9/9/07 Recognizing The Holy Spirit Pt. 4

I spent the first part of the week

getting notes together for our return to our study of the Gospel of John,

but then the more I thought about it

the more I began to feel as though there may be a few more things I wanted to say

about this whole business of recognizing the leadership of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

When we ended our study last week

mostly what I’d shared with you

is that the foundation of this life we are called to,

this life lived in the power and leadership of the Spirit of God,

is found in our choosing to believe two things.

First, we believe that God has done and is doing what He promised He would do -

that He did place His Spirit within us at the time we came to Him,

and that His Spirit is now within us and is living His life out through our unique personalities.

And second, we choose to believe

that everything our God has said to us,

and especially everything He has said to us in the area of morals

He has said because He loves us

and because He is revealing to us the perfect pattern for the most successful and fulfilled life we could ever know.

Then we closed by talking a little bit about how,

even though at first glance that seems both simple and obvious,

there are still times in our lives,

and in fact times on a daily basis

when it is anything but simple or obvious.

You see, though we don’t realize it at the time,

when we come to Christ

we come with both reasoning processes and fully developed emotional systems within us

that are riddled with lies.

From the day we enter this world

we are taught, trained to think, to reason through issues

from the perspective of God not really being there for us,

or His not being trustworthy in what He says.

In other words,

we are taught to think from the perspective of ourselves as being our only final resource.

And given the fact that we begin our lives

with spirits that are in rebellion against God,

these reasoning processes just seem absolutely reasonable and natural.

Certainly we may be taught to pray about important issues in our lives,

but even this we do

not because we truly see our lives immersed in the presence of God,

with His hands surrounding us

and His love being poured out on us,

but more as if we were tossing a quarter into wishing well.

I was praying with a person some time ago,

asking our Lord to put together some changes in his life

that were far beyond his ability to control.

When we finished praying he said, “Well, who knows...maybe it will work.”

I understand that.

I understand feeling that way both about God and about prayer.

Do you remember that TV commercial they use to play during the Holidays for M&M’s?

It showed a Santa in a darkened living room late at night putting presents around the tree

and then two of those cute peanut M&M’s enter,

not knowing that Santa is there.

Then suddenly Santa turns around and sees the M&M’s and the M&M’s see Santa,

and Santa says, “OH! Their REAL!”,

and the M&M’s say, “OH! He’s REAL!”,

and they all pass out.

That’s not unlike they way we all begin our relationship with God.

I can remember times in my own life

when I prayed urgently, desperately for something,

and then seeing God answer my prayer and suddenly feeling scared.

I mean, of course I knew He was there...I’m a preacher!

But it can be a real jolt when we are suddenly confronted with the reality

that talking with Him

isn’t anything like talking with dad as a child

when you knew that Dad’s mind was on a dozen other really “important” things

and that he’s only half hearing what you’re saying.

When we are suddenly forced to realize

that when we talk with our Lord

He is listening carefully to every word,

caring about every word,

100% focused on us and what’s going on in our lives it can be scary.

But my point here is simply that

we all begin our walk with Him

with fully developed reasoning processes

that are flooded with lies and misconceptions

because we have trained our minds to reason from the perspective of God being both distant and untrustworthy.

Ever read a passage of Scripture

or heard me teach a Biblical concept

and found yourself thinking, “I don’t think that’s right!”

Assuming I taught the concept accurately,

all that’s happened is that you have discovered one of those lies imbedded in you reasoning process.

And it’s not just our reasoning processes that complicate things.

We also have a remarkable emotional system

that we have trained in a whole spectrum of responses.

The system itself is not complicated - pulse rate quickens, senses are sharpened, adrenaline enters the blood stream, our body FEELS in response to the stimulus.

The problem is that emotional responses are very much like the grooves recorded in the now nearly extinct vinyl records -

the grooves record easily,

but they don’t rerecord well at all.

And once we have trained our emotional system in some response

it remains part of our emotional response system for the rest of our lives.

We can make great progress in choosing how we act in the face of the response,

but the response doesn’t go away...ever.

And the problem here, of course,

is that many of our emotional responses

are simply lies.

By that I mean that they cause us to feel things

that are not consistent with the truth -

with the truth about who God is or about the life and walk He’s called us into.

We have trained our emotions to respond to certain things we then believe we need,

things we FEEL we must have in order to be happy or fulfilled.

We have trained our emotions to fear certain things,

and because we FEEL the fear

we then believe that the fear is telling us the truth - that the thing we fear really has power over us,

that it is in fact greater and more powerful than our God.

We live in a log home.

During the first few years after we built it

the logs shrank a little

and under the eves at the corner of our bedroom

they shrank enough so that there was a small opening through the logs from the outside into our bedroom.

Until I found that opening,

over the course of a number of months

three times during the night I woke up with bats flying around inside our bedroom.

Folks, I now have a full-blown bat phobia.

The sound of their wings and the little skritchy sounds they make with their claws

is imbedded within me now

and whenever I hear anything that sounds even remotely like it

I get an emotional fear response that’s off the scales.

Occasionally at night the wind will rattle the window shade

in a way that imitates a bat sound

and I’ll wake from a dead sleep with this surge of adrenaline in my veins.

Now, logically I know how ridiculous that is.

I know first of all that there are no more bats in our bedroom and never will be again.

And I also know that even if there were,

I weigh about 400 times as much as those little creatures

and there’s no way they could ever do me any harm whatsoever.

But still, there it is - an imbedded emotional response within me that will be there until the day I die.

And that one doesn’t even have any moral aspects to it.

But with all of us, there are a lot of other emotional responses that do.

There are approaches we’ve taken in our attempts to meet our sexual needs,

or our needs for security,

or for a sense of self-worth,

or because of anger, or bitterness, or lust, or greed,

or because of any one of an endless list of other internal motivations,

approaches that have etched into us emotional responses

that are now automatic, conditioned responses within us.

And here’s the amazing thing -

even though many of these approaches we’ve taken

do not now and never did really meet the needs we were seeking to meet,

still that doesn’t change the fact

that our emotions still respond as if we really needed whatever we’re responding to.

And the enemies of the Spirit of God within us don’t stop there, either.

I’ll mention just two more quickly

to help complete the picture.

We also have within us

a life-time library of filtered memories,

memories of the life we lived prior to our Lord’s entrance into our lives,

and of the time since as well,

many of which seem to “prove” to us that our God either isn’t there or doesn’t care.

And many of these are used as ammunition

by the fourth enemy of the Spirit within us, Satan Himself.

Peter says with rather terrifying clarity,

1PE 5:8 ...Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

And if you’re hoping I’ll be able to neatly distinguish for you

how to tell the difference between direct demonic intervention

and our own thought processes or emotions,

you’re going to be disappointed.

What we know for certain

is that Satan does at times have access to our minds

and he certainly actively seeks to undermine the work of the Spirit of God within us.

And whether he does his work directly,

or whether he uses indirect measures such as influencing external circumstances

in the end makes no difference.

All of which is to say

that understanding how to distinguish the voice of the Spirit within us

from all of these other voices and responses and influences

is very much of a growth and learning process.

After sharing with you my “PRIDE100" adventure last week,

I realized that I implied that recognizing the voice of the Spirit

is always a fairly easy thing to do.

And the truth is, sometimes its not.

One night this past week

I woke up at 3:00 in the morning

in what at the time I believed was a sort of “righteous rage”

at a person that I thought was intentionally resisting or ignoring the leadership of God in their life.

Since I was then already wide awake,

I continued to think through an approach to the situation

that I believed would help move this person toward the obvious desired goal.

If you would have asked me at the time,

I would have told you with near certainty

that what I was seeing and feeling was the product of the Spirit in my life,

(though I did wonder a little why he chose such an ungodly time to do His work in me.)

In the morning, however,

when I took my 3:00 a.m. approach

and set it next to the protective moral framework given to us by our Lord,

I saw some major problems,

the biggest of which was the affect my approach would have on the relationship.

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

Then, as I churned over the whole thing,

a huge missing piece of the picture suddenly came into focus,

a piece that dramatically transformed my understanding of what was happening and why.

I totally revised my approach,

and even went back and apologized to the person for some things I had said earlier.

OK, now how could I have been so wrong in my first responses,

and yet not have seen it?

I was wrong because I did what we always do -

I began with my own logical reasoning processes

and moved through to a reasonable conclusion

on the basis of the information I had.

The problem I ran into was two-fold.

First, I was failing to see some critical information that, when I saw it, completely changed my perspective.

And second, logic in itself

can never bring us to a correct understanding

of what is healthiest or best in human relationships.

Was it pure logic that motivated our Lord

to clothe Himself in human flesh

and allow us to nail Him to a cross?

“For God so reasonably evaluated the condition of the human race that He logically concluded that He needed to give His only Son so that all those who believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

I don’t think so.

Any logical evaluation of the human race by God

would have brought Him to the reasoned recognition

that there was no place for Him in our world or for us in His.

But...well, but ...God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

So then, what do we do?

How can we find our way through to the voice and leadership of the Spirit of God?

Well, we begin with the correct type of mistrust of both our own reasoning processes

and our own emotional responses.

And then we daily go to war.

I like the way Paul put it in his second letter to the church at Corinth.

2CO 10:3-4 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ...

We take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

And how do we do that?

By holding them up next to the knowledge of God,

or in the terms I’m using for this study,

by holding them next to the protective moral framework given to us by our Lord.

And just to help a little more with this process,

let me say a little more about those five principles I shared with you last week

that help me to better relate to that moral framework.

The first principle is the one I’ve already mentioned this morning.

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

That’s simply my way of restating that one commandment given to us by our Lord.

JOH 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

You see what He’s doing for us when He says that, don’t you?

He’s revealing something to us

about one of the central goals of everything the Spirit of God is doing within us and through us.

What He’s seeking to do

is to teach us how to really love one another.

It is what we’re here for, or at least a major part of it,

and it is what He’s seeking to do through us.

And just so we don’t miss what’s really happening here,

I want you to take that truth, that principle, that commandment

and set it next to so much of what we see happening in the religious community around us.

Throughout the history of the church

Christians have been attacking one another with their doctrine,

literally destroying their relationships with one another in the name of God.

It happens between different doctrinal groups,

it happens between members within individual groups

leaving a wake of fear, anger, and pride.

And I am certainly not suggesting that doctrine doesn’t matter.

Every time I stand before you

I bring with me the hope that I can offer you another piece of doctrine

that will better equip you for your own personal walk with the King.

But whenever we allow our doctrinal differences and disputes with other Christians

to become more important than building a healthy love relationship with them

one thing we know with certainty - we are not following the leadership of the Spirit of God in our lives,

no matter how many verses we may quote.

And it’s not just our ideas that often war against the life of the Spirit within us.

If our possessions become more important to us than our relationships,

or if the defense of our personal rights becomes more important than our relationships,

then here too we forfeit our ability to correctly hear and follow the Spirit within.

The second principle I offered you last week

that can help us identify the voice of the Spirit within us

is one we spent a whole morning on a few months ago.

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

That is simply my restatement

of the central principle given to us throughout Scripture.

ROM 13:1-2, 4 Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God...for it is a minister of God to you for good...

1PE 2:13-15 Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

If you’d like to see this principle developed fully,

you can find the notes on the PBF web site under May 20, 2007.

But for our purposes this morning

let me just say that if we ever find ourselves believing

that the Spirit of God is leading us to disobey or defy any human authority God has placed over us

we should be highly suspicious of what we’re thinking or feeling.

Unless the authority is demanding that we deny our Lord Jesus Christ

or that we involve ourselves in immorality,

we are probably wrong.

Then the next two principles I shared with you

are really sub principles that belong under the first one.

They simply help us better understand the true nature of healthy love relationships.

3. The third principle states that sex is a special means of communication designed by God for a husband and wife within the context of a life-long marriage commitment.

And this one is not difficult to understand,

it’s just very difficult to trust and apply sometimes.

Whenever we seek to bring sex into any human relationship outside of marriage

it will always damage the health of the relationship

and frequently deeply wound the lives of those involved.

You see, God has designed sex in such a way as to embed within the sexual act

a powerful message,

the message that says, “I am committed to you and faithful to you alone for the rest of my life.”

It is a message that is absolutely consistent with the marriage relationship,

but a message that is a huge lie in any other human relationship.

And as with any huge lie,

it will powerfully weaken the deepest foundations of the relationship.

The fourth principle with which we can help recognize the voice of the Spirit within us states that when correctly used, our speech, our verbal communication with one another, will always edify or build up the listener.

Our ability to communicate with one another verbally

is among the most powerful and potentially life-changing gifts given to us by God.

We can literally bring either redemption or pain and destruction into the lives of others through the words we speak to them.

And all I would say here

is that if we are truly growing in our ability to hear and follow the voice of the Spirit within us,

one of the major works He will be doing within us

is teaching us how to anticipate the affect our words will have on our listeners before we speak them.

Do you want to change someone’s life for good?

Start telling them the truth about who they really are in the eyes of God.

And then, the last principle is clear and straightforward.

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

This is obvious, but God’s Spirit will never lead a person into drunkenness, drug abuse, or demonic involvement.

EPH 5:18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit..

Those principles define and clarify the true voice of the Spirit of God within us

in a way that, if we trust them,

allows us to literally walk in the Spirit of God every day of our lives.

It’s not nearly as difficult,

or confusing,

or religious,

or mystical as we are often led to believe it is.

Most of all it’s simply choosing to trust the voice of our God in very practical ways.

And with those clarifications, I’ll once again end our study of recognizing the voice of the Spirit within us.