Let The Holy Spirit Use Romans 8 To Navigate Your Way

Let the Holy Spirit Use Romans 8 to Navigate Your Way

Romans 8:1-8:38

If you really want the full benefit of God’s navigator, the Holy Spirit, who guides you into all truth, try ten key principles from Romans 8.

Illustration: The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. --Romans 8:26

Have you ever been speechless before God? Perhaps you know the frustration of being utterly unable to find the right words to pray.

Imagine a loving parent seeking to help a child with a speech problem. As the youngster struggles to express his feelings and desires, the parent with his own voice formulates what the child wants to say. This is a picture of how the Holy Spirit catches our deepest longings and aspirations and brings them in line with the Father’s ultimate purposes for us.

The weaknesses spoken of in Romans 8:26 refer to our inability to pray intelligently. This is evident from the phrase that immediately follows: "For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought." The Holy Spirit, who knows us better than we know ourselves, helps us. He takes our feeble attempts, and in a language all His own He interprets them to the Father in keeping with His holy will.

What a mystery! What a motivation to pray--especially when the words do not come freely. Even the faintest cry of "Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15) reaches heaven’s throne.

We may not know what to pray for, but we have a holy prayer partner who does. That should stir us to keep on praying, no matter how helpless we feel. --DJD

O God, too weak and worn for words, I shrink

From trials that deeply wound, and yet to think

Your Holy Spirit helps me as I pray

And gives a voice to what I cannot say. --Gustafson

When you can’t put your prayers into words, God hears your heart. (Our Daily Bread)

1. The Holy Spirit uses Romans 8:1 to teach people how to defend themselves against accusations, criticisms and insinuations of perpetual guilt and worthlessness. Paul wrote, "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

Application: Ask the Lord to give you the wisdom to know how to assure people of their blameless status in Christ. Through the complete work of Christ’s forgiveness, redemption and propitiation we can find restoration, forgiveness and intimate communion with God. Let us refuse to accept the blame game that other people try to lay on us. Let us refuse to throw blame on others when we really need to let God be the judge of all people.

2. The Holy Spirit uses Romans 8:3 to teach people that what our fleshly efforts could not accomplish in fulfilling the demands of the law and life, the Holy Spirit helps us subdue, overcome and over power. Paul wrote, "For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by condemning sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

Application: Allow the Holy Spirit to help you hate what is evil realizing that the flesh sets itself against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh for these are in opposition to one another. Let us remember that we cannot do the natural things that just selfishly please our flesh. (Gal 5:16-18)

Application: Ask the Lord to help you teach people who feel powerless to overcome their anger, jealousy, bitterness, feelings of frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, resentment, shame, guilt or ordinary fleshly struggles, to find overcoming power through the Holy Spirit and God’s word.

3. The Holy Spirit uses Romans 8:6,7 to teach people that the use of sense and reasons without the controlling power of the Spirit is a futile way to try to conquer temptation and evil. Paul wrote, "The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile toward God."

Application: Ask the Lord to help you show people how they can overcome all kinds of evil and sinister temptations that are so commonly given into by the majority of people.

4. The Holy Spirit uses Romans 8:10 to teach people what to do when others try to cast dispersions, shame and blame on them. Paul wrote, "But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness."

Application: Ask the Lord to show you how to buoy Christians up with a greater realization of all the rich resources that they enjoy through the imputed righteousness of Christ.