Holy Spirit Inspired We will focus on an area of scripture
in Paul's second letter to Timothy 3:15-17 in which he states, "From a child you have known the scriptures, which
has made you able to become wise in the understanding of your salvation which comes through Jesus Christ. Now all scripture
comes through the inspiration of God, and this is the only way, we will benefit in doctrine, reproof, correction, and for
instruction in righteousness; so that the man of God will be perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Through out my Christian life I am continually awed by my impressions of how the Holy Spirit makes
me hunger and thirst after a relationship with Him. Living in an intimate and continual conversation with God just totally
absorbs you to the point of not wanting to miss one word spoken by Him on a daily basis. I am assuming since you are reading
this article that, you have a hunger for God and just want to know that you are individually special to Him. I prayed a simple
prayer thirty-five years ago and said, "Lord if you will give me the tools like a pickax and shovel so that I can learn
how to map my destiny with you, I will do all that I can to walk in obedience to your leadings." I did not realize at
that time that, my intensions were good but the way I thought I was supposed to do it, was in my own strength.
It has been said thousands of times and I never get tired of repeating it. "Jesus Christ is
the center of all life." With out us being born again by His Spirit and by our confession of faith in Him, there is no
Holy Spirit Inspiration.
This is the foundation that must come alive in us, if
we are going to go on in understanding God who is a Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who is our teacher and comforter.
He is the one who inspirers us how to understand Gods thought patterns. The more you interact with
Him, the hungrier you will become to walk in the inner circle with the Lord. We will now attempt to develop a train of thought
on this area of scripture.
Paul starts out by reminding Timothy of where the
source of seeking starts and that is in scripture. The scriptures are (God's road map and last will and testament that
He left for us His children.) Now the author of this word and interpreter is alive in us if; we are a born again believer.
He will be as real to us as long as we will confess our need for Him and respond to Him when He shows up as we show an appreciation
for Him with a thankful heart. If we are meditating on the word day and night as scripture tells us to do then, we will find
that God is not a liar and His word works. Paul goes on to say that, this type of commitment will make Timothy wise and he
will come to understand his salvation.
This word for wise in the Greek is sophizo:
It means a person learning more about God and having things becoming clearer in his understanding of Him. It also means to
be able to recognize subtle differences on what God is saying verses what demonic forces are saying.
1Cor. 2:16 tells us that; "we received the mind of Christ the day we become saved." The Holy Spirit
shows us how to exercise that mind as we have a running dialogue with Him daily. Jesus already tells us in John 10:4 that,
"(if) His sheep recognize His voice, they will follow Him." The problem within the Christian community is not many
know how to recognize His voice because their focus is not on understanding their righteous position in Christ Jesus. This
happens because of faulty teachings on the word of God causing a lackadaisical commitment in their daily walk with the Holy
Spirit.
Paul said. This wisdom will make us understand what all our salvation
was meant to be in our lives. Now the word for salvation in the Greek is sotaria: It means to rescue, deliver, protect and
preserve. We can see here that salvation is far more then us dedicating our lives to Jesus Christ and being saved from an
eternity in hell. I don't think we fully understand what happened to us the day we were saved and became this new creature
in Jesus Christ, which is stated in 11Cor. 5:17. The blood that we participated in that Jesus shed on the cross the day we
got saved, causes us to become branded by Him in our being forever like a King stamping a proclamation on a peace of paper
with His seal and we have been spiritually infused into God's family and belong to His church assembly.
This makes us a threat to the devil and a target of being deceived because, we now have become involved
in warfare in the spiritual atmosphere of life. Because we are God's children, we need to pursue our eternal connection
with God by enhancing our resolve through a continual feeding and revelation from the Holy Spirit, so we don't miss any
of our inheritance that God gave us the day we became His children. He says that the inspiration that we are talking about
must come through God.
I am grieved to say that there are many teachings going on in far too many Christian circles
that are not Holy Spirit led and this is a troubling issue. Paul says (if) we are being inspired by God we will benefit in
doctrine, which will reprove and correct us in our righteous position in Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who reproves,
corrects and teaches us God's main doctrine, which is our righteousness in God. Unless we come to understand what righteous
participation is in our dialogue with the Holy Spirit, we will stay as born again believers going to heaven but living in
a stunted life style.
The word for reprove is elegecho: It means to be cautioned
against danger or to be told a fault or weakness in our perception of truth. The word for correct is epimorphosis: meaning,
to be told to straighten up and become revived by being re-informed and having your thinking processes purified. The word
for doctrine is didaskalia: This is us going through a process of being informed or taught by a master teacher or doctor.
Putting it together it reads.
"We must go through a process by God through
the Holy Spirit our Master Teacher and allow Him to protect and remind us of how to live in His Spirit of Righteousness."
The word for righteousness is dikaiosune: It means we are we are justified = (guiltless and blameless),
innocent = (free from evil) and holy = (pure and set apart unto God). This is the picture that God has of us the day we became
His child. Paul the Apostle in Eph.5: 25-27 tells us, "Christ so loved the church that He gave up His life on the cross
for it. This act makes us pure because, the water of the word has washed us. In turn this sacrifice makes us seen by God with
no spots and wrinkles and His sacrifice makes us faultless."
This washing that is taking place is a constant
purification of our thoughts and attitudes on how God loves us unconditionally verses our immature thoughts of us over the
days or years of how we have looked for love in all the wrong places. Man without a living relationship with the Holy Spirit
will cause him to continue to hunger for satisfaction and love which will lead to a life of a self-imposed prison of hurt
and scaring adventures that will cause sever emotional pain and disappointment.
God's
influence of love in our life is the key and power of God to create in us God like qualities of passion and commitment to
Him and a merciful loving feeling of acceptance of ourselves and others.
The word
for word is rhema: meaning, an utterance on a certain topic or a pouring forth and the making known of ones thoughts. The
Holy Spirit is a living person who lives within our being and He has a voice that can be understood if we learn to recognize
it. It's as we learn to recognize His voice in our being with our spiritual ear which causes us to live in an obedient
submissive relationship and be in harmony with God. We must not allow the devil to side track us with cluttering our minds
up with us taking up our cares of life and not acting on God's command which He stated in Matt. 6:33 when He said, "seek
first the Kingdom of God by hungering and thirsting after His Righteous Spirit so that, you will be a whole people lacking
nothing." We could be saved people however, living as prodigal children wasting our inheritance on trivial pursuits,
which have no eternal purposes in God.
You can know the bible from cover to cover
and be born again and love the Lord but still not flow in the Spirit of Righteousness, which is the personality and attribute
of the Holy Spirit. This rhema word we are talking about is a personal word given to us by the Holy Spirit in our intimate
relationship with Him that applies directly to certain areas of our lives where we are missing the mark of our high calling
in Jesus Christ. These areas are where we are falling back from receiving God's grace (His unmerited favor) which is what
we need to empower us to live the Christian life.
As we read and meditate on God's
word; it should be like wet ink on the pages as we find out that they are love letters from God and not words of condemnation
giving us the impression of God looking for faults in us. Unless the body of Christ comes to realize the friendship and loving
protection of the Holy Spirit in their daily walk, Jesus sacrifice will become of non effect and people will continue to make
God into there own image.
Through the Prophet Isaiah in 61:10 God said that, the
restoration, which is going on today was prophesied by Isaiah back then. This restoration being that, the Christians of today
will be living with great joy because, they will have become aware that, when they were saved, God put a white robe of righteousness
on them and they have become decked out with ornaments as a bride covers herself with her jewels.
Unless we come to understand our position in Christ and see ourselves as God sees us, we will continue to
walk around with this sin conscience mentality and make the sacrifice of Jesus of none effect. As long as the church continues
to teach on peoples behavior and always reminding people of there old man that was crucified with Christ when they got saved,
there will be no hope and the feeling of appreciation and thankfulness with in us to God for something He delivered us from
by His death. What happens is when the Spirit of Righteousness is not having its way, the people are constantly looking under
their white robes and they are being reminded and condemned for their faults and incompleteness. There is no such thing as
overnight maturity, or perfection and obedience to do the works of God in our lives.
God's
idea of perfection is we knowing that, we are not perfect in behavior but, us allowing Him to show us that, we are still totally
accepted, complete and faultless in His sight.
Unless we as Christians understand
how to drink in the aroma of God's Righteous Spirit and learn how to interact with the Holy Spirit in our every day travels,
we will continue to live in a life of observances of ritualistic activities that have no real joy and stability in the Spiritual
World.
It's like lowering the bar of having God's greatness and watering
down the gospel, which causes us to not have the power to overcome our fleshly desires.
In
turn, we never come to have the same heart God has and having a fellow feeling as He does for our own needs and the needs
of others. This is the same attitude that three and a half million Jews had in their travel to the promise land in the old
testament where they wandered in the desert for forty years and died but never entered into the promised land and a relationship
of power in God because of their uncommitted hearts.
The first issue is not the
devils devices but, we the church putting our light of the gospel under a bushel and loosing our salt. When the church teaches
anything contrary to Righteousness, what it produces are doctrines of devils. In addition, it drives the body of Christ as
cattle into denial and plugs up their spiritual ear to hear the Holy Spirits voice telling them in their travels, "do
this and to not participate in that."
Once the devil gets his deceptive
darts into our thinking by us not being able to be reminded by God of our spotless and unwrinkled position in His sight, it
then causes us to remain spiritual cripples the rest of our lives. Righteousness is the Living Entity of the Spirit of God
who flooded our heart with love and a deliverance from our sin based nature the day we met Christ for the first time. The
devil's main focus is to blind the eyes of the born again believer of his position in Jesus Christ. When this happens,
it hinders the anointing in us from being able to break bondages of seducing spirits trying to control our lives and robbing
us of our total inheritance which God gave to us the day we were saved. A person who is not functioning with God's Righteous
Spirit cannot truly know the devil's devices that he is being influenced by and they become sheep led to be slaughtered.
The word righteousness we said was God looking at us as blameless, free from evil, pure, and set
apart unto God. Now this is the definition of righteousness. Knowing the definition of it does not make us obedient in following
Jesus. We need to be participating and flowing in the Spirit of Righteousness. It's us allowing the Holy Spirit ( Who
is Righteousness ) to weave His Spirit in us at all times as God did in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. After they were
influenced by Satan and committed an act of disobedience, their whole being was closed up. This stopped God from weaving His
Spirit in them. Nothing has changed since then. The devil deceived Adam and Eve with the same lie he is feeding the church
of today. Our salvation in Christ becomes meaningless unless we are participating with the Righteous Spirit, which gives us
His Divine Inspired Wisdom.
Paul goes on to say, if we are flowing in God's
righteous spirit, we will be complete and lacking nothing essential and we will be thoroughly furnished to let God perform
His righteous works through us. We must come to understand that; there is nothing lacking in us and we are protected, separated
from evil and our sins have been paid for and we are free of fault. When a person is furnished; they are fully equipped by
an outside entity or a teacher whose origin represents where all truth and power comes from. The word for works is ergon:
meaning an act or occupation. We need to be going about doing our Heavenly Father's business and not something we substituted
by doing some self righteous acts in our own strength.
We can begin to see here,
what a powerful influence and change happens to us, when we begin to submit to the influence of the Holy Spirit as we allow
Him to become our teacher. He purifies our thinking and secures our relationship from the fears and anxieties of life. This
happens as we allow Him to convince us of the mercy and unconditional love relationship that He wants to lavish on us. If
we are in any way trying to understand God‘s ways with our natural mind, it will be impossible to comprehend Him.
1John 2:27 tells us. "We have received a anointing when we became saved and this anointing will
forever live within you. Because of this, you have no need to be taught by men and this anointing is incapable of lying and
is able to let you know about everything. The main thing it lets you know, we are permanently connected to God the day we
became born again." We know that we have God given teachers and expounders in the body of Christ who God put there for
the edifying and growing up of the body of Christ. However, we as Christians must learn what it means to function in the Spirit
and network with the Holy Spirit when we gather in the name of the Lord. Please consider this next statement. The Holy Spirit
is not being given much time to share His opinion and comfort in our meetings because, we have not learned to recognize His
presence.
I am not talking only about corporate worship and church meetings.
What about husband, wife and children conversations daily in the home and our encounters with people in the market places
of life. What is it going to take for God's people to understand that we have been set apart to live a life of holiness
unto God and be different then the world's concept of what they thing real righteous living is all about. It is a constant
concern and continual watch in my prayer life for my family and my brothers and sisters in Christ where ever they physically
live in the world.
It is becoming evident to me through countless hours of meditating
in the word of God that, there are far too many areas where in the spiritual world, the devil has his army networking well
in saved circles of where congregating Christians have no clue as to his devices. Why? Because the meaning of what Righteousness
represents is not being focused and taught with clarity to the believers in Christ.
In
my every day travels in the market places of life. I look forward with great anticipation and enthusiasm and I enjoy being
able to network with the Holy Spirits leadings. I have encounters with people born again or not and get an opportunity to
share a word of wisdom with people just like me that need a word of encouragement in their walk with Lord. To me this is a
natural ordained way by God with out any effort. We must be walking alertly and know that our main priority is to be about
our Heavenly Fathers business. Our conversations are not to be as teachers but we must be giving prophetic words that are
meaningful which ministers to the exact need that people have in their lives.
The
Holy Spirit in us is the one who should be leading us and telling us what to say and do in our every day life styles. The
real place for the Church is in the highways and byways of life. Whether it is in the church service or at home or at the
store or in the Doctor's office, we need to be doing God's works not our own. He is the one building His church not
us. There is no end to the life of Christ in us. I am ending this dialogue but my conversation with the Holy Spirit continues
to go on as my thoughts, hopes and dreams continue. When I write these articles at times it's as if I am writing to an
unseen army of God's family that has not yet been seen with the naked eye but, I know they are there being trained for
this final perfecting of knowing how to walk in the Spiritual admonitions of God's leadings.
With my deepest convictions and total commitment it's my heart-felt prayer that; God makes you so hungry
for Him that He completely becomes the supreme ruler and governing power over your life.