One evening the Lord reminded me of the basic concepts of life that allow for the move of the Holy Spirit in man. Have you ever wondered why you seem to be ‘doing’ so much, yet still aren’t seeing any progress in your pursuit of God? Well here are a few things that the Holy Spirit brought to my attention as potential hindrances. First let’s start with scripture.
John 14: 26 ‘But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.’
John 16: 13 ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own authority but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come’.
Anything that hinders the Holy Spirit in you will hinder everything else He came to do in you. That is why if you are truly seeking Him, you can't afford to live for your own pleasure; you must be careful how you live. The Holy Spirit inside of you has an assignment, and you can determine the extent to which this assignment is fulfilled in your life by how you choose to live. So here are the four concepts to reflect on and to consider:
Be Set Apart
Obedience
Love
Knowledge
Once you are set apart it means you are for Him alone. Once you are obedient, you work with Him and so there can be a physical manifestation of His promises as well as what He already has in store for you. When you love Him, you desire His will to be done and so you do it. When you know Him, you are able to trust, understand and apply this knowledge in life and fully allow Him to express Himself through you.
This makes sense right? Maybe to an extent you may feel that these are things you are actively ‘doing’. Sometimes, if we are being truly honest with ourselves, this is exactly is where the challenge lies. God is not interested in your ‘acts’ if they aren’t flowing from a faith filled heart that seeks to honour Him.
I asked the Holy Spirit more about this. (Disclaimer - if you do not understand something, simply ask the Holy Spirit to explain it to you. Prayerfully wait on His answer, and be quiet enough to listen to His response.)
Q: What causes you to be hindered in these areas?
Set Apart
Obedience
Love
Knowledge
A: How you think about these things is what hinders you.
Since these are concepts, they must be explained and understood before you can apply them in your life. Stay with me, set aside how you’ve always thought of these four concepts and if you will, I encourage you to take on the following explanations and sit with the Holy Spirit for more insight on this.
#Set apart: being put aside for God, for His special purpose.
This world will always make you feel like you are ‘missing in action’ as a child of God. The devil also highlights the feeling of isolation or loneliness for the one who chooses to be set apart unto God. The bible tells us not to be ignorant of the devil’s devices (2 Corinthians 2:11). Now if we are aware of this, then being set apart becomes an intentional decision that we make in spite of the backlash we may get from this. We still decide to be sold out for God in every part of life, and that is how we give Him glory, through a life intentionally kept for Him. When you make that decision to belong to God alone, you become a person God can trust with certain matters.
#Obedience: simply doing what God says, as evidence of your submission to His authority.
The devil makes you believe that obedience is something that robs you of your freedom, when in actual fact it is a willing choice that you make as a display of love.
Disclaimer: you are a child of God, the most special being in all of creation! God doesn’t desire you to be His slave! He wants you to love Him, and obey Him as an act of reverential service to the One who loves your soul, the One whom you love!
We obey God because He is our Father, who loves us and who has shared this same love into us. The response of your love for Him is to honour Him, in respect and reverence and to therefore do His bidding and His will. (John 14:21 - ‘Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Your obedience to God tells of your love for Him. When you love someone you willingly submit yourself to serve them, in one way or the other. You want them to know that you love them, and so you don’t do the things they dislike, rather you focus on showing your love for them by doing what they like. It is the same thing with our obedience to God; it is an expression of our love for Him.
#Love - Patient and kind, does not envy or boast; is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-9
The enemy will have you believe that love is something you feel. In fact He bombards the world with a sensual deception of love, and so you think that if you don’t feel love for God then you don’t love Him. Actually, the love God pours into us has nothing to do with how you feel, it is love that is based on a choice and a commitment, you choosing to love Him.
Choosing to love God can look like so many things, in different seasons of your life. It is usually always centered around doing His will and seeking His Kingdom. In some seasons we love God by choosing to trust in Him, living for Him no matter how hard it feels, and obeying His word, despite the storms of life.
Our love for God is not something we do by focusing on ourselves or our ability to love Him. Instead we love Him when we receive His love poured out for us in many ways. Once we understand and believe that He loved us first, we come to a place where our love for Him is simply a return of His love for us. 1 John 4:19 ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’
#Knowledge - Information
Knowing about God and knowing God are two different things. The devil can bring you to a place to ‘know’ so much about God that this replaces your intimacy with God. You may feel that because you know a lot about God, you automatically know Him. Not so.
The knowledge of God is too great for us to comprehend, and is based solely on the unveiling of our eyes by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that truly reveals God to us, therefore our intimacy with the Holy Spirit is what determines our knowing of who God is. The bible tells us about the character of God, His works and His statutes, however it is the Spirit of God that gives us the experiential knowledge of who God is. This is a knowledge that has to be taught by the Holy Spirit. So you may read that God provided a ram for Abraham in the bible, but it takes the Holy Spirit to reveal God to you in your life as a provider for you to experientially know Him in this way. It is the experiences that God brings our way that shape our knowledge of Him, if we yield to His Spirit.
Knowing God is also not something you do in one moment, no, knowing God means knowing Him in the good times and the bad times, coming to know His character, His mind and His desire for every situation you find yourself in. The study of the word of God is the beginning, Jesus says it this way ‘You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life’ - John 5:39-40.
It is very possible to be a student of the word of God, yet lack intimacy with Him. It is in the place of prayer and meditation coupled with the word of God where you develop in your intimacy with God.
Summary:
These are some of the basics required for life according to what the Holy Spirit has taught me.
Take a moment to reflect
What can you do today to ensure that you are set apart for God, how you live, speak, react, think, the things you feed yourself with?
What do you need to obey God in as an act of reverential submission and honour to your Father?
How have you chosen to love God this past week, in fact today?
What has God recently been telling you about who He is, and have you spent some time with Him this week?
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