sermon Iv: Where You Reside Makes A Big Difference Series

WHERE YOU RESIDE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD SPIRITUALLY

Where do you reside . . . How many residences do you claim . . . Where do you live geographically? Where do you live psychologically? A lady asked me this week to recommend a vitamin that can work wonders. I suggested the multi-vitamin-mineral-fruit and veggie pill ALIVE; in the course of our conversation, my age was referenced; she expressed disbelief, then asked me, “Are you still in your right mind?” ---- to which I responded, “Well, that’s debatable, but yes, I am ‘at home’ mentally.”

Be that as it may, the all-important question for me, and for you, at our age and stage in life, is this: Where do you reside spiritually, and, are you “at home”?

Yes, there is a spiritual realm that far too many professing Christians either deny or defer to folks of the Pentecostal persuasion. Yet,

As born-again children of God, we need to be aware of our new residence “in Christ” . . . “in the spiritual realm” . . . “in the arena of the Holy Spirit of God!”

In a very real sense, we reside in the “Spirit World” of the Trinity – God in three persons! No one has “seen” God, nor do we “see” Jesus as “He walks with me and talks with me”; and, the Holy Spirit of God is likened to the wind - which we do not “see” – but are aware of! Be aware of the Holy Spirit in your life! Now,

We did not begin the Christian life until we accepted Jesus Christ - for what He is and for who He is; but we have not accepted Him fully until we have become aware of and feel “at home” in the spiritual realm in which we reside -- “in Christ” . . . until we have accepted all that residing in the spiritual realm entails . . .

We are at a disadvantage in our day because we are so far removed from the literal coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. That world of early Christians experienced a surge of the life of the Spirit; they had not been professionalized, nor had they been organized; no, they were conscious of living in a spirit-filled world – to the extent that everything was gauged accordingly . . . !

The problem then as now was: There existed evil spirits as well as the Holy Spirit. People were easily persuaded by spirits of evil; people got swept away by false teachings; people deluded themselves into falling for the rhetoric - of the kind that seems to accompany false prophets wherever they pop up.

Thus, toward the end of the 1st century of the Pentecostal coming of the Spirit of Truth, genuine concerns began to arise about false teachings that were taking hold of “border-line” disciples; and, who better than the beloved apostle John to address the issue --- I John 3:24b-4:3 . . .

Like it or not, diverse “spirits” abound in and around your world – whether real or make-believe. (Some folks seem to live in a world of their own making for the sake of their sanity – a world in which they “feel” comfortable.) In the real world where most of us live and move and have our being, we have become aware of diverse voices that compete for our attention and our devotion.

So, when John talks about “spirits”, it makes more sense to me to think in terms of “voices” that invade our personal space, our range of hearing --- TV . . . gathering places . . . outside influences . . . inner intuitions . . . recollections from our upbringing. How often I remember advice mama gave me!

Aside from this diversity of “spirits, voices, messengers” we let influence or motivate us, there is a clear distinction made by John about Who we as children of God have access to, that makes all the difference in the world with regard to our spiritual well-being – the Spirit of God. And you know what?

Upon our shoulders, dear children of God, rests responsibility for testing the “voices” we hear to determine whether the voices are genuinely “of God”!

THE test of authenticity is whether the voices we listen to are willing to, and do in fact, “confess” that Jesus Christ is God incarnate.

To be “of God”, anyone who professes to speak “for God” will unswervingly, unapologetically, unashamedly “agree with” the Word of God that Jesus is Christ, the Messiah, Son of God, and that He came to earth in the flesh. If the spirit of one who claims to be a “speaker for God” communicates a message as to who Jesus was other than the incarnation of the LORD God, and thereby “confesses” the divine-human nature of the Son of God, said message is to be disbarred from taking root in one’s mind, disbelieved, disowned as false.