After one of my sermons last year, I got blasted by a visitor who was telling me I was preaching all wrong.  He told me that only the Spirit changes people and by me reading scripture that tells people to do stuff, I was off base.  I had just preached and was not in the mood to discuss  it so I let it go.  But my brain never really lets things go, so I pondered, and pondered what he meant, and I believe he was in some ways right, but mostly wrong.  Yes it’s true that when you get saved God does some immediate sanctification, but if He was responsible for all the changes, then we’re really just robots in some giant chess game.  We would say “I’m ok with murdering people, because the Spirit hasn’t changed me from that yet.”  That’s just foolishness.    So I’ve been pondering deeply lately what is the role of the Spirit and what is my role for changes in my life.  Here’s what I came what I believe: 

I believe that the Spirit of God initiates a work, or a change, and that it’s your job to respond to the initiated work.  I heard a great analogy the other day.  It’s like a person riding a bike, where the movement of the bike illustrates your spiritual growth.  If the bike is moving fast this would represent your spiritual growth being very fast.  In this picture the Holy Spirit is controlling the left leg and the person is controlling the right leg.  The Holy Spirit initiates a work by pushing the pedal down, and your pedal goes up for you to push down on.  Now, if you don’t respond you go forward a little bit but then stop in your spiritual walk.  However, if you respond, it’s like you pushing the pedal down and it’s the Holy Spirits turn again and He always pushes right away.  So if you respond to the Holy Spirit’s initiation, then you can have very rapid growth in your spiritual walk.

But this is where people screw it up.  The Holy Spirit says “read your bible,”  and you say “I’m too busy” and then the Holy Spirit says “fine, I’m not initiating a work again until you respond.”  And wam!  Your spiritual growth is stalled and you live a life different from what God has for you, and it’s not victorious.  The Holy Spirit frequently does this with sin in people’s lives – he says stop doing XYZ sin and you need to respond or He won’t act again and you also may come under God’s discipline.  God once told me to take a Sabbath day off each week.  I half-heartedly obeyed.  I like to take a day of rest on Sundays, and one week I decided I had to mow my lawn one Sunday afternoon after church.  I got started and things went OK for about 5 minutes, then I pushed the mower and my back went out and I was literally and fittingly brought to my knees in agonizing pain.   I was floored for the rest of the day and could barely walk for the next week.  I learned a lesson from God that day.  When the Holy Spirit acts, we need to respond.  If we don’t respond we may get stalled in our Christian walk.  When this happens we can’t beg God to move in certain areas of our lives, we need to obey and follow God’s plan which He initiates through the Holy Spirit.

Let’s move on, verse 9:

9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

This is the good news for those who know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Even though we are going to die, our spirit is alive with God for eternity because of Christ’s Righteousness.  Verse 11 – And we will have life in our mortal bodies as well – and this doesn’t refer to our mortal bodies living forever.  This refers to us being alive in Christ, Jesus said – I came so that they may have life and have it to the full.  Christ came so we may have a victorious life in this world and after we die.  This is great news!  But here’s also where we get off track again.  What does it look like to have a full life?  Our Lord and Savior, was homeless and poor, he was a common man, a carpenter in fact.  He was abused, betrayed and crucified.  I can hear y’all now going great, I wonder if I can sneak out without anyone seeing me.  But the point of me saying this is we have to think about the way God thinks about “living life to the full.” 

Please hear me right here – I’m not saying that nice cars, and big houses are bad.  What I’m trying to say is that God just sees things differently than we do and I’d argue that living by the Spirit will bring way more peace and joy than living for things in this world.  I was reading Ecclesiastes the other day and it says in verse 6:2 2 God gives a man wealth, possessions and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them, and a stranger enjoys them instead.  and then it says in verse 3:13 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God.

Is it possible that God controls happiness!  And do we tend to instead or pursuing God – we pursue the good things of good.  I would argue that pursuing God will result in Happiness and not the vice versa.  And how do we do this – by loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and living by the Spirit of God.  We may end up with nice things in this life, but we got them by pursuing God and not pursuing  nice things.