How to Walk by the Spirit (Part One)

I’ve lived through the life of an actor and musician – my son. When they’re rehearsing their life gets absorbed by the play. They’ve formed a team and are completely focused on what the director leads them into. They live, eat, sleep and constantly talk about the play. That is how the early church was. They lived, ate, slept and constantly talked about the wonders of God. So what are the critical requirements for walking by the Spirit?

To know what the director wants, the cast should know the play. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16).  For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).” Walking by the Spirit involves being absorbed by the Word of God (the Bible). The more you read the Bible, the more its contents settle in your mind. If the mind is filled with Word, the Holy Spirit has something to work with. Whenever He needs scripture for you to share with someone, be it for teaching, rebuking, correction or for training in righteousness, He’ll lift out from your memory what He needs and lay it on your tongue or thoughts. The Bible is meant for bringing about change. The Holy Spirit uses this Sword to delve deep into a person’s being and to work on attitudes, feelings, ideas and motives as can be seen in the passages above. Walking in the Spirit therefore means knowing the Word.

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).” This is the greatest commandment, Jesus said. The words used mostly in this sentence are the words “all your” – ALL. Jesus could have listed these four things in a row, with only one “all your”, but He wanted to make a point. Walking in the Spirit doesn’t have room for divided love and a thousand other gods. If we want to experience the Lord in all His glory, we need to get rid of those carnal things that share our love for the Lord. If you love someone, your mind is on that person most of the time, isn’t it? Our heart connects with the spiritual, our soul with the emotional and the will, our mind with the intellectual and our strength with actions and activities. The Lord must engulf all these areas. We must experience, feel, want, think and do the Lord.

Am I talking fantasy here? Is this science fiction – the impossible? To Jesus and the apostles it was reality, but it was a sacrifice. If it wasn’t meant to be for us, why then was it written in the Bible? The world is in a state, dear reader. Evil is thriving and if you don’t believe me, just surf the Internet. I’ve stumbled onto the most horrific things people do. Satan openly promotes spiritual slavery and people are proud to be his slaves. The only people that can make a change to this are the Christians and what do the Christians do? Look at the church and answer the question for yourself.

Tomorrow we’ll continue.

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