The Leading of the Spirit of God

Intro; Human beings of all ages, genders, nationalities, and ethnic groups are on a search for purpose and significance. They seek to understand why we are here, the significance of the world we live in, and how we can fulfill our personal potential.

They want to know if our individual lives have any real meaning in the vast expanse of history and time. They try to fill the emptiness with a variety of things: money, relationships, parties, drugs, sex, alcohol, work, sports, or vacations. In fact,

I believe that every person, whether they are Christian, atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Scientologist, animist, or even Satanist ultimately desires the same thing. They want to fill what is missing in their life, and only the presence of the God in their life can accomplish this.

To be true and complete human beings, we must somehow become reconnected to and re-indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible instructs us that Adam had such an inteligeis, that he was able to name all the creatores that God created. But in truth, he was inguft in the Spirit of God.

Years ago my wife an I attined Remah Bible trainning crenter, and Bro Hagan was teaching on real faith. As he was teaching the class, I had his book real faith in my hands when I realized that he was quoting it from word to word. It amazed me, so I asked myself the quesion, how is this man able to do this, he stop in the middle of his message and said, I got a photograph mememory, any thing I have ever ready, I can quoto it verbatam. Then he went on to say, I did not have this ability until I was filled with the Holy Spirit.

I. Before Jesus’ passion, he promised that the Father and he would send his disciples “another Counselor” (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7).

The Counselor or Paraclete, from the Greek word parakletos (meaning one who gives support), The Spirit of God is a helper, He is an adviser, a strengthener, an encourager, ally, and advocate.

Jesus was the first Paraclete and is promising a replacement who, after he is gone, will carry on the teaching and testimony that he started (John 16:6–7).

The Paraclete ministry, by its very nature, is personal, a relational ministry, implying the full personhood of the one who fulfills it. In the Old Testament, much was said about the Spirit’s activity in Creation (e.g., Gen. 1:2; Ps. 33:6), He brought revelation (e.g., Isa. 61:1–6; Mic. 3:8), He enabling for service (e.g., Exod. 31:2–6; Judg. 6:34; 15:14–15; Isa. 11:2), and He was a inward renewal (e.g., Ps. 51:10–12; Ezek. 36:25–27).

In the New Testament, however, it becomes clear that the Spirit is as truly a Person distinct from the Father as the Son is. This is apparent not only from Jesus’ promise of “another Counselor,” but also from the fact that the Spirit, among other things, speaks (Acts 1:16; 8:29; 10:19; 11:12; 13:2; 28:25), He teaches (John 14:26), He witnesses (John 15:26), He searches (1 Cor. 2:11), He determines (1 Cor. 12:11), He intercedes (Rom. 8:26–27),He can be lied to (Acts 5:3), and can be grieved (Eph. 4:30). Only of a personal being can such things be said.

So it must be pointed out, that the Spirit of God is not an it, He is a person, and he must be obeyed, loved, and adored along with the Father and the Son.

As Jesus Christ witnessed, He glorifying the Spirit by showing his disciples who and what he is (John 16:7–15), and making them aware of what they are to him (Rom. 8:15–17; Gal. 4:6) in His Paraclete’s central ministry. The Spirit enlightens us (Eph. 1:17–18), He regenerates us (John 3:5–8), He leads us into holiness (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:16–18), He transforms us (2 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 5:22–23), He gives us assurance (Rom. 8:16), and gifts us for ministry (1 Cor. 12:4–11). All God’s work in us, touching our hearts, our characters, and our conduct, is done by the Spirit, though aspects of it are sometimes ascribed to the Father and the Son, whose executive the Spirit is.

The Spirit’s full Paraclete ministry began on Pentecost morning, following Jesus’ ascension (Acts 2:1–4). John the Baptist had foretold that Jesus would baptize in the Spirit (Mark 1:8; John 1:33), according to the Old Testament promise of an outpouring of God’s Spirit in the last days (Joel 2:28–32; cf. Jer. 31:31–34), and Jesus had repeated the promise (Acts 1:4–5). The significance of Pentecost morning was twofold: it marked the opening of the final era of world history before Christ’s return, and, as compared with the Old Testament era, it marked a tremendous enhancing of the Spirit’s ministry and of the experience of being alive to God.

II. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 CORINTHIANS 2:14

The knowledge of divine things to which Christians are called, is more than a formal acquaintance with biblical words and Christian ideas. It is a realizing of the reality and relevance of those activities of the triune God to which Scripture testifies.

Like “the man without the Spirit” in 1 Cor. 2:14 who cannot receive what Christians tell him, or the blind leaders of the blind of whom Jesus speaks so caustically in Matt. 15:14, or like Paul himself before Christ met him on the Damascus road). Only the Holy Spirit, searcher of the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10), can bring about this realization in our sin-darkened minds and hearts. That is why it is called “spiritual understanding” (spiritual means “Spirit-given,” Col. 1:9; cf. Luke 24:25; 1 John 5:20). Those who, along with sound verbal instruction, “have an anointing from the Holy One … know the truth” (1 John 2:20).

The work of the Spirit in imparting this knowledge is called “illumination,” or enlightening. It is not a giving of new revelation, but a work within us that enables us to grasp and to love the revelation that is there before us in the biblical text as heard and read, and as explained by teachers and writers.

Sin in our mental and moral system clouds our minds and wills so that we miss and resist the force of Scripture. God seems to us remote to the point of unreality, and in the face of God’s truth we are dull and apathetic. The Spirit, however, opens and unveils our minds and attunes our hearts so that we understand (Eph. 1:17–18; 3:18–19; 2 Cor. 3:14–16; 4:6). As by inspiration he provided Scripture truth for us, so now by illumination he interprets it to us. Illumination is thus the applying of God’s revealed truth to our hearts, so that we grasp as reality for ourselves what the sacred text sets forth.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?… And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

1 CORINTHIANS 6:9, 11

Sanctification, is “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” The concept is not of sin being totally eradicated (that is to claim too much) or merely counteracted (that is to say too little), but of a divinely wrought character change freeing us from sinful habits and forming in us Christlike affections, dispositions, and virtues.

Sanctification is an ongoing transformation within a maintained consecration, and it engenders real righteousness within the frame of relational holiness. Relational sanctification, is a state of being permanently set apart for God, it flows from the cross, where God through Christ purchased and claimed us for himself (Acts 20:28; 26:18; Heb. 10:10). a moral renovation, whereby we are increasingly changed from what we once were, flows from the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:13; 12:1–2; 1 Cor. 6:11, 19–20; 2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 4:22–24; 1 Thess. 5:23; 2 Thess. 2:13; Heb. 13:20–21). God calls his children to sanctity and graciously gives what he commands (1 Thess. 4:4; 5:23).

As believers, we find within ourselves contrary urgings. The Spirit sustains our regenerate desires and purposes; The Adamic instincts (the “flesh”) which has been dethroned, are not yet destroyed, constantly distract us from doing God’s will and allure us along paths that lead to death (Gal. 5:16–17; James 1:14–15).

(Rom. 7:14–25). This conflict and frustration will be with Christians as long as they are in the body. Yet by watching and praying against temptation, and cultivating opposite virtues, they may through the Spirit’s help “mortify” (i.e., drain the life out of, weaken as a means of killing) particular bad habits, and in that sense more and more die unto sin (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5). They will experience many particular deliverances and victories in their unending battle with sin, while never being exposed to temptations that are impossible to resist (1 Cor. 10:13).

Conclusion; God made us and has redeemed us for fellowship with himself (16 Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s sanctuary d and that the Spirit of God lives in you)?, and that is what prayer is. God speaks to us in and through the contents of the Bible, which the Holy Spirit opens up and applies to us and enables us to understand. We then speak to God about himself, and ourselves, and people in his world, shaping what we say as response to what he has said. This unique form of two-way conversation continues as long as life lasts.

Many Christian’s fine themselves at a crossroad of making the wrong choice, because they know what God’s Spirit is saying they need to do, but they disobey Him. In return they cut off their means of spiritual growth and can’t seem to have the peace in their life they think they should have.

Here the secrect to your delema, go back and obey the leading of the Holy Ghost. Some people walk away from God all togather, because they don’t want to obey. Jesus said my sheep here my voice and no other sharperd shall they follow.

The Holy Spirit is your Counselor, He want to lead you into deeper truths of God. but you got to be willing to eat the good of the land.