We feed our spirit by the time we spend with God in fellowship. Prayer, God’s Word and the exercising the fruit and gifts of the spirit are all body-builders to the spirit man in us.
The more you feed the body, the stronger the body gets and the weaker the spirit gets.
But the more you feed the spirit, the stronger the spirit man gets, placing the body in submission.
When I first moved into our new house, the backyard was just a wasteland of dry dirt. But I worked the soil. I built a rock wall, planted bushes and trees. I went to the store and purchased a big bag of hybrid Bermuda grass seed and carefully spread that seed through the backyard and down the side yard…
Every day, I watered those seeds by hand and after a few weeks, I noticed the tiny, fragile shoots of grass coming up in patches. Eventually, the whole yard was full of beautiful new grass.
Then one day when I was admiring the newly forming lawn, I noticed some weeds trying to grow up among the new shoots. In order to keep that new lawn perfect and pristine, I had to get down on my hands and knees, and painstakingly pull every weed by hand all the way up and down the yard.
But when I finished, the lawn looked beautiful: like a golfing green. The reward was worth the work to me, because I invested so much in that yard, I expected much from it.
As the years passed, new weeds tried to spring up in different areas of the lawn. And I’ve learned since then, that having a beautiful yard is an ongoing process. You don’t just pull the weeds one day, and they’re gone for life. You have to make a regular habit of checking for weeds. You have to work at it daily, a few weeds at a time. If you let it go, what you end up with is a nightmare in the backyard that takes hours of painstaking work to clean up. But the reward of a beautiful yard is worth the work, because it’s such a pleasure to sit back, to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
You can learn a lot from gardening. Jesus often related the Kingdom of Heaven to us in stories about gardening. And from all the time I spent working the soil in that yard, I learned more about spiritual life than ever before. In fact, our spiritual life is much the same as that lawn in my backyard. Before we knew Christ, we were all dry and barren, without any life: Like a dirt lot, full of weeds.
But when Jesus came along, He planted seeds of life. He brought beauty to a barren spirit when He rescued your soul from sin. He planted the seeds of eternal life in your soul.
Did you know that God takes great pleasure relaxing in the garden of your life? He likes to fellowship with you and observe the beauty that your life produces on a daily basis.
That’s why spending time with Him every day is vital in the renewing of a right spirit. As you stroll through that garden together, He’ll point out the beauty of the new growth in your life and He’ll help you to pull up the ugly weeds that sprang up since your last time together.
So, if we neglect our time of fellowship with God, then we’re neglecting the need of our spirit to be renewed and refined, and as a result, the weeds grow up in our lives and choke out that beauty. If we neglect our fellowship with The Lord long enough, our spiritual life will become a mess of tangled weeds and the garden of our lives will be in need of much more difficult, laborious and backbreaking work to become beautiful in the eyes of God again.
I: FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD is step 1 for spiritual renewal.
Our spirit is in constant need of fellowship with God for personal renewal.
When we compromise that fellowship with Him, when we neglect our spiritual life, the weeds of sin come in and choke out the beauty God planted there. When we’re weak and tired, sin goes unchecked and the spirit man goes unfed. That gives the flesh opportunity to corrupt and weaken the spirit.
We can learn about the power of sin to hinder our spirits through the life of David in Psa 51:10-12.
In this Psalm, King David is pleading to God for mercy and forgiveness.
Psalms 51:10-12, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
King David is pleading for God’s mercy and forgiveness. His soul is weak and unfed.
I think it’s safe to assume that David hadn’t fed his spirit man for a while. He hadn’t tended to his spiritual garden in a long while, because his life had become so entangled in sin. At this point in king David’s life, he was so wrapped up in sin that his conscience was completely buried by it.
He sees Bathsheeba bathing in the pool below from his balcony: “Should I continue watching her, or give her some dignity?” and he decided to continue watching her. He was engaging in the sin of pornography and it consumed his life. You have to wonder: was the night recorded in the Bible only the first night he watched Bathsheeba secretly from his balcony, or had he seen her on other evenings before, and made a habit of it? How long had he been watching her?
Whatever the case, we know that his sin was progressive. James reveals the progressive nature of sin in chapter one of his book saying: “but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” James 1:14-15
One evening when David was watching Bathsheeba bathe, he had her brought to him, and committed adultery with her. When he found out she was pregnant with his child, he had her husband killed.
The progression of sin in David’s life began with one weed in his garden: one perverted thought, progressed to pornography, gave birth to the act of adultery and adultery gave birth to murder: death. “Sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.” In David’s case, if meant the physical death of an innocent man and spiritual death for the sinner. Sin always progresses from one level to the next: from seemingly insignificant things to deadly things, almost invisibly.
A major work of spiritual renovation was necessary in the life of King David at that time. He needed a spiritual renewal to restore a right spirit in him. Much of the good in David’s life would be uprooted and destroyed simply because he let the garden of his spirit go untended for so long that the weeds of sin overgrew the beauty God placed in his life. The spirit man was beyond the point of being able to resist the temptation of the flesh because he was weak and unfed.
Just like Adam and Eve, the rest of David’s life was spent in toil, and in hardship because of his own original sin. His punishment was the same as theirs: he would work the soil of his life with sweat and blood for the rest of his days.
Nathan the prophet came to David to inform him that God was going to punish him for his sins.
The Lord shed light on the condition of David’s spirit, and David was deeply ashamed.
? How many of you feel weak in the spirit today? How many here are honest enough to admit you are in need of spiritual renewal?
As soon as we come into God’s presence and receive that spiritual strength and renewal, we receive sustenance for our souls and the spirit man receives strength from God to overcome the flesh.
When we’re submissive to God, when the spirit man is stronger, we are able to put the man of flesh in submission to the spirit man in us. Then we are in a place to be broken, pliable, able to be shaped in the hands of God.
So prayer: fellowshipping with God is the first step to spiritual renewal: the food of the spirit.
II: REPENTANCE: The next step is repentance.
David was in desperate need of spiritual renewal, and he began his pursuit of it on his knees didn’t he? That led him to repentance.
He said, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
A spirit of purity, of commitment, of dedication to God begins with repentance.
The spirit is renewed by the presence of repentance in our life.
It begins when the Holy Spirit of God convicts our heart, when the sinner finally has a sense of shame and sorrow for the condition of sin in his or her heart. It begins when we come to God, empty-handed, without any defenses or excuses, without any pretension or ceremony, in the most personal and submissive posture… It comes when from a sincere heart when we confess our sins and say, “I’m sorry”, to the only righteous and holy Lord, the God of the ages... who alone can forgive and redeem: who can renew and reconcile our souls to Himself.
Friends, we are all in desperate need of true repentance in our lives for renewal.
There’s not a person here today without need of repentance in your life.
How long has it been since your last heart to heart fellowship with God?
How long has it been since you allowed Him to shed light on the true condition of your spirit?
When was the last time you knelt before God in tears, pleading to Him for forgiveness, and asked Him to renew a right spirit in you?
Repentance is DETOX to the soul. It makes a spirit healthy again.
The Lord is passionate about repentance!
In Ezekiel 18:30-32, The Lord says, “…Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!”
See, the Lord is passionate for a people who are serious enough about our relationship with Him that we are willing to cast ourselves at His mercy, turn from all our offensive ways and ask for His forgiveness.
He’s passionate about our need for repentance and spiritual renewal.
“Why will you die?” “Repent and live!”
Repentance is a daily requirement for spiritual life and renewal.
Every day we have need to repent for something to detoxify our souls, whether large or small. Men and women of the Old Testament took repentance seriously. They even offered up sacrifices for sins they may have committed without knowing.
The idea of repentance is to see to it that we are in a pure, right relationship with God at all times in our lives: that the spirit man is strong and well fed by the presence and power of God.
Repentance is key to spiritual purity, strength and renewal.
Acts 3:19, “Repent, then, and turn to God, [(why?)] so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,”
? How many could use a time of refreshing from the Lord?
? How many would appreciate refreshment for your spirit today?
God’s desire is for His people to be refreshed: to go from strength to strength, to transform valleys of weeping into bubbling springs: to draw strength from Him, to encourage and build each other up in the Most Holy Faith, to be strong in the spirit to the tearing down of strongholds, amen?
III: BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
And He’s given us yet another opportunity for spiritual renewal, aside from every other spiritual nourishment. Aside from the whole salvation experience, when we are filled with the Spirit of God and our bodies become a temple of the Most Holy God, besides the spiritual renewal that comes from prayer and repentance, God has given us the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for spiritual renewal.
Some people have made the mistake of assuming that the salvation experience is the end of spiritual renewal. But there is an amazing and fresh outpouring: a renewing and spiritually empowering experience available to every single Christian here today, young and old alike, who would seek to receive everything God has to provide. It is the most exciting form of spiritual renewal available to us today, and it is called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Baptism, in contrast to being filled with the Holy Spirit, is when a person is immersed, or completely overwhelmed, fully submitted to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit of God, and it is as readily available to you today as the power in a light socket is available to anyone who plugs into it.
Holy Spirit Baptism is available to everyone who is saved!
The only requirements for receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit are that you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and savior and that you are fully submitted to the influence of the Holy Spirit of God: fully submitted. Resistance, reluctance and lack of faith are the greatest obstacles to those who are seeking to experience the Baptism of the Holy Spirit: lack of full submission.
Unfortunately, Holy spirit baptism is mostly downplayed or completely ignored in many churches today, simply because most people lack an understanding of what it is, and what God uses it for. But it really isn’t that difficult to understand, and it’s such an important, exciting, vital part of the Christian life.
Holy Spirit Baptism is meant to unify and empower believers for service, and I believe that’s the reason Satan is trying to confuse and scare people out of desiring it: because he’s afraid of the damage it might do to his mission of destruction in the world.
But the books of the New Testament resound with examples and emphases on the great importance of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers. In fact Jesus’ last words, before He ascended into Heaven were instructions regarding the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. He said,
Acts 1:8, “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
He wasn’t talking about salvation: He was talking about Holy Spirit Baptism!
? Who was Jesus talking to when He said those things?
He was talking to His disciples: the first men to receive salvation by their faith in Jesus Christ.
So the gift of the Holy Spirit Baptism is for the believer: for anyone who has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and who wants to experience the fullness of what God has for their life.
The Holy Spirit Baptism is so important to believers that Jesus commanded His disciples not to leave for ministry till they received it in Acts 1:4-5:
Acts 1:4-5, "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
It was important to Jesus for us to receive this gift, and what’s important to Jesus should be important to us! Jesus said, “but wait for the gift…”
If I were come to you and say to you, “Hey, while I was away, I bought an awesome gift for you…
Just wait here a minute while I go and get it.” And if I were to walk out of the sanctuary to retrieve that gift for you, how many of you would just take off and not wait for me to return with the gift?
No one… How much more ridiculous is it for a believer to hear that God has this incredible gift for all of us, called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and then not have any desire to receive it?
Jesus said, “wait for the gift…” “Hey, before you go out to minister, wait… I have a gift for you that will help you, empower you and strengthen you along the way.”
Acts 1:8, “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
So the gift is for the empowering of God’s people first of all to be God’s witnesses to the ends of the earth. When you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit, you experience a manifestation of God so powerful and so real that it changes the way you live. It gives you new boldness to testify!
Holy Spirit Baptism is such an intimate experience with God, it draws you closer in your relationship with Him. It reveals a side of God you never knew before, and by the virtue of that experience it empowers you to witness with new boldness and to operate in the power of renewed faith.
You’ll notice, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that the disciples went out with a new boldness to witness, and the power to heal people in the name of Jesus Christ (just as He promised they would).
So it also empowers us to use the spiritual gifts God has given to each and every one of us…
What are the spiritual gifts?
1 Cor 12:4-13, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
This incredible baptism empowers us to live life by the power of God and employ the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us instead of walking in the power of our own strength! It is the power to operate by the supernatural power of God for the purpose of building God’s Kingdom.
Additionally, it opens up a whole new realm of communication with the Lord.
Acts 19:1-6, “While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" They answered, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." So Paul asked, "Then what baptism did you receive?" "John’s baptism," they replied. Paul said, "John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”
The baptism of the Holy Spirit on them caused these men to speak in new tongues!
A whole new method of communication, by which we can express ourselves to God in ways the human language could never accomplish, was given to those who received Baptism with the Holy Spirit.
These people were in the same boat that many of you are in today, never having heard of the power or the gift of the Holy Spirit Baptism, which is available to all of us today, but when they heard that God had such a wonderful revelation available for their lives, they submitted themselves and received the gift that very day! Shouldn’t we be just as excited about receiving this gift as they were?
Shouldn’t we be eager to receive all God has for us today, especially if they are meant to amplify our relationship with God and the power of the Spirit man alive in all of us?
Mark 16:17-18, “And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."
There’s an incredible gift from God, available to each one of us today, who are seeking every day to be more like Jesus, and we should be excited about receiving all He has for us.
It’s not an elite club for the super righteous. It’s a gift from God, paid for by Jesus, available to all who would see every day to receive the fullness of life, and every good experience that God has for us.
? How do I receive this Baptism?
Acts 19:6, “When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.”
Today, if you are willing, you can receive the gift of Holy Spirit Baptism.
You just have to be submissive, receptive and patient.
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Invite people to come forward to pray, rededicate their lives to Jesus and receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
REPENT of your sins / shortcomings, RECEIVE the baptism of the Holy Spirit, RECOMMIT your life to the Lord.
