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Are You Getting Your Steps Today? Series
Contributed by Calvin R. Davis Sr. on Oct 16, 2021 (message contributor)
Summary: So, what is going on today? Why are so many Christians leading a defeated life? If you talk to the average Christian today, they will tell you it is hard out here for a saint.
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Are you getting your steps todays?
Amplified Bible
But I say, walk habitually in the [Holy] Spirit [seek Him and be responsive to His guidance], and then you will certainly not carry out the desire of the sinful nature [which responds impulsively without regard for God and His precepts].
So, what is going on today? Why are so many Christians leading a defeated life? If you talk to the average Christian today, they will tell you it is hard out here for a saint.
As a child of God, born again through faith in the death, burial and resurrection Jesus Christ, and the washing of the Holy Spirit, we do not want to live defeated lives. I do not know of any person walking around saying to themselves, I want to be on a losing team.
But as Christians, we are on a winning team.
The following scriptures are just a few that tell we are winners through Christ Jesus.
John 16:33
I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!"
Romans 8:35
35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written” For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:57
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
It used to be hard for a sinner. There use to be so many people practicing Christianity until sinners would stay in the closet with every sin going on in their lives for the most part. Everybody is out in the open and Christians are now in the closet. After 3 years at my current job, a co-worker walked up to me and said "I just founs out that you are a Christian, and not only that you are a preacher too." I thought about going to my job the next day, standing up in the meeting and say, I’m coming out today you’ll. I am a Christian. But I also wondered why I had not done to let my light shine before or what happend that suddenly made them aware that I was a Christian. Because we are living in the shadows of Society now. The world seems to be in control of everything. We are not changing the world, but the world is changing the church. In my own personal experience, it is hard to stay off of Facebook and You Tube and Twitter and Bing and Google. It is even harder to get up in the morning and pray everyday and fast on occasion.
Paul when speaking to the Galatian church said there is a way to do it. I say then, walk in the spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Notice that he said, I say then. He in other words, he is saying let me explain something to you that is connected to what I have already said.
This is what he had already said in summary if you read Galatians 5 in its entirety.
6–26. The spiritual life of liberty is inconsistent with the indulgence of the works of the flesh
In other words, if we are free in the spirit to do what we want to do, why would we as Christians want to do bad when that is not what is consistent with the Christian life.
Paul is saying there was only one means by which the problem of the lust of the flesh could be resisted and broken accept by the guidance and power of Him Who is the Spirit both of love and of liberty.
What does it mean to walk in the spirit vs the flesh?
Got Questions: Believers have the indwelling Spirit of Christ, the Comforter who proceeds from the Father (John 15:26). The Holy Spirit assists believers in prayer (Jude 1:20) and “intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:27). He also leads the believer into righteousness (Galatians 5:16–18) and produces His fruit in those yielded to Him (Galatians 5:22–23). Believers are to submit to the will of God and walk in the Spirit.