Leading The Spiritual Life Part 2

Central Christian Church

St Petersburg, Fl

Dec. 12 2001

Joe Bedy

We looked last time at John 4:23 & 24 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.

"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

We examined the true worshipper from the scriptures and we determined that the worshipper "bowed down" before God, which acknowledges that the worshipper knows who God is and is determined to live an obedient life that glorifies God. We saw worship also as more than just bowing down, but we saw the element of service associated with it, we know that we have been saved by grace to do the works that He has prepared in advance for us to do.

Tonight we come to the words spirit and truth.

We are going to direct our attention tonight to the word Spirit. Next time we meet we will look at truth.

What does the Spirit- the Holy Spirit and our spirit- or in the Greek (pneuma) have to do with leading the Spirit led life.

A life that does not cave into temptation, or gives way to sin and, when sin is full blown leads to death.

How do we lead this life that worships in the Spirit?

1. We need to understand that for us to lead the Spiritual life is not all God’s responsibility, we have responsibility too.

I get a kick out of evangelicals who will quote Phil 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. As if to say to their audience that you do not have to make any effort to mature or be perfected, God will do all that, as a matter of fact Jesus has done it for you already!

Now do not be "put off" by this statement, when we come to Christ- God does make us Holy and when He looks at us He sees one of His own adopted children, but that does not leave us without responsibility.

If we believe our holiness, our Spirit led life is totally God’s responsibility, we are saved and do not have to do anything else, we are on our way to falling into satan’s trap of easy believism, which is not what Jesus said at all.

We cannot quote 1:6 without verse 5. Phil 1:5 in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

We must understand that once we become Christians we enter the battle, we are now in the race. Paul is very explicit in His description regarding this Christian life, he uses the examples of Marathon athletes, soldiers and farmers.

Paul puts it this way, He says in Romans you are either a slave to sin or you are a slave to obedience.

Rom 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

Rom 6:17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,

Rom 6:18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

We begin to understand as we pursue this Spirit led life that like Paul we become keenly aware that in our lives is the law of sin and the law of obedience through grace- or if you will Holy Spirit power.

We begin to recognize this struggle like Paul that torments us, we start to compare ourselves to Christ and see the good we want to do, we do not do and the evil we do not want to do we find ourselves struggling over.

We begin to see that although this law of sin lives in the world- we are able through our participation in the Gospel, and by the leading of the Holy Spirit, to call upon God. When we follow the Spirit’s leading and not our fleshly desires we allow the power of His Grace to get in between us and the law of sin, and stop the law of sin from controlling our lives.

We must understand that our participation in the gospel includes being in the body of Christ, sharing each others lives and holding each other lovingly accountable to live lives according to the word of God.

It includes examining ourselves as to how we are in relationship with one another and if there is a dispute we do not take communion or place our offering in the plate until we are reconciled to one another.