With The Strength God Gives You

 

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline. So never be ashamed of me, either, even though I’m in prison for him. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the sake of the Good News. For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was His plan from before the beginning of time—to show us His grace through Christ Jesus. And now He has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News.”

What powerful verses! Jesus, by dying on the cross and being raised again, broke the power of death and illuminated the way to walk through the Good News. Holy life here means being set apart for a holy call. God illuminates the way and draws us along a path of faith and trust that leads to greater holiness through abiding with Him.

Receiving the Holy Spirit at the time of our salvation, helps us to walk out this holy life. The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that we will receive the full inheritance He promised (Ephesians 1:13-14). It is by His spirit that we cry Abba, Father and know we are sons of God and adopted into His family (Ephesians 1:5).

Walking by the Spirit helps us to put to death the things of the flesh [sin] that is contrary to the Spirit. As we depend upon the Spirit and ask for His help, He will bring us to choices of walking the way of the Spirit and walking the way of the flesh and then as we lean into His strength, give us the power to put to death the flesh. Paul would say, “I die daily.” Here he was speaking of the flesh and the desires of the flesh, including conforming to the world.

More recently for me, it is worldly ambition. When someone is competitive with me and frequently tries to one-up me or show me up or make me look bad, it bothers me. I can get frustrated with this and not have the same value and love for the person.

Just recently, the Holy Spirit told me, that I sometimes “cut the corner of their robe when we in the hidden cave.” What He is referring to is the story of David and Saul where Saul was pursuing David and trying to destroy him because he was competitive and jealous. Saul went into a dark cave where David was hidden and his men told him that he should take Saul down. But he didn’t. Rather, he cut the corner of his robe. Then after, he felt convicted and repented by confronting Saul.

When a fellow leader (co-worker) hurts me, competes with me and tries to make me look bad, I am tempted to talk badly about them or make some remark about them behind their back in closed doors. In essence, I am cutting the corner of their leadership robe in the dark where they can’t notice by cutting them down behind their back.

But what the Holy Spirit wants from me is to not hide my anger about it and be passive aggressive by making a comment but to go to them directly. Like David who was convicted and saw their worth, the Lord is asking me to treat them with incredible worth. In this way, He is asking me to put to death the flesh in doing things my way and lean further into Him for His strength to love them well.

When I have discord, dislike, dissension or side with people in factions, this is of the flesh and not of the Spirit. These acts grieve the Holy Spirit and are in direct opposition to Him. Any time we fail to put to death our flesh and make excuses for it, we limit ourselves in inheriting the Kingdom of God. We limit the Spirit within us by overriding Him. (Galatians 5:16-25)

Paul warned Timothy that there would be people who act religious but will reject the power of the Holy Spirit that could make them holy. Instead they will manipulate, judge, and be controlled by fleshly desires. (2 Timothy 3:4-6)

Galatians notes that the fruit of the Spirit that comes up from putting to death the flesh is “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Rather than trying to be good and love others in our own strength, the more we crucify our flesh, lean into the Spirit and allow Him to flow freely in our lives, the more of the fruit we will experience.

Someone once spoke, “grieving the Holy Spirit will bring revival to a halt.” We cannot press in for more of the Spirit while living in the flesh. We need to work with the conviction of the Holy Spirit and put off the old man and be renewed in the spirit of our mind, putting on the new man created [born again] in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24)

Ever notice that when you have known sin in your life, you have less life, passion, joy and other fruit of the Spirit? If I am late for something and speed all the way there, knowing God is telling me to slow down and convicting me, when I get there, I feel dry of His sweet flowing Spirit. I feel in lack.

Paul says in Ephesians 4:30-32, “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

Grieving the Lord does not mean He leaves us. In feeling absent of the Spirit by driving too fast, the Holy Spirit has not left me. I think that what the Holy Spirit is speaking to me in this is that “getting there” is not the end game. Sometimes our ideas of getting somewhere are about ambition or people pleasing. We can have the wrong end game in mind.

For me, I like to be at peace with everyone so I try to meet their expectations. I want to show up on time, say the right things, be compassionate at the right times and feel like I get it all right. But this comes from a desire to feel comfortable and fear of letting people down. It is people pleasing. I go way out of my way not to let people down, especially my boss.

But people pleasing, just like every other sin is a never ending target. You can never do enough or be enough. I work real hard but miss the mark on something and find that I get discouraged with myself and them. What I needed to realize is that the reason I get discouraged, is that I am doing it for them rather than God. Whenever I put anyone or anything as a priority above the Lord, I am going to be gravely disappointed.

Lately, I have found myself repenting of idolatry. In trying to please certain people like my boss, I am not working for God but for trying to appease them. While I may work just as hard, it needs to be for pleasing God and glorifying Him and not people pleasing and trying to meet other’s expectations.

When we are saved and have His Spirit inside of us, even when we run away from the Lord or grieve Him like Jonah did by not obeying and going in the opposite direction, God is there for us. The Lord never abandoned Jonah, even when he jumped on a ship in the wrong direction. He kept swallowing up Jonah in His love. He even sent a whale to pick him up.

We need to remember that God’s love is strong enough for us. When Jonah was bitter about Nineveh repenting, the Lord still was there for him sending truth and light so that he would understand. The Lord spoke the truth and dispelled the lies he was believing.

David said in Psalm 139:10 (NLT), “Even there [the furthest places or running away] Your hand will guide me, and Your strength will support me.”

Crucifying our flesh is not too hard for us if we are doing it in the power of the Spirit. When we try to do it in our own strength, we grit our teeth and make it happen, we typically get puffed up in pride, judgement and self-righteousness about it after. We may say to ourselves, ‘if I can do it, so can everyone else.’ As Paul said, ‘what a wretched man I am.’ Our unregenerate nature is corrupted by sin.

Following the law is not following the Spirit through being born again. We see this with the Pharisees and Scribes. They tended to the law but were living in the flesh and full of pride. They did not have the Holy Spirit inside of them to give them discernment and help them live into the Spirit. They said they were Abraham’s sons, but they loved living by their own rules and laws as it gave them power.

Following the law in our own strength is not what the Spirit is asking. He is asking for dependence. It is in dependence upon Him that we can lean into His strength to put to death everything else. The Lord invites us to abide in Him through the Spirit and “walk by the Spirit.” It is through abiding that we bear the fruit of the Spirit.

This dependence comes from resting in His love. In 1 John 4:10 it says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sin.” So our work is not to work hard to live out the law but to invest our energies in resting in the Lord’s love. The more we rest in His love and grow in dependence up Him, the more the Spirit will flow freely through our lives.

As we soak in the Lord’s love for us and receive it, we are filled with His love for others. We bear the fruit of love in our lives. And we are free from the discontent of the orphan spirit of feeling unloved and like we have to win love from others. We just naturally overflow with it as we abide in it. It spills out on everyone around us.

1 John 4:10-16 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Loving others comes from being loved by God and expressing love back to Him. I had a scripture verse that I was meditating on in a dream that says, “Let us lead in love in all things.” Our love for others is an overflow of the love we receive.

In the story of Mary breaking an alabaster jar of fragrant oil upon the feet of Jesus while weeping and washing His feet with her tears, the Pharisee, Simon, who had invited Him was terribly offended by this. Jesus then tells Simon a parable about two debtors. One owed a great deal and the other owed little. And asked, if both were forgiven, who would love him more? We know the answer to this, the one who received more forgiveness.

It is the one who received more of the two that had more to give back. She gave all she had saved up and poured it out on His feet. The point here is not to owe more by creating more debt, but to receive more. The more we receive from the Lord, the more grateful we will become and the more we will have to give away.

Lord Jesus, thank you for giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit and making us Yours. Help us to live and walk out the life of the Spirit every day. Fill us and cause us to overflow with the fruits of Your Spirit everywhere we go.