April 08, 2020
What is it that you need to be truly changed? To have the power necessary for the tasks assigned to you by God? The Bible is clear about this: you need the Spirit of God.
THE OLD COVENANT PROCESS
In the Old Testament, the Spirit would come upon a man for a season, empowering him for service. This is what happened to Saul as he was anointed to lead God’s people. Sadly, Saul would later turn from God and lose His presence and power.
This is why David, after his sin with Bathsheba, prayed in Psalm 51:11, “Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” The Spirit could lift from a man’s life, leaving him powerless to live as God intended.
THE NEW COVENANT PROCESS
Knowing our weakness and inability, God had another arrangement coming, made possible by Christ. After Christ came and lived and was resurrected, He made a new promise, recorded for us in John 14:
On the day of Pentecost, just as Christ promised, the Holy Spirit descended upon the early believers. He came not to visit them for a season, but to indwell each one of them forever, and the difference is profound. Once born again, the Spirit now comes to indwell every believer, changing them and giving them everything they need for life and godliness for the rest of their lives.
We can ignore the Holy Spirit’s presence within us as believer for a season. But He is still there. And now the Christian life is not a matter of “doing our best” for Jesus, but living in dependence upon Christ to live through us through the power of the Spirit. This was the key to Paul’s power and fruitfulness and to ours.
What a blessed reality! To know that the Spirit indwells us as believers and will never leave! That we have everything we need to live and live spiritually! That, once saved, we are never the same again!
And what a sobering reminder, that we must depend upon the Spirit within daily, hourly. Paul’s constant prayer was that he would not come to people with “persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).
Are you a believer? Do you have God’s Spirit living in you? If not, it is time to turn from a life without Him and cry out for His salvation and the incoming of His Spirit. Only this can bring the change your heart desires.
Gracious Father, we’re overwhelmed that You come to live in us through the person of the Holy Spirit! Thank You for indwelling us! Thank You for changing us and empowering us! Teach us to live from the inside out; not trusting in our own weak abilities, but trusting in You to fill us and flow through us like rivers of living water!
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