Live by the Spirit

One of my favorite chapters in the bible is Galatians 5. It resonates with my passion for freedom… “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. I have a passion to see the church walking out that freedom in fullness. The question is, how, how do we get from this place to a place of full freedom?

Verse 16 says “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature”. I’m convinced that central to our experiencing that full freedom is learning how to live by the Spirit.

Here’s a question for you. Are you a physical being with occasional, temporary spiritual experiences or are you a spiritual being living a temporal physical reality? Whether you’re a Christian or not, you are going to live forever, it simply a matter of location, what will your eternal address be? We are Spiritual beings, the 70-80 years we live in this physical realm are a drop in the ocean compared to eternity. This natural existence is temporary, the Spiritual realm is permanent. The Spiritual realm is the real reality. This is a challenging concept for the American church to grasp. I suspect that this question of the real reality was part of the appeal of the Matrix movies. It touched an arena of truth with us.

Maybe you don’t want to consider the question of which reality is more real. Than how about this, as a follower of Jesus Christ to believe you have reached the zenith of your maturity and spiritual development in the faith? Do you still have room to grow? Do you believe that God still has more for you? Any honest person would quickly examine themselves and offer a resounding yes! Of course God has more for us, I want that more. Beyond that, I believe we are entering time in human history where we need that more, we need to be able to “live by the Spirit”.

We are presently living in the lull before the storm. The Lord has revealed to me some things that are about to take place. I’ll write about them tomorrow. The season we are in right now is a kin to training camp, boot camp or the pre-season. It is time for us to practice, experiment and explore so we will be ready when it time to enter the field of battle.

To use more biblical language, we want to be like to the five wise virgins whose lamps were filled with oil (the Holy Spirit), ready for the bridegroom when he comes.

Father, take us out of our comfort zones; blow up our artificial controls that box us in and you out. Set us free from fear and the limits of the natural realm that we might live fully free by your Spirit, amen.

Copyright © Tom Zawacki 2006