Characteristics of Life in the Spirit
Romans 8:9-11
There was an Italian man who at the turn of the 20th century had to sell everything he had to immigrate to the United States. He barely had enough money to buy a ticket on a ship to the U.S. With what little he had left over, he bought some cheese and crackers to eat everyday, for breakfast, lunch and dinner during the journey. While he ate his cheese and crackers, everybody else was in the ship's dining hall. He could smell the aroma of lobster, filet mignon, and other delicious food. Getting sick and tired of eating just cheese and crackers, on the 6th day of the journey, he went to the captain and said, "I'll do anything you want. I'll do the dishes, clean the bathroom, sweep the floor. Anything! Just let me have one meal in the dining room." Then, the captain looking perplexed, said to him, "But sir, the meals are included with the ticket." Many Christians have settled for cheese and cracker lives without really knowing it. But God has provided us with so much more. God does not just forgive our sins, adopt us into his family, give us the Great Commission and say good luck. God has given us the Holy Spirit to provide wisdom, guidance, boldness, commitment and strength.
In our Scripture today, Paul states that the Christian life is more than just believing in Jesus and coming to worship. The Christian life is about having the Holy Spirit in you. For Paul, this an issue of salvation. “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ” So knowing if the Spirit is in you is of critical importance. How do you do that? Today I want to share seven tests to discern if the Spirit is in you.
The first is the carbon copy test. It asks the question, “Are you becoming more and more like Jesus, in your thoughts, in your words, in your actions and in your relationships?” The call of God is to become an apprentice of Jesus. An apprentice is someone who is bound to another for a certain amount of time to learn an art or trade in which the master is an expert. The Master is Jesus himself. His art or trade is making disciples and doing the will of the Father for the sake of the Kingdom of God. And the apprenticeship lasts lifetime. We grow to become more like Jesus as the Holy Spirit writes God’s laws on our hearts and minds, helping us internalize God’s way of life and think like He does (Hebrews 8:10). It enables us to transform or change our minds as Paul calls us to in Romans 12:2 and but it also transforms our hearts as our sole desire becomes to please God (2:5). So how are you becoming more like Jesus?
The second is the GPS test. “Do you turn to the Holy Spirit to guide you in your life?” The New Testament contains many references to people who were guided by the Holy Spirit in the practical decisions they had to take in their lives. The Book of Acts shows how Paul and others in the church continually consulted with the Holy Spirit on major decisions of ministry as well. Now if first century followers of Jesus needed the guidance of the Holy Spirit for their lives, how much more do we? And yet it seems that so often, we only turn to God in moments of great crisis. It’s then that we fall on our knees and cry out to God to intervene. But after things settle down, we go back to taking charge of our lives and in effect say, “God, I got this. You can sit this one out.” Holy Spirit empowered disciples seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit continually, in the big decisions but also in their day to day decisions as well. So how about you? How often do you turn to the Holy Spirit to guide you your life?”
The third test is the butterfly test. It asks, “Are you growing and transforming in your faith?” A butterfly begins life as a caterpillar. This is the feeding and growth stage. As it grows, it sheds its skin four or more times. Then when the time comes, it builds a chrysalis or cacoon within which the caterpillar transforms. This is the transformation stage. When it emerges, the transformation is complete and it is a butterfly. Christians have a growth and transformation stage for Christians called sanctification. It’s the process of growing to become like Jesus, to live for Him and do His will in every aspect of your life. This not about attending worship and going to an occasional Sunday School class or a short term study. It’s an intense pursuit of greater knowledge of Jesus through the Bible, greater experience of Jesus by stepping out of your comfort zone to serve Him, developing your relationship with Jesus through prayer and fully yielding yourself to Him as he seeks to change you. This is a time when you become a voracious reader and servant for God. The beginning of this journey should be when our relationship to Jesus starts for is then that the work of the Holy Spirit begins to transform you into the disciple and servant he has created you to be.
The fourth test is the Peter test. The boldness test asks, “How bold are you in sharing the Good News of Jesus with others?” Perhaps nobody embodied boldness more than Peter as he left the Upper Room where he was hiding for his life and preached the first sermon proclaiming the Good News of Jesus. He was not alone. The disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, were changed from men in fear of their lives to men who boldly proclaimed the Good News of Jesus. Acts 4:32 says, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” Every one of them had come from doubt to determination, from confusion to conviction, from fear to faith. The Holy Spirit gives us boldness in witnessing for Jesus in our society. How much do we need this boldness today! In the face of growing religious and political forces in our society that are hostile to the Christian faith, we need the boldness of Peter, Stephen and Paul to witness about Jesus - fearlessly, unashamedly and uncompromisingly! Without the Holy Spirit, fear will grip us and keep us quiet about our faith in Jesus! This is why Paul wrote, “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.” So how bold are you in sharing your faith with others?
The fifth test is the produce test. It asks, “What fruit are you bearing?” Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing…. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15: 1-5, 8 What fruit are you bearing for the kingdom of God? How is the kingdom expanding because of your work in God? How are the hungry being fed, the thirsty having their thirst quenched, the stranger being welcomed by you, the sick being cared for, the hurting being healed? How is the kingdom of God being expanded through your words, your actions and your life? Fruit is not just about what you do, it is also about who you are becoming. Paul writes, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23 How are the fruit of the Spirit evident in your life? Spirit filled Christians regularly examine themselves to see how much this fruit is growing, and ask God to provide His gracious Spirit to help them grow and produce even greater fruit.
Test #6 is the agape test. “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” Romans 5:5. The agape test asks, “How are you loving others?” Now the word agape is used for love in the NT. Agape means self sacrifice on behalf of another. How do you speak to people? How do you treat others? How are you sacrificing for others? Most importantly, how are you loving and interacting with people who are different from you: the poor, the disheveled, the homeless, the drug addict, the hurting? It’s easy to love people like us but what about those who are different from us. Love is more than acknowledging them and saying, “Hello.” Love is wanting and working for what’s best for them, not necessarily in their eyes but in God’s eyes. Godly love is described in more detail in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” So how are you doing in the loving others? Love is what defines us as Christians. We do not love as the world loves but rather love as we have been loved through Jesus Christ. For Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
Test #7 is the voice recognition test. This test asks, “Do you recognize it when the Spirit speaks?” Can you differentiate it from all of the other voices of the world? In John 10:2-5 Jesus tells the parable of the sheep. Shepherds would place their sheep in a cave with a gate across it to keep them safe. Often many shepherds would use the same pen. The shepherds sleep in the gateway and that is why Jesus says he is the gate. In the morning when it’s time to take the sheep to pasture, they would call to them and the sheep would follow the voice of their shepherd. Jesus says my sheep know my voice. “The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”
Brian Brown tells the story of being at the community pool with his family. Kids were screaming, playing, and splashing in the pool, music was playing, the lifeguard whistles were blowing and in the midst of the conversation, his wife shooshes him. He said, what are you doing? Shoosh, did you hear that? Hear what, he said. “Listen! And over all of the noise, she had heard their youngest daughter screaming. As she listened to it, she then said, “OK, everything’s alright. That’s a happy scream.” He said he was blown away that over all of the other voices, she not only recognized her child’s voice but was able to identify what type of scream it was. Why because every day she talked with them and in the process learned the sound of their voices. And then he writes, Maybe that’s what it takes for us to understand His voice, that every day communication and spending time saying to God, “Speak to me.” This is why it’s so important spending time in prayer. But prayer is not you telling God what you want, prayer is listening to what God wants. Have you every heard the phrase, Silence is golden? (pause) Sometimes we spend so much time in the noise and even in our prayers continuously speaking that we never give God an opportunity to speak to us. If we would just spend more time listening to God and less time speaking, then that still small voice the Bible talks about becomes a voice you can hear over the noise of the world. The only way you will be able to hear the voice of God is if you spend time together.
Several years ago, Gatorade had an ad with Michael Jordan where he was covered in orange drops of sweat. The image says clearly that Michael Jordan is so full of Gatorade that it is literally pouring out of him like sweat. That’s an appropriate image of the Holy Spirit in us. If the Holy Spirit is living inside of you, there’s going to be evidence. Whatever is inside of you is eventually going to come out of you. If you squeeze a grape, you’re going to get grape juice. If you squeeze an apple, you’re going to get apple juice. If you squeeze a prune, you’re going to get prune juice. Whatever is on the inside is eventually going to come out. And if the Spirit is in us, it will come out in our lives.
So how did you do on the 7 tests? Do you need to receive the Spirit anew in your life? So how can you receive the Spirit? First, you must sincerely desire for God to fill you with Himself, which really means you must want God to totally have His way in your life. Because God is total love and total wisdom and He always has our best interest in mind, we all should want that. Therefore, present every area of your life to God. Second, confess to God any known sin in your life. That sin may very well be things that you have put ahead of God. Too often what we try to do is add God in our lives and never really ever take the time or put in the effort to make room for God in our lives. We hold onto all of the same priorities, goals and desires of our lives and just add God into the mix. We want God to be next to all of our stuff but we never want it to supplant our stuff. The problem is that throughout Scripture it talks about being filled with the Spirit and not just have a little bit of the Spirit in us. When I’m filled with the Holy Spirit, there’s no room for my stuff. When the Spirit moves in, my stuff has to move out. So the question is, Have you made room for the Spirit in your life?
Third, ask God to fill you with His Spirit. It is God’s will for you to be filled with His Spirit. Stop leading cheese and cracker lives and lead the life that God intended you to live by receiving and being filled with His Spirit. All you have to do is ask. Let us pray.
