Walking in the Spirit

Part 1--Walking in the Spirit or in the Natural?

By David Hobbs

1 Cor. 3:19—“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Most Christians understand that the Bible teaches that we can either live in the “flesh” [i.e. sinful nature] or in the Spirit (Romans 8:5-9). Those living in the flesh cannot possibly please God because the whole fleshly nature of man is contrary to God (v.8).
But then the Bible seems to take born-again Christians off the hook. In verse 9 it says that we are not controlled by the flesh but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in us. And He does live in us if we belong to Christ. Therefore Christians shouldn’t have to worry about “walking in the flesh,” right?
Well, not so fast. I believe there is a whole different kind of walking seldom discussed in Christian circles, but practiced by most Christians every day. In fact, it’s how most Christians spend the vast majority of every day. It’s walking in the natural man. Granted, we may not be driven by the passions and appetites of the fleshly nature, but neither are we walking in the Spirit of God. We have no sense of His Presence, His touch or His anointing; we are just walking according to our natural thinking and reasoning.
Does the Bible support this? Consider this passage from Isaiah 55:

8”For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

What’s God saying? He’s saying He doesn’t think like us and we don’t think like Him. Now if we were in the Spirit, we would be thinking like God and this wouldn’t apply, but most of the time it’s all too true: our thoughts are very earth-bound and controlled by our natural reasonings. We get sick, we go to the doctor. We don’t think, “Wait a minute, I’m a child of God. Healing was provided in the atonement,” and call upon Him to fulfill His promise. Only if the doctors fail us completely do we turn to God.

We worry about our retirement. We call in our financial adviser, start an IRA, project interest rates into the future, cost of living adjustments, etc. The last thing we do is consult the wisdom of the Bible:

James 4:13--Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

And 1 Tim. 6:8—“And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.”

My point is that Christians can easily walk according to their natural thinking. Here’s another passage, from 1 Cor. 3:3:

You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?

Just because we have the Holy Spirit; it doesn’t at all mean that we are always walking in the Spirit. The Spirit is resident within the Christian, but most of the time He lies dormant in the background while the Christian lives and thinks and speaks from the natural realm. He thinks and speaks human thoughts based on his own reasoning and experience. That’s why we miss God so much. We pray for God to heal those He’s ready to take home; we pray for deliverance for those He’s handed over to satan for the destruction of their sinful natures (1 Cor. 5:5); we coddle those He’s trying to bring to the end of themselves to save them, and on and on.
The Proverb says there is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death. That’s it in a nutshell. A man walking in the natural thinks everything he is doing is right, only to find later that he missed God by a mile. The book of 1st Corinthians is full of such people, whom Paul is continually rebuking, because, though they presumably have the Spirit, they are obviously not walking in the Spirit. (Also consider Heb. 5:11-14)
I say this because it is an absolutely critical concept for Christians to understand. It is not enough to be born again and have the Spirit of God in us. Yes that’s enough to make heaven. But we’ll never reach our destinies, never fulfill our high callings in Christ, and never contribute to the work of building the Kingdom, preaching the gospel or preparing the Bride, unless we learn to walk in the Spirit as opposed to the natural.
God’s will is not just to save us. That was accomplished on Calvary 2000 years ago, but for what end? So that we could make heaven? Yes but much more than that. He saved, sanctified and is purifying us so that He can live His life through us. That’s the only way we’re going to defeat the devil and turn the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ. Not by our own good ideas! Not by human effort! Not by organizational skills and charismatic giftings! It will only be by the power of God working through millions of Christians as they walk “in the Spirit!” Therefore we must learn what it is and what it is not to Walk in the Spirit!

The Goal of the Christian Life

By David Hobbs

-----When Jesus came to Earth and purchased a people for Himself with His own blood, what was His plan for those people? Likewise, when Christian parents send their children off to Christian schools to be prepared for life, what is their plan for their children? Shouldn’t the goal of Jesus for His people and the goal of Christian parents for their children be the same?

-----Here are the goals of two Christian schools as taken from their websites:

The mission of ____ Christian School is to help students mature spiritually and excel academically by offering a Biblically-integrated, college preparatory program that will enable them to impact the kingdom of God by living productive Christian lives.

-----Notice that the way we “impact the kingdom of God” is by “living productive Christian lives.” (I thought we were supposed to impact the world for Christ. And if we do it best by living productive Christian [i.e. moral] lives, we should all become Mormons. They lead some of the most productive lives I know of). Here’s another:

_____ Christian Academy is an independent, co-educational, PreK - 12, college preparatory school with an educational culture built on the classical Trivium and historic Biblical Christianity. _____ provides an academic curriculum that trains students in the grammatical, dialectical, and rhetorical arts with an equal emphasis on the acquisition of the empirical and mathematical sciences preparatory to, or at the level of, College Board Advanced Placement standards. The program aims not only to equip students with knowledge of the different disciplines, but also to aid their understanding of learning as the pursuit and application of truth. The program's distinctives include Latin instruction that begins in third grade, a full year of informal and formal logic, a full year of rhetoric, the writing and defense of a senior thesis, and the age-appropriateteaching methodologies required of each subject.

Now that’s a mouthful!

-----The goal of many Christian parents, as reflected through their schools’ programs, seemingly is to out-produce the world in the field of education. Armed with our Christian principles and worldview, taking things seriously and applying ourselves, we can produce better educated and more successful (i.e. “productive”) kids than the unbelievers down the street whose kids party away their lives at Worldly U.

-----There is truth to this. I wasted my college years with drinking, drugs, bad attitudes, and general cluelessness. How I wish I could relive those college years now as a head-screwed-on-straight Christian when I could take full advantage of the opportunity offered!

-----But is that the goal of Christ? He died on the cross so we might be better educated and more together than the world? Many parents’ goals for their children are for them to be well educated, have a good career, a godly spouse, nice children, a comfortable retirement, and to be esteemed in their communities. We want them to be “good Christians,” meaning we want them to be respectable. That’s how we measure success. If we parents can accomplish that, with the help of our Christian schools and our church, then we can die happy, sure that we have succeeded in life.

-----I was not raised as a Christian. In fact I despised Christianity because I thought its message was: 1) be nice to everybody; 2) if it’s fun, it’s forbidden, 3) do unto others as you would have them do unto you (at least I got one right!).

-----When I got saved, the glorious story as told in Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed, The thing that amazed me most was that I could meet God for myself through Christ and have a ongoing, personal, supernatural relationship with Him. “How come they never told me about this?” I marveled. In fact I came to call it the “best-kept secret of Christianity.” In studying the Bible, I saw that that was in fact why Christ came and why He died. He wanted the same thing-- an ongoing relationship with us. Sure He wants us to be good students; He wants us to do good works and not mess up. But more than anything He wants to know us and love us and have us know and love Him.

-----Which of these two people would you most approve of? A well respected person with a good job and family who goes to church every Sunday and considers himself a “good Christian man.” Or a homeless person who lives in rags in the river bottoms, who cries out to God about the mess he’s made of his life, who has nothing and has to pray every day for food to eat and shelter from the elements. Which person has our approval? Which person has Christ’s approval? Before you answer, read Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14.

-----If the humble sinner is Jesus’ great prize, why do we make respectability and success by this world’s standards our great prize? Having met Christ for myself, I would rather live in the river bottoms and walk every day with Him than be Warren Buffet and only know about Christ and all the doctrines and theology of the Christian church.

-----If we’re saved “out of the world,” why do we go back and try to beat the world at its own game?