9/2/07 Recognizing The Holy Spirit Pt. 3

We stopped in the middle of a thought last week

and this morning we want to pick up where we left off

and finish what we started.

This is our third and final week in a series we’re calling “Recognizing the Holy Spirit”.

It grew out of some comments made by our Lord in the Gospel of John,

comments in which He said, “My sheep know my voice...”.

He was telling us that His relationship with His people

is like a shepherd’s relationship with his sheep,

and just as the sheep know and trust the voice of the shepherd,

so His people know and trust and follow His voice.

It’s a crucial ingredient of the whole design He has for those of us who come to Him through faith in Christ.

We have not been called to a religious system,

we’ve been called to a living relationship with God Himself.

In fact, it’s fascinating to see the kind of analogies our Lord uses

as He tries to illustrate for us what really exists between Himself and His people.

We’ve just seen the way He uses the shepherd’s relationship with His sheep

as a picture of what we share with Him.

But there are so many other analogies he uses as well,

like the one we find in the first few verses of Romans 7

where He uses the relationship between a husband and a wife

to picture what now exists between the Christian and God.

Only its not the kind of marriage relationship that we so often see around us,

it’s the kind of marriage relationship we all long to know,

a relationship in which the husband loves and guards and cherishes his wife perfectly.

Then, in the next chapter, Romans 8,

He uses another illustration,

telling us our relationship with Him

is a lot like the relationship that exists between a small child and a loving father,

the kind of father/child relationship

in which the small child curls up in his daddy’s arms and calls him “Papa”.

In John 15 Jesus uses another human relationship illustration,

calling us His friends - God calling us His friends.

And in John 14, 15, and 16 God describes His relationship with us

by identifying Himself as “the Helper” - our helper,

the one who comes along side us and literally fights for us, and defends us, and protects us, and comforts us.

That’s the Creator God,

the One who brought all things into existence with just a word,

describing the kind of relationship He seeks with us.

One of my absolute favorite descriptions of the kind of relationship that exists between God and the Christian

is tucked into a comment made by Paul in the 14^th chapter of Romans.

In that section of the letter

Paul is directing his comments to Christians

who are forever poking at other Christians,

passing judgment on them for their conduct

in areas where God has given us liberty to hear and follow His voice in our lives personally.

I came across this statement in the early years of my Christian life,

during that phase of my walk with the King

when my life often felt like one long endless failure.

And when I found this verse

it came to me as this incredible personal promise from my Lord,

a promise I desperately needed at the time.

Paul says,

ROM 14:4 Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

...and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand!!!!

I love that!

I loved it 40 years ago because it was my God telling me

that I really would find solid footing in my walk with Him

because He would personally lead me into that solid ground.

And I love it now because when I find myself caring so much about the young Christians He brings into my life,

and I see them at times struggling in their walk with the King,

it helps me remember that God is well able to do in them

all that needs to be done in order to bring them into strength and stability in their walk with their King.

...and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand...

But my point in all of this

is that whenever God talks with us

about what’s really going on between us and Him

it never ever looks anything like what we are so often fed in the world of religion.

It’s not the acceptance of a religious system,

it is our entrance into a living daily relationship with God Himself.

And the way this works

is through God placing His Spirit within each of us

at the time we come to Him.

It isn’t just that He’s next to us,

near us,

around us,

with us,

(although He is certainly all of those things,)

it’s that He is literally in us,

with His Spirit joined to our spirit.

And last week as we closed our study

we looked at three evidences of the presence of the Spirit of God within a person,

three evidences that cannot be duplicated or counterfeited by Satan.

The first is a hunger and thirst for righteousness,

the inner longing for a life that honors God.

And I mentioned last week

that this is not the same thing as our feeling guilty for the things we’ve done wrong.

Everyone, Christian or pagan, feels guilt over moral failures

because God has placed a conscience within each of us.

That conscience is our basic recognition of the moral law of God etched on our hearts.

The conscience does not give us either the ability or the desire to make correct moral choices,

but it does give us the internal awareness

of when we have crossed the line.

Paul warns us in I Timothy 4:2

that the conscience can be seared, silenced by repeated moral violations

until eventually it doesn’t bother us a bit.

But when God’s Spirit enters our lives

He doesn’t simply rebuild the conscience.

He doesn’t simply recreate within us a sensitivity to sin

and a sense of regret or shame when we violate the moral law of God.

What He does is to create within us a literal hunger and thirst for righteousness at the spirit level,

giving us a longing to live a life that honors our God.

It is a work within the human spirit that only the Spirit of God can accomplish,

and where it exists

it serves as a powerful proof of the presence of the Spirit within.

The second evidence of the Spirit of God that we looked at last week

is the ability to hear and respond to the love of God in our lives.

Satan cannot, will not ever make you aware of God’s love for you.

On the contrary,

he will do everything he can to convince you that God is still displeased with you,

still angry at you,

still wanting more from you before you can know true peace with Him.

As long as he can keep you believing

that God is still the displeased Deity,

demanding from you what you can never adequately give,

he’s won the only battle in your life he ever has to win.

I came across the words to a Rich Mullins song this past week

that captures beautifully

some of what we hear in our spirits

when His Spirit talks with us about God’s love for us.

The first verse says:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy

I cannot find in my own

And He keeps His fire burning

To melt this heart of stone

Keeps me aching with a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless raging fury

That they call the love of God

And it is that, folks - a reckless raging fury.

It consumes, and engulfs, and surrounds, and changes everything it touches.

No human being can ever encounter the love of God and remain the same.

And then the third evidence of the Spirit of God within us that cannot be imitated by Satan

is the ability to truly love and act in love toward those around us.

1CO 13:4-7 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We all have certain people we are drawn to,

and we all learn how to use the appearance of love in our human relationships

in order to get what we want from another person.

But only the Spirit of God can equip us to truly act in love

toward those from whom we will gain nothing,

those who have wronged us,

those who have offended us,

those who, when we act in love toward them, cost us time and money and tremendous emotional energy.

The Christian writer Anne Lamott once said that we know we have created God in our own image when He hates all the same people that we hate.

That’s what we do in the flesh.

Not only do we not, in ourselves, possess the ability to love the unlovely,

but we actually become highly skilled at finding some nice, reasonable religious basis for hating them,

for avoiding them,

for fighting against them and their intrusion into our life.

We may even find some way of convincing ourselves

that it is a truly compassionate or righteous thing to exclude them from our life.

But when the Spirit of God begins His work within us

He creates within us a heart of compassion and forgiveness and kindness

unlike anything we’ve ever known before.

And that ability to reach out in love to those who naturally repulse us

is a clear, powerful evidence of the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives.

OK, that’s where we left off last week,

and where I want us to pick up our study this morning.

And if you were here last week

you may recall that I began sharing with you

what I have come to recognize as the central principle

in our understanding and following the leadership of the Spirit in our lives,

the principle that enables us to recognize the difference between the voice of the Spirit

and our emotions,

or our flawed reasoning processes,

or the demonic forces that war against us.

It’s not all that complicated,

it’s just that it requires from us

the only thing we can really offer our God -

our choice to believe He’s telling us the truth,

to believe it at times

even more than we believe what we feel, or what our logic tells us, or what we see around us.

But let me lay this out for us in an organized way

and then I’ll try to apply it in a way that may help us make better sense of it.

OK, step one in this process

is simply believing that God really has done what He said He would do -

that He has placed His Spirit within you,

joining His Spirit to your spirit in a way that has created a new heart within you.

And that’s why we’ve just spent so much time

looking at those three evidences of the Spirit within you.

And the beginning of living a life in the daily leadership of the Spirit of God

is choosing to believe He’s really done what He said He would do -

He has placed His Spirit within you and He is now living His life out through you.

The second step in this process of discovering a life lived in the Spirit of God

is our choosing to trust His love,

trusting that He really is on our side,

and that everything He has said to us and will say to us on a daily basis

is motivated by His longing for us to have the best possible life we could ever have.

And so far you’re still with me, aren’t you.

That seems reasonable, sensible, easy.

Of course God is good,

of course He loves us,

of course He wants the best for us.

So what does this have to do with hearing and following the voice of the Spirit in our lives?

Well, the problem we run into here

is that the third step in this process

calls us to a life lived within the moral framework revealed to us by our God.

And here’s where I need to talk a little more

before this makes any sense.

You see, it is that revealed moral framework

that provides us with the perfect mirror

in which we can see what’s truth and what’s deception,

what’s of the Spirit,

and what is a lie of our emotions,

what’s of the Spirit,

and what’s the product of religion, or peer pressure, or flawed logic, or demonic intervention in our lives.

I mentioned to you last week

that when I first discovered this principle

I became so exited about what I was seeing

that I built a weekend retreat around it for a group of high school students

and in the process I got some adults so mad at me that one lady wouldn’t even speak to me.

Well, the reason that happened

was because I’d gone through every New Testament Epistle, verse by verse,

and I’d made a complete list of every moral commandment given to the Christian by our Lord.

And when I finished that list

I was utterly amazed both at what was on it and what was not.

It didn’t look anything like what I’d been handed by my church experiences in the past.

And at that point I was so overwhelmed by all of the stuff that was not on the list,

and so overwhelmed with the incredible freedom given to us by our Lord

that I made that freedom the central message of what I shared with those kids.

But when you have a rebellious teenage son

who’s sneaking off to the beach on Friday nights

with his six-pack of beer so he can get drunk, thinking it proves something,

the last thing you want is some preacher proclaiming to him our amazing freedom in Christ.

But what I discovered in the process,

and what has revolutionized my life ever since

is the amazing power, freedom, and simplicity of the true life in the Spirit of God.

What He’s saying to us is this.

Begin each day with the assumption that Christ is in you, living His life out through you.

Don’t pray and plead for “the will of God”,

don’t assume it’s something you have to search for, seek out, and rarely find.

Just assume that He’s doing what He said He would do - “It’s no longer I who live by Christ lives in me...”.

Then, as we live out our lives each day,

we simply trust that He’s working out His will, His life, His purposes in and through us,

while at the same time we keep our eyes fixed on the mirror,

taking every thought,

every impulse,

every response,

every idea and holding it up to the mirror of His Word.

And whenever we find a thought or a feeling or a “logical” conclusion

that differs from what God has revealed to us,

we know we’re being deceived or lied to.

Sound too simple?

Sound like no great or amazing revelation?

Well, it isn’t any big deal

until the life of our Lord within us

conflicts with either one of those two powerful weapons used by Satan

in his efforts to destroy the life of Christ within us - religion and immorality.

At this point all I’ll say concerning religion

is that religion is all about the externals,

learning the system, following the rules,

finding those things that bring status and success in the world of religion.

God, on the other hand, is all about rebuilding our lives, one brick at a time,

one issue at a time,

one failure, one fear, one area of bondage at a time,

remaking us from the inside out

so that we have a growing ability to love God and to love the people He places around us.

And there will be times in our walk with the King

when we must choose between faithfulness to what He’s shown us or what He’s asking from us

and success or prominence or external image in the religious community.

I told a friend of mine recently

that I have come to the conclusion

that it is often impossible to remain faithful to the voice of the Spirit within us

and at the same time find great success in the organized world of religion.

To be deeply religious is not to be deeply righteous,

and in fact the path to righteousness and certainly the path to learning how to love

is frequently in direct opposition to the one that promotes religious success.

But for our study today

it will be easier for me to illustrate what I want us to see about recognizing the voice of the Spirit

if we look at some of the moral battles we face in life.

Now, keep in mind what we’ve seen so far.

We trust that God is in us, living His life out through us.

We trust that everything He’s ever said to us has been said out of His love for us.

Then, each day we choose to live that day within the protective moral framework He’s given us in His Word,

knowing that we can recognize the lies

by measuring each thought, each impulse, each voice, each emotional response

against that protective moral framework.

And for me to do what I want to do in the time we have remaining,

I need to offer you a concise statement of that moral framework.

And perhaps the easiest way for me to do this

is to share with you the five key principles that I believe summerize the heart of that moral framework.

This is not Scripture,

but it is my best attempt to state those moral principles contained in Scripture.

1. In God’s economy building love relationships with one another is always more important than our rights, our things, or our ideas.

2. Human authority is God’s tool, used by Him to accomplish His will in our lives.

3. Sex is a special means of communication designed by God for a husband and wife within the context of a life-long marriage commitment.

4. When correctly used, our speech, our verbal communication with one another, will always edify or build up the listener.

5. We are never to wilfully yield the leadership of our life to anyone or anything other than the Holy Spirit.

This 5^th principle deals especially with drunkenness, drug abuse, and demonic involvement in our lives.

Those are the basics of that moral framework.

The amazing thing is how few such absolute lines God has established for us,

and the only ones He’s given us have been established by Him for our protection.

But with that as background,

let me tell you how this thing works.

And I’ll start with an example out of my own life just recently.

Sandee and I are going to take a little vacation later this fall

and this past week I went on line to make hotel reservations.

I did a search on Orbitz for hotel rooms

and found a great deal on a nice hotel.

Then I did a Google search for “Orbitz promotion codes”

and found a site that said that if I entered “PRIDE100" in the Orbitz promotion code box

I would receive $100.00 off my room reservation.

Folks, I am profoundly cheap...well, let’s say frugal,

and if I can save money it’s just huge to me.

I entered the code and it worked!

But then, on the last screen where I enter my credit card number

I received a message that read, “Thank you for using your Gay Pride discount”.

And all of the sudden I had two voices going on inside me.

On one side I had a strong emotional elation at having just saved $100.00,

and on the other side I had the voice of the Spirit of God within me

asking me if I really wanted to identify myself with a movement that openly denies the truth.

I’m so cheap that it took me a full day before I made my decision,

but in the end I couldn’t do it - I couldn’t enter the code.

Now listen!

If you just heard me say that it would be a sin for you to enter that code,

you’ve totally misunderstood everything I’ve said today.

I haven’t got a clue as to what God would say to you in that same situation,

nor do I care.

It’s none of my business,

it’s closed communication between you and your God.

But that right there is the point.

It is real, true, personal communication between each of us and our God,

and learning and trusting the sound of His voice is the only way this whole thing works.

When I first began my notes,

I had a number of other illustrations I was going to offer you,

examples of recognizing the difference between sometimes intense emotional responses within us

and the voice of the Spirit of God.

But I’ve decided not to offer them

because if you’ve heard what I’ve said so far,

and if you truly have chosen to trust the voice of your God

and especially to trust the love that has motivated Him to speak what He’s spoken,

then you already have what you need for a daily life in the Spirit.

And if you haven’t yet reached the place

where you have chosen to trust His voice, especially in those more deeply rooted lies in your life,

then you would only resist my examples,

or find some convenient religious road around them.

But I can’t end this series without offering one additional comment.

It’s certainly true that much of the work God’s Spirit does within us during the early years of our walk with Him

is the work that must be done in order to bring our lives

into the protection of the moral framework He gives us.

But that is just a tiny tip of what the Spirit has for us

and seeks to do within us.

When Paul told us in Romans 5:5 that “... the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us...”

he is revealing to us the center of the Spirit’s work within our lives.

What that means is that the Spirit of God is daily, actively seeking those utterly personal and unique ways

of speaking to our spirits the depth and richness of God’s personal love for each of us.

I know what some of those ways are in my own life,

ways He says things to me about His love,

things that would mean nothing to others but sometimes brings me to tears.

But though the individual channels of communication are as unique as we are,

the message is always the same - “I love you!”

And if that’s not the message you’re hearing,

then you’re not hearing the Spirit of God.

And with that I think I’ve said all I want say about hearing the voice of the Spirit in our lives.

It’s not a religious game,

it’s not at all complicated,

and certainly not something reserved for a select group of Christians.

Most of all it simply requires us to do the one thing we really can do - believe what our God has said to us,

and then trust that He’s spoken always, only in love.