Welcome
back to my blog. Thank you for visiting today.
Teleios
recently surveyed the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives in 475 young
participants in visitors to the Instagram account, InstaPray. Wow, we received
some amazing answers! All the findings, as well as other research, are on our
website (www.teleiosresearch.com).
The Holy
Spirit is a very important, yet controversial and often emotional, topic. However,
often people generally lack knowledge of what scripture teaches about the
Spirit. We are covering some pertinent topics over the Spirit, examining what
scripture alone says.
I
generally breakdown scriptures handling of the Spirit for the New Testament into three basic realms:
· The Spirit’s work in salvation
· The Spirit's role in
our Christian walk
· The Christian’s duties
to the Spirit.
Today let's
examine the most common responses from our InstaPray participants regarding how
the Spirit helps in our Christian walk (please see table).
What
the Bible says:
The scripture states that the Spirit plays a vital and active role in believers’
lives, and can divided into two basic types:
Constant roles - The Spirit has several
constant roles not dependent on us:
· Points to Christ – The Spirit
glorifies Christ, and gives and teaches us the information our Savior has given
to him (John 16:13-14; 1 John 2:20,27)
· Indwells us – Remember, we
learned last week that the Spirit indwells us completely until the day of our redemption
so we have full access to His power and help.
· Prays for us (Romans 8:26) - This
great truth indicates the Spirit prays on our behalf to God. What better source
of prayer could we have?
Believer dependent roles - However, importantly
there are roles for which the Spirit assists us that are variable and depend upon
our obedience. Two passages are critical to understand the Spirit’s help for
us, Romans 8:13-16,26 and Ephesians 6:10-17:
·
Stops sin (V.13) - As we are obedient the Spirit helps
us put to death the deeds of the flesh.
·
Leads us (V.14) - Christians commonly believe this
biblical concept but we should understand how He leads. In short, the Spirit
use God’s word (please see below passage in Ephesians 6). Indeed, the Bible
often tells us to be people of knowledge and understanding, for example in
Paul’s prayers for us (Ephesians 1:17; Colossians 1:9).
·
We are God's children (V.16) - The Spirit comforts us that
we belong to God and not to be anxious over our eternal security
Ephesians 6:10-17 - The
magnificent armor of God passage is critical to understanding our Christian
walk because it instructs us how to access God’s power by describing a Greek
hoplite soldier and his armament. Often Christians wonder how they can know the
power of God. These great verses describe it! However, it is also important in
showing the role of the Spirit because His mighty actions are linked to each of
the pieces of armor in other scripture.
· Truth (our belt to prepare us V.14) - Living in truth is a
fruit of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:9) and prepares our mind to making proper
decisions and actions.
· Righteousness (our
breastplate V.14) - A
fruit of the Spirit is a holy heart that is set apart to serve God and
perceives and rejects sin (Ephesians 5:9)
· Share the gospel (the shoes to carry
us to battle V.15) - By telling others the message of salvation we see the
power of God to change others and positively affect our society, which is
assisted by the Spirit (Romans 1:16-17; 2 Timothy 1:7; John 16:8-11).
· Faith (our shield V.16) - A
fruit of the Spirit also is faith in which we make all decisions and God
desires from us (Galatians 5:22,23; Romans 14:23).
· Eternal security (our helmet V.17) - The sound knowledge of our security of salvation
protects our heads as we face troubles in this world and its function is from
the Spirit (Romans 15:13).
· The Bible (our sword V.17)
- The power of God we experience in our Christian walk is through the action of
the Spirit in accordance to the Bible.
Wow what great truths! These passages tell us
how the Spirit acts in our lives to cause us to please God and to experience
His power.
Join us again next week as we describe what
are our responsibilities are to the Spirit so He's free to act in our lives as
described above. Join us again then. Thank you for visiting this week.
WC
Stewart
Response policy - The purpose of the comment section is to promote discussion that
is encouraging, propels the further search of Scripture and raises interesting
and thought provoking Biblically related questions. You may feel free to
disagree with me in a constructive manner using appropriate language. I reserve
the right to remove your comments if they are profane, pornographic, libelous
or I do not consider them constructive or consistent with the policy
stated above. By posting you no longer own your comments and you are granting
me an unrestricted worldwide license to use your comments.
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