Time To Engage: "Building A Spiritual Life”

Time to Engage: The Journey to Discipleship

“Building a Spiritual Life”

Watch on YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiaFcom_MtI

This year we are entering into the third part of the vision God had placed upon my heart for Living Waters Fellowship. It began in 2024 with the word, "exchange," where we exchange the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of Light, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of God.

We then looked at what will "energize" us to start engaging this world with God's Kingdom as we move into this next stage to "engage," which is about discipleship, or our need to build up the House of God within each of us.

To enter this third part, we are beginning a new sermon series entitle, “Time to Engage: The Journey to Discipleship.”

We’re beginning our series looking at building our spiritual lives.

Why is this so important, and why am I starting out with this in our series, is because when we come to church and hear a message that applies to our lives, and hopefully this message is one of them, we generally get all excited; ready to put into practice the principles we’ve learned from God’s word. The only problem is that by the time we get home and turn on the TV, or computer, the desire and fire are gone, and we find ourselves frustrated and disappointed once again in our Christian Walk.

The reason may be because I haven’t done my job. You see, I may have given you all the right information, all the biblical steps and principles, but I may have missed the mark by not getting you connected to the fullness of what it means to build up the house of God within us as a spiritual house.

Without the fullness of the Holy Spirit operating in our lives, all of these steps and principles won’t work. What’s happening is that we are trying to put into practice spiritual principles through natural understanding.

As we proceed in our series on discipleship, that is, building up the house of God within us, which I am describing in this series as being our need to engage, it seems only logical to build up our spiritual lives, given that within us lays the temple of the Holy Spirit.

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19 NKJV)

And so today I would like to look at our need to build up our spiritual lives.

The question is how do we go about this process? The answer is we don’t, but God does, as the Lord said through the prophet Zachariah, “Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit.” (Zachariah 4:6)

And so, the power doesn’t lie within us; rather it lies in God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Consider these biblical passages.

“You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4 NKJV)

This means that the Holy Spirit residing within us is greater and mightier than Satan and his demonic hoard, along with anything and everything that can be thrown at us.

In Ephesians 3:16 the Apostle Paul says, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.” (Ephesians 3:16 NKJV)

Paul is saying that within every believer there is tremendous power. And then he goes on to say, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” (Ephesians 3:20 NKJV)

The power that works within us is the power of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to walk on this journey of faith and live in victory.

“I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” (Galatians 5:16-17 NKJV)

This is why the Apostle Paul said, “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.” (Romans 7:15 NKJV)

To walk in the Spirit means to continue living life completely dependent upon the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit, and when we do our sinful nature, along with the world’s enticements, and Satan’s temptations, will stop dominating us.

Maybe we can say it this way, that the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives allows us to live effective lives for God.