LIVING SPIRITUALLY.

When we live spiritually, we live in constant communication with God’s Spirit, and we are guided by Him, in step with Him, led by Him, and walking in Him. So, the Spirit uses Scripture, but is not limited to Bible study. If we are saturated with Scripture, we have given our spirits a vocabulary with which God can speak to us, and a measure by which to test the spirits. But He also prompts, checks, empowers and speaks to our spirits.

When we live in the flesh, we hear from ourselves, that is, from our flesh, from our bodies, our minds, our wills, our emotions, and yield the fruit of the fleshly life. When our lives are “fleshly,” our lifestyle is marked by striving, frustration, burnout, self-promotion, selfish ambition, shallowness, anxiety about money, and a need to control. We are marked by the fruit described in Galatians 5:13-21, which includes a legalistic spirit, divisiveness, discord, jealousy, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, as well as more obvious sins of immorality.

On the other hand, when our lives are in step with the Spirit, our lives are marked by everyday miracles of Divine providence. We have overwhelming peace and contentment, freshness, a desire to promote the life and ministry of others, humility, depth, trust in God’s adequate provision, and letting go and letting God do His thing. The fruit of our lives is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Which list best describes you? If you are walking in the Spirit, you may even be mistaken for a drunkard at times, because you are no longer concerned about protecting your carefully-honed dignity. Somehow, being filled with the Spirit is a joyous experience of wild abandonment, not just an intellectual exercise or theoretical game!

The central point of both of these passages is this: We cannot be good enough to please God. We don’t have it in us. And there are plenty of ways that we can try to do enough good things, keep enough laws, and outwardly control our behavior through our bodies, our wills, our emotions, or our intellects. But all of them will fail.

On the other hand, when we give up and say yes to the Lord and receive the Holy Spirit into our lives, then we are not “good enough” because of our work. We simply receive grace. And yet when we have the Holy Spirit living in us, guiding as captain of our ship, we find, surprisingly, that we are becoming good!