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“I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out
the desire of the flesh. For…the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control…Since we live by the Spirit, we must also
follow the Spirit.”
[Galatians 5:16, 22-23, 25 HCSB]
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Keep in step
All of my life, every activity, is to be done according to the leadership of God’s Spirit. We live in harmony with the Spirit of God. He sets our march and we respond to Him.
And this is where modern Christians tend to get really unhappy with me, or more accurately, they get angry with God. What we want are “four easy steps to spiritual victory.” Right? We want physical, detailed, how-to, self-help guides.
With the laughing wind
Which causes God to laugh in our faces. In fact, He purposefully describes God the Spirit in the most non-physical, nebulous term possible. He specifically uses the Greek term πνεuμα Pneuma to describe the Person of the Trinity who indwells and guides us. Pneuma means “the wind” or “air.” That’s why it came into English as “pneumatic” – a term for air pressure.
This is not a solid thing. There is nothing less detailed, how-to, or self-help than the wind! We can’t control it. We can’t even see it. We can only see the effects of it. And yet that is supposed to be our daily guide. We are to keep in step with something invisible. How is that possible?
It’s possible the same way my kite flies in the air. I put a kite up in the air so it can catch the breeze. Then it moves according to how the wind blows. Likewise, I must throw my life up into God’s leadership. Every day I need to spiritually, internally, cast myself on the guidance and power of God. Then I can respond throughout the day according to His guidance.
A daily, internal response
I was discussing this with David Wade of our pulpit team, and he sent this insight:
Wayne, the old pastor A.B. Simpson had this to say: This…is an interior life, a spiritual life, and many persons do not know this, and do not want it. It holds too constant a check upon the heart, it requires too utterly that we should walk softly with our God. Most persons like to be their own masters, and the habit of walking step by step with God and submitting every thought and desire to an inward Monitor is intolerable to their imperious self-will, or at least unfamiliar to their experience. – A.B. Simpson, The Life of Prayer
Recently I met another great Christian teacher, Alistair Begg. He said this to me: “The Spirit’s fruit is not a Christmas tree with ornaments added from the outside. It rather comes from within.”
Keep that in mind as you decorate your tree at Christmas. Keeping in step with God’s Spirit is not an external decoration. It is an internal surrender.
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