Guidance of Holy Spirit

Transcript

Greetings to you in Jesus’ name! Welcome to this beautiful new morning. I believe that the Lord’s hand, His grace, and His power will be manifested in our lives, but the extent to which we can receive from the Lord greatly depends on our maturity in the spirit. In this world, we naturally keep growing in the flesh, the more we eat food, the more we expose ourselves to knowledge and information around us, we are growing in our flesh but the question is are we mature in the spirit enough to handle what God wants to give us, what God wants to impart in our lives?

Let’s read 1 Corinthians 3:3; Apostle Paul says, “For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men?” What you see here is the desire that Apostle Paul has to train and raise a church that is full of spirit-filled leaders and yet when he begins to discern them when he begins to impart his grace upon their lives; he realizes these guys are not mature enough to handle what I want to give them. And the symptoms of their immaturity are these, he says you are still of the flesh, you are still led by the flesh, you are still filled with the desires of the flesh and hence, there is constant jealousy and strife.

Whenever a man/ woman of God begins to mature in the things of the spirit, there are certain things that will stop becoming a trigger for him/ her, there are certain things that wouldn’t cause anxiety, jealousy, or strife anymore. Early on in their ministry, Apostle Paul and Barnabas had a ferocious fight, and a sharp disagreement about if John Mark should go with them, but at the end of his ministry, Apostle Paul changes his mind and he wanted John Mark to be part of this ministry.
What we see is a beautiful evolution of Apostle Paul’s spirit. So, there were certain things he wouldn’t agree with, certain compromises he wouldn’t do, certain relationships where he was hard and strong, and certain issues that he wasn’t willing to let go of early on during his ministry, which at a later point was not a big deal and it was such a mature man of God who was writing to the church and he says, ‘You are of the flesh, all these symptoms that we see on the outside are evidence that you are led by the flesh.’

The only solution to not being led by the flesh is to be led by the spirit, to be dependent on the Holy Spirit and driven by the Holy Spirit. Any time that we stop depending on the Holy Spirit, we will immediately start manifesting our flesh character. We know the story of how Apostle Peter before Jesus was crucified, testified that Jesus is truly the Messiah, the son of the living God, and yet a few days later, he was speaking the exact opposite. He was saying I don’t even know who this is, he began to curse and self-destroy the same witness that he had made about Jesus a couple of days back.
How did that happen? – it is because he stopped relying on the power of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus asked him to pray, watch and make sure he didn’t fall into temptation, he chose to sleep instead, and in doing so, he was not dependent on the Holy Spirit, and automatically his flesh started surfacing, the desires of the flesh started coming off from his mouth.

Friends the calling upon our lives is really great, the one thing that will compromise that calling is if we give into the desires of our flesh or l speak like people of the world, and/ or act and react like people who have no hope; if we get into jealousy, anger and fights in the same way unbelievers do, all of this can throttle what God wants to do through your life, through my life. So, this morning, we need to come back to a spirit-dependent living, every morning we need to go back to relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, every morning we need to re-initiate our dreams, our desires at the feet of Jesus, in the presence of God, every morning we need to come back to square one and tell the Lord – without you, we are nothing.

Without the presence of the Holy Spirit, without the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, without the guidance, leading, and direction of the Holy Spirit, we would be nothing. I will read one more scripture and then we will pray.
Galatians 5:16 Apostle Paul writes to the church of Galatia, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.”

Prayer: Father, we thank you for this morning’s word. We thank you for revealing to us how much we need the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We know that the moment we depend on our own ability, and our own strength, we will fail. We will do things in our flesh, we will do things that are completely away from your plans and purposes for our lives. So, this morning we submit ourselves completely into your hands Holy Spirit, we submit ourselves to your ways, we submit ourselves to your way of leading us i.e. through the blessing, impartation, and infilling of the Holy Spirit. Fill us, mold us, make us new, change our character from the inside out, we yield ourselves into your hands, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen!