Transformed life
Transformed life…stripping away the past..Carrying too much luggage?
My yoke is easy & burden is light.
Who is it that overcomes?
Rom 12:1
Rom 8:31 if God is for us who can be against us?
Rom 8:13 “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
Romans 8:13 ESV For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Matthew 12:43-45 ESV "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. (44) Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. (45) Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation."
Phil 1:9-11 love abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight; able to discern best and may be pure; filled with fruit of righteousness-comes through Jesus
Gal 5-It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not allow yourselves to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised Christ will be of no value to you at all.
…v6
Are you trying to be justified by the Law? Are you trying to prove your worth to God and man? If so, you’ve missed the point of what Jesus has done….perhaps we haven’t made it clear..(v10)
When preach god’s standards for life, that is just one piece of understanding the Christian life. We need to know what the standard is…foundation. Goal is not for you to go out and try to take the burden of living up to that standard upon yourself….
You can’t! Just build up more guilt. Keep falling.
Called to freedom (v13)…only don’t use it for evil. If you have accepted gift of Jesus’ forgiveness…God sees you are pure, sinless. Washed clean. Old has gone, new has come. Don’t spoil it..
V 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh…
.need to learn to walk by the Spirit, not by the flesh….get rid of extra luggage
…flech is the part of us that wants to fulfill selfish desires.
….flesh is part that reacts to the world based on what has happened to us in the past…
…way we were raised…mistakes/habits of parents…”generational curses”
(leave out or define)
….past hurts/habits….experiences…taught us wrong way to live…
….past/current sins…trying to do it on our own.
get rid of extra luggage to let Spirit guide our lives. Need to depend upon God.
Will reap the rewards of a life transformed by God…
Rid life of sinful acts: (v. 20-21)
Will live by fruit of Spirit (v. 22-23)
v. 5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope
how to…2 Tim 3:16
overcome through Christ…give credit to Him.
We know what is right…problem is don’t always want to….need God to change us so that we will WANT to do those things.
Change environment sometimes….
Teen Challenge…\
V
Cleaning the house…open to strong man…fill with healthy stuff.
Interventions…
Look at spiritual landscape…people unnecessarily burdened…trying to do what is right.
Oct 25th…worship message/praise & worship…
No Spirit…can’t please God. Expect people without God to disobey God. don’t expect them to want to please God.
Christians today-identified by way of life…moralism “they were denying the Spirit's sufficiency to identify them as the people of God and to direct their conduct”
“The Spirit is the best guarantee of Christian identity and the only sure guide for Christian behavior. The Spirit is the only source of power to love in a way that fulfills the whole law.”
Walking by Spirit is sometimes harder that living a moral life-involves great internal struggle, humility.
Sometimes easy…Spirit suddenly present in our lives and convinces you to live differently.
More often, something needs to be overcome first…great struggle to do what you know is right because Spirit is convicting you, but that you can find all kinds of other reasons to do the wrong thing
Take constantly presenting self to God and asking Him to reveal your weaknesses.
Takes constantly exposing those weaknesses to God and to those He has placed around you to deal with those issues.
Involves walking through the fire…dealing with problem and difficulties that come from facing it…until you finally overcome. Rather than hiding from it, running away from it. Ignoring it. Willing to face difficult times/expose wounds to one another knowing that it will be better in the end. Rip the bandages off….feels comfortable…hurts to expose it…especially if infected, festering…but necessary if doctor is going to heal you.
Luggage analogy…get comfortable carrying stuff. Some discomfort, but that’s just the way life is…accept it. One recognize it, begins to bother you more…shift it around, expose it, increased discomfort, can throw you off balance…causes more struggle.
Takes faith that in the end life will be much better!
How can I impact the seeker in this message? Don’t want to be part of group that is constantly telling them what’s wrong with their lives and that they need to change. It’s the hope for something better….something they know deep down they need and can’t seem to get on their own…this is what we are all seeking…we need to let people know the answer provided by Go through Jesus and Holy Spirit.
-even unbelievers can live a morally decent life…is that what Christian life is really all about. Are we satisfied with people not knowing God at all, as long as they are living a moral life?
To seeker: is that enough for you? To just live a “decent life” be a “good person” Not enough for me…know that God has a much better life to offer,…freedom from the constant pressure to do good…guilt of when I don’t
“This inner spiritual warfare is the nature of the Christian life; it is the experience of all those who live by the Spirit. The conflict Paul is describing here is not the moral conflict that everyone feels at some time, nor the conflict of a wayward Christian who is no longer committed to Christ. This is the conflict of a thoroughly committed Christian who is choosing each day to "walk by the Spirit." Each day the Christian who chooses to walk by the Spirit is engaged in a fierce battle between the Spirit and the sinful nature. It is important to stress this point, because many Christians feel ashamed to admit that they are experiencing such a conflict. They feel that mature Christians should somehow be above this kind of struggle. They imagine that the great saints were surely too spiritual to feel the desires of the flesh. But Paul flatly contradicts such images of superspirituality. His perspective is expressed by an old hymn”
Those who are living by the guiding power of the Spirit in their lives and are fighting each day against the influence of the sinful nature do not need to be supervised and restrained by the law.
If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law (v. 18). Life in the Spirit was pictured in verse 16 as an active determination: "Walk by the Spirit!" Walking demands active determination to get up out of the soft armchair and endurance to keep going at a steady pace. But now Paul speaks of life in the Spirit as passive submission: if you are led by the Spirit.
If the Spirit is leading you to forgive your sister who wronged you instead of being resentful toward her, you are under the control of the Spirit rather than under the restriction of the command "You shall not kill." When your conduct is guided and empowered by the Spirit, your conduct will fulfill the law, so you will not be under the condemnation or supervision of the law.
Life by the Spirit involves active obedience to the direction of the Spirit (v. 16), constant warfare against the desires of the sinful nature by the power of the Spirit (v. 17) and complete submission to the control of the Spirit (v. 18). Such a life will be an experience of freedom from the control of the sinful nature and the control of the law.
No doubt one reason the Galatian Christians were attracted to the law is that they viewed the law as the only way to restrain and control the passions and desires of the flesh. They saw the law as a needed disciplinarian to keep them from being destroyed by their own sinful desires.
The law's restraining power over sinful desires is a common subject in Jewish literature and must certainly have been a theme in the campaign of the false teachers who were trying to bring the Gentile Christians under the law. We can imagine them saying, "How can you ever hope to win the battle against your evil desires? There is only one way. Come under the yoke of the law. The law was given to guard, protect and keep you from evil. Live under it as your master and guide."
It is still a response to people who wanted to live under the yoke of the law. They were hoping to be able to overcome their moral problems by concentrating on keeping the law. Paul seeks to convince them that the law has no power to restrain the flesh. On the contrary, those who try to overcome the sinful nature (the flesh) by observing the law become more deeply enslaved to the sinful nature (the flesh). Certainly Christian freedom from the law does not mean giving into the sinful nature. It means serving one another in love. And this is only possible by walking in the Spirit. That is the essence of Paul's ethical appeal. His appeal defines freedom as freedom to love (5:13-15), freedom by the Spirit (5:16-18), freedom from evil (5:19-21), freedom for moral transformation (5:22-26) and freedom to fulfill responsibilities (6:1-10).
How-to: Word, prayer, interaction with others seeking to live by the Spirit.
So we drop the law code idea. We see Jesus' lofty standards for what they are and we realize that we will never obey them perfectly, at least in this life. That's why we are saved by grace! So we quit following rules and allow the grace of the Holy Spirit to do his work in us. We learn to become more like children as regards humility and simplicity (Matt. 18:3). We accept our inability to sanctify ourselves. Prayers are offered for the Holy Spirit to work changes within us, giving us a new heart; a pure heart. We are praying for a miracle; something that cannot be accomplished through obedience to laws and rules. God softens and shapes our hearts to the extent that we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us.
???Promote power of Spirit to heal…do we trust the same Spirit to do the daily miracles within us to transform us into people of God?
Before we learn and really believe that certain practices are morally wrong, we may not suffer a guilty conscience. But once we believe they are wrong, our flesh becomes reactive and through its natural rebelliousness it prompts us to seek the pleasure of sin all the more. Things that we view as sinful (whether or not they really are in God's eyes) will titillate the flesh when we do them, not just because the act may bring pleasure to the body, but because rebellion is a fallen pleasure in itself (Pro. 9:17; Job 31:26-28).
This can be seen in its extreme form in ritual Satanism, where everything holy is blasphemed; pleasure being derived from the very act of blaspheming God. While that may sound revolting, the same sin factor is at work in all of us. It's just that some of us allow it to take us farther along the road to degradation than others.
Though we have died to the old sin nature if we are born again, the flesh can still plague us in the same manner if we fall under law once more. We need to understand the principle of being set free from the endless cycle of sin and guilt, by living in the Spirit:
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. (Rom. 7:5,6)
If you have a tendency to put rules on other Christians where the Bible does not give rules, you might be surprised to know that doing so is like trying to cure the sick with the AIDS virus! There are far more effective ways of promoting good conduct in others. Study the methods of Jesus in relating to others, and you will have success.
Big concerns as Christians today—declining morals. Teaching kids good morals.