The Power of the Holy Spirit in Your Life 11-26-2006
I think that too often we live beneath how God wants us to live, we don’t really do all that God wants us to do, and God doesn’t accomplish all that he truly wants to accomplish in our lives and with our lives. This results from us not truly living the Spirit filled life.
Sure we come together in the house of God, we lift our hands as we worship, we speak in tongues and have interpretation of tongues, but there is more to it than that.
Living the Spirit filled life is having faith in God,
Living the Spirit filled life is being obedient to God,
Living the Spirit filled life is a life empowered by God.
1. GOD IS PERSONAL TO EACH ONE OF US.
In parts of this world there are churches that have been changed into museums. They are full of gold, full of silver, full of beautiful stained glass but what is absent is the presence of the power of the Spirit of God.
And if we are not careful our lives will become like those churches, absent of the presence of the power of the Spirit of God. It will be just a dead hollow shell that was once alive.
What the church world needs today is to learn what it means to live in the power of the Spirit…To understand that the Holy Spirit has been given to make God personal to each one of us.
Gal 4:6
6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
(KJV)
Rom 8:9
9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
(KJV)
John 14:16-17
16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
(KJV)
So God, by the Holy Spirit, becomes personal to each of us when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and repent of our sins. When we do that God the Holy Spirit then lives in us.
The life that we now live is to be a dynamic kind of life, an empowered life, the Spirit filled life.
We need to rediscover the universal priesthood of all believers so that we don’t depend upon him from an organizational institutional standpoint. We not only need to know what it is to be the church gathered but we also need to know what it is to be the church scattered. Individually capable of standing before the Lord as a priesthood of believers in behalf of others. God has given us the power to do so. He has made himself available and personal to each one of us.
What we often forget is the God does become personal to us through the power of the Holy Spirit…God is more than…
1. The man upstairs
2. abstraction
3. mysticism
4. elitism
5. emotionalism
He’s got to become a reality in our lives so that we’re not depend on a new age concept where we make our own psyche God or were we find God is the power within ourselves that somehow we trigger the release of that power of ourselves.
The Bible tells us that the greatest power that can be in man is God, then and only then does the Bible say…Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
That means that we’ve got to understand the power of the Holy Spirit in a living way…The Bible say’s that the Holy Spirit can….
a. As a person Speak
b. Take bodily shape
c. Is omniscient
d. Is omnipresent
e. Is omnipotent
f. He leads
g. He helps
h. He can be resisted
i. He can be grieved
j. He can be pleased
All of these give us the attributes of the personality of the Spirit, but that personality has to take a place in our own hearts and we have to understand that it’s the Holy Spirit in us that is going to give us the power.
2. THE HOLY SPIRIT IN US GIVES US POWER
The Holy Spirit gives us power in that he gives to us as necessary and when needed spiritual gifts. These gifts listed in 1 Cor. ch. 12 are to be the kinds of everyday things that we allow the Spirit to operate in our lives.
They are more than just what we do at church…its more than just speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues and prophecy but it is God giving to you the
wisdom/ knowledge/discernment/faith/healing/miracles/prophecy/ so that no matter what happens you have His ability to overcome….and we are made more than conquerors through him.
This is the message that he wants us to have in…
I Jn 4:13
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
(KJV)
1 Cor 2:13
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
(KJV)
2 Cor 3:6
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
(KJV)
What God is saying is that He wants us to LIVE in the Spirit, SPEAK in the Spirit, and MINISTER in the Spirit. When you live, speak and minister in the Spirit then you are doing what God has ordained for you to do and the church become the living church of the living God and the reality of his presence in our lives become evident to all and God is glorified in our lives.
The point is this, the Holy Spirit is our strength and is the source of everything we do.
Zech 4:6
6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
(KJV)
Acts 1:8
8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and
(KJV)
Micah 3:8
8 But truly I am full of power by the spirit of the LORD, and of judgment, and
(KJV)
Luke 10:19
19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
(KJV)
Luke 24:49
49 And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
(KJV)
This power within us is greater than any ant-Christ spirit in the world…
I Jn 4:3-4
3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
(KJV)
He is the source of our strength…
Eph 3:16
16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
(KJV)
When the Spirit is in your inner being you are able to handle
temptation, worry, fear, stress, tension, you are able to handle anything that this world has to offer…and you make known to the world that I have found the way to live because Jesus Christ is Lord of my life!
This means that when we talk about the gifts of the Spirit operating in our lives…and that those gifts are given to us so that we can…
1. Have the strength we need in the time of battle
2. Have renewal in the time of duress
3. Have help in the time of fear
4. Have resistance during the time of attack
5. Have power in the time of weakness
If the church is going to be the church and answer the challenge that the world is giving us… then we’ve got to stand up and say,” that there is a dimension of living that this world has never known..
You wont find it on wall street, you wont find it in the Casino, you wont find it in the pleasure places of this world…but you will find it at the throne of God when you bath in the blood of Jesus Christ and are sanctified by his power and filled with his Spirit.
3. GOD GIVES THREE SETS OF GIFTS FOR YOU TO COMMUNICATE HIS POWER TO THE WORLD.
a. The first set is those gifts that we have are the TO KNOW gifts.
wisdom, knowledge and discernment
When we talk about the gifts we too often put them into the institutional form..the result is that we all have to be together for them to operate…and we never exercise them when we really need them, out on the firing line.. God say’s, I’m going to give you
1. Wisdom-divine supernatural intuition so that you can act appropriately under every circumstance of life.
2. Knowledge-divine supernatural information so that you can have a cognitive body of facts that will stand you in good stead regardless of the circumstances in which you find yourself.
3. Discernment-divine supernatural insight so that you know what’s going on in the devils mind and the spirit realm so you can head the devil off and put him in his place. The reason so many people are in so much bondage and the devil pushes them around is because he’s always one step ahead. But you have a gift! and that gift is an enabler, equipper, empowerment and he gives you wisdom, knowledge and discernment and the devil can not compete when those gifts are active in your life.
b. The second set of gifts are the TO DO gifts. God says I’m going to give you the gift of…
1. Faith-power to believe God when everything is against believing god…when the circumstances are the worst that’s when the gift of faith operates the highest. Faith to keep hanging on when there’s nothing left to hang on to.
2. Healing-a divine supernatural cure from God that defies scientific explanation.
3. Miracles-When God operates in a way we don’t understand, defies all laws of nature.
c. The third set of gifts are the SPEAKING gifts.
Tongues- Speaking the mysteries of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul lists controls for these gifts.
1 Cor 14:26-28
26 How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.
27 If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret.
28 But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.
(KJV)
1 Cor 14:2-5
2 For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.
3 But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.
4 He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church.
5 I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.
(KJV)
Closing: When those gifts of the Spirit are allowed to be at work in our lives then you will see lives cleaned up, sin become disdained, and the things of God become the cherished possessions, the treasured time, the highest goal.
When you live the Spirit filled life the miracle of people being born again will take place in your life and in the church.
Give my testimony.
Resource: Paul L. Walker Sermon: Putting the Holy Spirit to Work in Your Life
