Walking in the Spirit (Part 6)
Prayer
Prayer is an essential part of the Christian life. Prayer first changes us and then as we become attuned to the Spirit, our prayer life is instrumental in our daily walk. Look at 1 John 5:14-15
14 Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
Many take a fleshly approach to prayer as they assume our prayers are intended for selfish ambitions and personal gain. Some years back I read a ‘Christian’ positive thinking book which instructed the reader to ask God expectantly for all the material possessions they wanted. This book even stated that you should tell God what color you wanted, what model of car and when you wanted it. His example was that he asks God for a yellow Mercedes and he wanted it in his driveway by a specific date. Anyone who looks at prayer this way has missed everything about the Christian life. Maybe God does want to give you good things, but that should never be the focus of your life. Maybe God wants you to live without material wealth, again this should not be the focus of your life. Jesus made it clear that our treasures should not be stored on earth and that our lives do not consist of the things we possess. Look at James 4:3
You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
So isn’t it true that in Christ I have whatever I ask? Only if you are walking in the Spirit and asking according to God’s will. You find God’s will by seeking HIM with all your heart. Maybe God wants you to be rich; maybe God has a reason for your lack of money. It should not matter for our riches are in heaven and our heart is on doing His will. A few years back I worked with several others to start a church in a very low income community. I found that it was almost impossible to get the community to accept an outsider. In their eyes, we were rich because we had more than they had and did not belong in their community. The cultural barrier was strong and many people can only be reached by people within their familiar culture. Wealth is a relative term. To most of the world, our housing projects would be considered wealthy living. To those in housing projects, a trailer home may be looked upon as a step into wealth. To those in trailer homes, a small home is a mansion. To the starter home owner, a nicer neighborhood is wealth. It goes on and on and on. At what point do we feel like God has blessed us? When we have more than everyone else? Statistics show that almost no one is satisfied with their possessions or money. The average person responded to the survey by saying that to be happy they need twice as much as they currently possess.
To walk in the Spirit, you must step outside of that realm of thinking and begin looking at your possessions as tools that God has entrusted to you. If God desires to reach a lower income area with the gospel, are you going to murmur against Him because you want material possessions? According to the modern church doctrines, you are lacking in faith if you have less wealth than others. In truth, it takes more faith to trust God when we depend on His daily provision than it does to live in pleasure. Perhaps God is calling you to leave behind material possessions in order to reach someone that God has equipped you to influence for the gospel. Are we going to refuse God’s call over materialism?
When we pray, we are not to pray for selfish ambitions or greed, but for God’s will to be done first in our lives and then in the culture around us. To pray in the Spirit is to pray for the will of God to be done. Our blessings are after this life. If God chooses to bless us in this life, fine, but if not, a greater thing awaits us if we are faithful.
Also remember that prayer is always God focused. In a previous study I examined the New Age practices that have been customized for Christianity in the ‘Contemplative Prayer’ movement. Prayer is never emptying your mind or bringing your mind to idleness. We are quiet before Him by removing all distractions of this life so that we can pray with a spiritual focus and seek Him through His word. Quietness does not mean to have nothing in our mind, but to set everything aside and focus seeking the will of God and our place in His will. If you need help in determining what to pray about, look at Jesus’ prayer guide in Matthew 6:7-14.
If you pray according to His will, you have the promise that He hears and will grant your petitions. If you pray according to your selfish desires, you have no guarantee and you are not building up yourselves in the faith but rather in the flesh. Remember that you are bought with a price and you are walking down the path of righteousness as a pilgrim looking forward to the promises God has given. If you are praying like a resident of this world and not a pilgrim, you are not seeking God’s will and are not walking in the Spirit.
Fasting
The purpose of fasting is to humble ourselves before God and to weaken the flesh and its influence in your life. Fasting is not works and is not going to make you holy and righteous. Fasting weakens the flesh so its stronghold over your mind is loosened and God’s righteousness is revealed in you and faith is made evident in your life. When you fast, do so with the focus on bringing your body under subjection so that it is not a hindrance to your spiritual walk. Fasting does not make you holy, but it does help you to separate yourself from fleshly desires so that you can live holy to the Lord. Holiness means to be set apart for God. Holiness is being separated from the world and its ways so that you are free to walk in God’s ways.
You are the one who decides how to fast. Fasting means to go without food and self-centered pleasure for a specific period of time. Do not be dogmatic about your method of fasting. The Bible does not give step by step instructions on fasting and I believe this is by design. Fasting was not intended to be a ritual or a spiritual practice that makes us holy or merit favor with God. Fasting is a personal discipline that we impose upon ourselves for the sole purpose of bringing our flesh under subjection so that our minds are focused on the spiritual things of God. As I said before I want to reiterate again: God’s Spirit is already within the Christian who has surrendered to Christ and faith is already present within us by God’s divine power. Our fleshly human nature rises up and draws our attention away from God and onto worthless things. Those things can be pleasures, materialism, sin, or even the problems in our life. If we neglect our spiritual lives, we will always return our focus to the flesh. Fasting brings our focus back onto the spiritual things of God while at the same time weakening the grip flesh has on our minds.
Since our goal in fasting is to shake loose the things that are not spiritual and reveal what God has already done, the method of our fast is not the focus. You do not have to complete a 40 day fast to benefit from fasting. In fact, if you have health concerns, you do not want to do anything that would endanger your life. Obviously a diabetic cannot go an entire day without supplementing their diet. The reason why fasting is so powerful is because eating is a very gratifying experience and is a strong focus in our lives. The restaurant business is not booming because we are seeking nutrition. We go out to eat to enhance our pleasure. While this is not necessarily a sin, it is something our flesh takes pleasure in. For this reason, we fast to deprive the flesh for a period of time so that we are bringing it under subjection. Our flesh does not like to feel hunger pains or any other kind of urge that goes ungratified. Ultimately our goal is to shift our mind’s focus from the flesh to the Spirit.
I like to fast from after dinner to the next dinner and drink only water. When I fast, my goal is to fast long enough to suffer through a few hunger pains. The reason I like to go from dinner to dinner is that I am not watching the clock and I am not denying my family of our time together. Try not to put yourself in the position of watching the clock. The goal is not to make it 24 hours, but to bring your body under subjection. This is why I say that you should not be dogmatic. I have heard of people watching the clock and eating on the exact minute that their time is complete. Ironically, the last hours of their fast is spent focusing on the flesh and not the Spirit. You may even want to start small by skipping lunch and desserts.
Equally important is to deprive the flesh of anything that stirs up lusts. Those lusts could be almost anything. Some lust after clothes, cars, shopping items, or any number of things. Sensual lust is one of the most destructive forces in the Christian life. You cannot walk in the Spirit while lusting after someone in your heart. You can’t view websites, read magazines, watch shows, or read books that introduce sexual desires to us and expect to walk in the Spirit. Most Christians subject themselves to lust on a daily basis and have become so accustomed to it that they don’t recognize its impact in their lives. 1 Thessalonians 5:19 commands you not to quench the Spirit. Anything that introduces fleshly thoughts, images or desires to us will quench the Spirit of God in our lives.
Fasting is a tool that helps remove these things from our lives; however, if you are introducing these things back into your life during or after your fast, you are fighting against yourself. You can’t feed the flesh and expect the flesh to remain under subjection. If you are unwilling to set your life apart for God you cannot expect God to reveal His power in you. Most Christians want both worlds but God does not give us that option. In fact, James 4:4-5 provides a warning for us to heed:
4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"?
As you weaken the flesh’s grip on your mind while at the same time build your spiritual walk, you will begin to see the deeper things of God. As things are removed from your life that hinder faith, you will begin to grow into your faith. You grow into faith, not by receiving more faith, but by removing those things which impede faith. The same holds true for all the things of the Spirit. If you want to see the power of God, you must remove the things that are contrary to the Spirit. As we have seen, the Spirit is at war with the flesh and the flesh is at war with the Spirit. These two cannot agree or coexist (Romans 8). You, the individual Christian, must decide which world holds more value to you. You cannot invest in both. Jesus made it clear, you cannot serve two masters. You will serve one or the other. God is a jealous God and will not permit you to walk in the Spirit when it is convenient while walking in the flesh to fulfill your worldly desires.
The Challenge of Distractions
We live in an age where we have more resources, better literacy, and more information on the scripture than at any point in history, yet the knowledge of the scriptures are desperately lacking in the church and the individual Christian is not experiencing the power of God in their lives. Why do so few people have any real knowledge of the scriptures? I believe it is our day and age in which we live that makes living godly more challenging than at any point in history. The average person’s life is so crowded that spiritual things are pushed out of view. Our lives are filled with work, education, recreation, TV, possessions, games, activities and so many other things that we never take the time to be quiet and set our hearts on the Lord.
Even church activities have become a great hindrance to the Christian walk. I have a friend who said that he was serving God by doing many church activities. Sunday is filled with Sunday School, Sunday morning service, Sunday night service and deacons meetings. Monday night is committee meetings; Tuesday night visitation; Wednesday night church service; Thursday night is a Bible study; Friday is youth night; Saturday is a church workday. Is this what God wants for the Christian? Are we showing spiritual maturity if we are involved in church activities seven days a week? How can there be any time to seek the Lord through prayer and personal study time? A Bible study is a good thing, but it cannot replace personal study time. Most churches will consider you as spiritual if you show up Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and attend Sunday School. It does not matter whether your spiritual walk is growing in the Lord; your service to God is measured by your expected attendance and involvement.
I am not knocking church attendance by any means; however, it does not reveal your spiritual depth and it alone cannot grow you into maturity. You can be present each time the doors open and never see God’s power in your life. Do not let your life become so crowded that you do not have time for God. This includes church activities.
In today’s entertainment saturated society, I don’t know if it is possible to seek the Lord with all your heart without making radical changes in your life. About two years ago I had satellite TV. Even though we were very selective in the programming we watched, I can see now how much it hindered my spiritual life. After coming home, I always wanted to just sit and relax in front of the TV for a few minutes. Since there were 130 channels to choose from, there was never a shortage of channels to flip through. Each night, my mind would be tired and I would just want to relax for the evening. The next evening became the same routine. I liked to watch documentaries and similar shows and found myself not wanting to miss my favorite programming. Looking back I see that the two years I had TV was the weakest time in my faith. One day I came home after a storm and both my receivers were chirping. We had taken a lightening strike and it took out several things in my house including my satellite and my receivers. The programming company was not cooperative and it would have cost us $300 to replace the equipment. Instead I canceled the service. Looking back, this was the best decision I have made in recent years.
At the end of the 1980’s, I was stationed overseas in the military. For two years I did not see commercial TV but we only had old reruns on the Armed Forces Network. When I returned to the U.S., I was shocked at what I saw on TV. In the two years I was away from TV, the moral standards plummeted and when I saw it, I recognized that everything was garbage. My wife was in the hospital a few weeks back and we watched the tube to pass the time. After another two-year absence, once again I was completely shocked at what is now being funneled into every living room across America. Even when you watch ‘wholesome’ programming, the commercials are horrible. In one hour’s time, I saw a show advertising someone getting beaten with a baseball bat, chopped with an axe, a show called ‘till death do us part’ where husbands and wives are apparently killing each other, and multiple couples in sexual situations. Even though we were watching a game show, we were still having violence and immorality forced upon us. Do you think it is possible to not be adversely affected if you are saturated with this day in and day out? You can’t even watch a ballgame without seeing the escapades of desperate housewives and the latest ‘steamy new series’ splashed across the screen.
This is my opinion but I think the facts clearly support this statement; it is not possible to mature spiritually if television is a regular part of your life. Even without immorality and violence, the constant distraction takes up too much of your quiet time. The Lord is the Rewarder of those who diligently seek Him; not those who seek Him when they can fit time in. We must decide if the rewards of knowing God are important enough to change our lifestyles and if we are willing to sacrifice entertainment in order to gain spiritual maturity. For me, I sacrificed spiritual maturity for entertainment for a couple of years until God intervened to show me the valueless priorities of my life.
One thing that is certain is that the closer you get to the Lord, the more you will see the need to change things in your life. As God reveals His holiness to you, His presence will reveal the things in your life that are not holy. In my own eyes, I was much holier a few years ago than I am today because I did not recognize the need for a deeper faith. As His Spirit reveals things in your life, you will be inspired by His holiness rather than overwhelmed by your guilt. In fact, guilt will be absent while at the same time you see the need to change. When our lives are in disarray, our failures produce guilt, but when God’s holiness begins to be revealed in us, we will have a desire to change and conform to His image. Our lives will be drawn by a desire for holiness instead of being driven by guilt.
Eddie Snipes
Exchanged Life Outreach
http://www.exchangedlife.com
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