Walk By The Spirit

Let Us Walk by the Spirit

Galatians 5:25

Human nature, with which all of us are born, will not enter into the kingdom of God unless it is changed.

This change is called being born again. And what this means is that the Spirit of God creates something new; he takes out of us the heart of stone that rebels against God, and he puts into us a new heart which trusts God and follows his ways.

Or to put it another way, the Holy Spirit establishes himself as the new ruling principle of our life.

When we accept the Lord Jesus Christ into our life, we are a new creation, the old is gone the new has come. 2 Cor 5;17

To some of you here this morning I will be speaking in tongues, you see, if you don’t have that personal relationship, you will not understand a word that I say this morning. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will be revealed to you during this message.

The new birth is not caused by our faith; on the contrary, our faith is caused by the new birth. "No one can come to the Son unless it is granted to him by the Father" (John 6:65).

Therefore, the life we have in Christ is owing wholly to the work of God’s Spirit, and we have no ground for boasting at all. We live by the Spirit.

"That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." In other words, that which is begotten by the Spirit has the nature of the Spirit, is permeated by the character of the Spirit, is animated by the Spirit.

Now what? Galatians 5:25 states concisely what our next step should be. "Since we live by the Spirit, let keep in step in the spirit."

Now Paul, in Galatians 5:25, draws an inference from how our new life in Christ began: if it began by the Spirit, then all our subsequent life ought to be carried out by the Spirit (see Galatians 3:1–5).

If it was by the free and sovereign power of the Spirit that our new spiritual life came into being, then the way that new life should be lived is by that same free and sovereign power.

"Walk by the Spirit" means do what you do each day by the Spirit; live your life in all its details from waking up in the morning until going to sleep at night by the enabling power of the Spirit.

But what does that mean, practically speaking? How do we "walk by the Spirit"?

Walking in the spirit to me is constantly engulfing my mind in the spirit.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. There are only two ways to walk: walking in the spirit or walking in the flesh: the choice is yours.

When I’m driving in the car, I’m walking in the spirit by listening to Christian radio.

As I drive over the Beaufort bridge at sunrise, I’m walking in the spirit by praising God for this glorious day and praising Him for His mighty presence in my life.

When Joy and I even begin to get the notion to quarrel about something, we are walking in the spirit when (at that instant) remember the promises of God. i.e., James 1:19-21. “My dear brothers, take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen slow to speak slow to become angry for mans anger does not bring into the righteous life God desires, therefore, get rid of all moral filth and evil that is so prevalent and humbly except the word planted in you”.

The more YOU do this, the easier it becomes………

The more you enable the power of the Holy Spirit to work in your life, the more you become Christ like.

The phrase "walk by the Spirit" occurs not only in verse 25 but also in verse 16, "So I say live by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature."

So here we see what the opposite of walking by the Spirit is, namely, giving in to the desires of the sinful nature.

Remember, "flesh" is the old, ordinary human nature that does not relish the things of God and prefers to get satisfaction from independence, power, prestige, and worldly pleasures.

When we "walk by the Spirit," we are not controlled by those drives: the sinful nature produces one kind of desires, and the Spirit produces another kind, and they are in conflict to each other, and you do not do what you want.

You need to make the choice, the decision, the initiative, to empower God’s will in your life. This is just another reason that we need to place God’s word in our minds by memorization.