| Unleashing The Dominion Power Of The Holy Spirit Part III |
Pastor Steve Holt
|
Mountain Springs Church
|
| Download Notes |
Listen to Sermon --> |
|
| 07/29/2007 |
Unleashing the Dominion Power of the Holy Spirit III
A Violent Battle is Being Fought
Romans 7 tells us that there is this “law” in our members — “law” means a principle working inside us: Evil is working in your body trying to take you down.
- Paul loves God’s Word and he passionately loves God but he says there is this principle within him that is waging a war, a principle that is pulling him away from God.
- Vs. 23 This principle is warring against Paul’s desire to do the right thing and follow God wholeheartedly.
- Paul loves God’s Word and God’s ways but there is this principle working in his body, soul, spirit, mind, emotion and will that is warring against his mind! It is bringing him into captivity!
- This violent war is between the fleshly man, the outer man, and the spirit man that now has the Holy Spirit living within.
- This violent war is defining your life: your relationships, your job, your mind.
- In Vs. 24 he asks, “Who will deliver me from this battle?”
- We all understand this dilemma.
- Vs. 25 JESUS CHRIST…But it is not an automatic deliverance. It is present tense experience with Jesus Christ:
- We must daily encounter Jesus Christ and his active presence.
- You don’t have this experience just because you’re saved: You have to engage Jesus through the Spirit in the inner man daily.
- You have to encounter the active Holy Spirit in your life everyday.
- Ex. You can have someone pray for you, you can have a great experience with the Spirit of God, but the battle is not going to go away.
- We can have victory and dominion in the war, but only to the extent that we have a present tense communion with the Holy Spirit.
- We must experience the active presence and power of the Holy Spirit if we want the promised freedom.
- It must be a deliberate interaction with the Spirit everyday!
The Aerodynamic Power of the Spirit
Galatians 5:1, 13, 16
- God wants us walking in the freedom of the Spirit.
- Vs. 16 is a command with a promise.
- The command is that we are to walk in the Spirit, and the promise is that if we do, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
- Walk in the Spirit! It is not enough to just have the Holy Spirit; you must walk in the Spirit.
- Too many of us overly focus on the “denying of the flesh” and not enough on walking and engaging the Spirit.
- That is the wrong emphasis…I’m not going to talk about the lusts of the flesh today…I’m going to talk about walking in the Spirit.
- If you learn to walk in the Spirit you will have dominion over your life, your job, your problems…
Galatians 5:17
- There is a violent battle going on between the flesh and the Spirit.
- This is truly a violent war of enormous magnitude!
- The flesh is constantly warring against the Holy Spirit’s work in your life.
- As a matter of fact, the war did not cease when you got saved, it actually started when you got saved! The flesh hates the Spirit and is violently attacking the relationship you have with the Spirit.
- Just because you are saved doesn’t mean that you have any power over the enemy: you have to choose daily to engage the Spirit in your life.
- It is a war! It is a violent clash of powers!
- Ex. I watched the Air Force F-16’s fly over during the Memorial Day practices at the Air Force Academy…Like an airplane or jet that uses aerodynamics to get up in the air, the greater principle, aerodynamics, is more powerful than gravity.
o There is a greater power at work: Aerodynamics is a greater power than gravity.
o But, if you cut the engine off you will see the power of gravity.
o The law of gravity is not going to cease just because we get into the plane, or get saved, but you have to turn on the engine of the plane.
o The greater principle of power: The aerodynamics do not work if there is not a pilot in the plane who knows how to fly.
o Listen: The gravity will not go away!
o But if you get up in the plane you will overcome the power of gravity!
5 Kinds of Pilots of the Aerodynamics of the Spirit
- Some of you aren’t in the pilot’s seat yet because you’ve never given your heart to Christ.
- Some of you are sitting in the seat of the F-16 of the Spirit but you just don’t know how to fly yet.
- Some of you are sitting in the pilot’s seat but you are fearful; yes, you are fearful because of the power you are sitting on.
- Some of you are damaged from past flying, you got shot down, and you’ve lost confidence and don’t know if you can fly again.
- You are flying and most of you are here today because you are ready to fight! You are a fighter pilot of the Spirit, but the fuel is running low.
If you fly, you will run on fuel! It is natural in a jet, and it is natural in the Spirit filled life too.
A Vibrant Relationship with the Spirit
- If you don’t go after the Holy Spirit in your life through a daily experience of the present power of God, you will lose altitude and the principle of gravity will take over.
- Ex. So many people kind of say: “Hey, this plane is really doing well. It’s flown well now for years. Why don’t we just cut the engine and coast for a while?” You are headed for a crash if you do that!
- You must have an interaction with the Spirit right now, today, or you will lose altitude.
- The Greatest Culprit: not Satan, demons, or the values of this world…guess what it is?
- Busyness! We get so busy we run low on fuel:
- The pilot cannot get so busy that he runs out of fuel, and so many believers get so busy that they forget to keep that engine on.
- We run out of fuel because we forget to fill up.
- We can coast for awhile, and we don’t even know it, but the gravity is pulling us earthward.
1 John 4:4
…greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.
- Yes, the higher stronger principle of the Spirit is more powerful than anything the world can send your way, but you must have a vibrant relationship with the Spirit.
- Having a vital relationship with Christ is the only way this works…if you don’t, the spirit of this age will get the upper hand and win over you.
Managing the Crash
- We focus entirely too much on managing the crash and all the things that can cause us to crash: fleshly sins, fleshly desires, but it is way more important to focus on cultivating our relationship with the Spirit in the inner man.
- We must cultivate a vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit in our inner man.
- Too much energy is put on concentrating on the sin, managing the crash. We focus on all the big things: I will not get drunk, I will not sleep around.
- Or we waste too much energy on managing the crash, and Bible verses to use if we crash.
- But the most effective way is to cultivate the Spirit’s relationship in the inner man. The rule of your life is that the Spirit, the higher power, the higher principle, is maintained.
- The main focus is to maintain a dynamic interactive relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Diamond of Dominion: Focus on 3 Verbs in Galatians 5
- If you will listen and put into practice these 3 verbs, you can have dominion in your thinking, your relationships, and your job!
- Vs. 16 “Walk in the Spirit”
- Vs. 18 “Led by the Spirit”
- Vs. 25 “Live in the Spirit”
- 3 facets of the same thing: like a diamond. The diamond of victory comes from doing these three things.
- This is the diamond that will bring us victory, dominion in our lives
- Victory and dominion over addictions to drugs, eating disorders, gluttony, not just sexual…we can overcome all of this.
- These are the laws of gravity that are warring against us.
- The law of the Spirit is a higher power than the law of the flesh.
- This higher law is working but so many don’t initiate it by cultivating a relationship with the Spirit.
- Vs. 19-23 are the values of the flesh and the values of the Spirit.
1) Vs. 16-17 Walk in the Spirit
- There are fleshly, emotional areas that are just as powerful, if not more so: bitterness and pride are just as powerful and just as deadly to our spiritual lives as sexual issues and gluttony.
- But if you walk in the Spirit, the lusts of the flesh will not have dominion over you.
- The opposite is also true: If you don’t walk in the Spirit, you will carry out the lusts of the flesh.
- It is a violent war going on!
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
- It is a “walk” not a run! It will take time: little impartations of the Spirit in your inner man.
- These are the behavior choices: Saying no to the things that grieve the Spirit and yes to those things that cultivate our relationship with the Spirit.
- This is daily…”walk” is the command in the present tense.
- Ruth Bell Graham said, about being married to Billy: “The hardest part is that it is so daily.”
- Daily putting Christ on the throne of our hearts over: what we say, what we look at, what we do…
- You must have communion with the Spirit throughout the day by talking with the Lord.
- I will share more on this in a moment.
2) Vs. 18 We must be Led by the Spirit
- The Spirit’s agenda is to lead us into freedom and liberty over the flesh; to empower us to overcome the works of the flesh.
- The Holy Spirit, God, wants leadership over your life!
- If the Holy Spirit is leading you, you can have dominion in the battlegrounds of a man’s life.
- We must learn to be led by the Spirit, dial it down inside and listen to the Spirit’s promptings.
- That is not the issue in our lives; it is about the promptings of the Holy Spirit more often telling me what not to do—warnings from the Spirit.
- It is the small matters of our life that really matter: how you speak to someone, how you treat a relationship, not the big matters, those will take care of themselves if you follow the Spirit’s leading in the little things.
- Being led by the Spirit means to come under the leadership of the Spirit in our daily lives.
- We learn to calm down and listen and become aware of the Spirit’s voice.
- Our spirit is injured in little portions and our human spirit loses vitality when we ignore the Spirit’s leadership.
- We honor the Spirit’s leadership instead of ignoring it through the little things of our lives: Not just “I’m not going to get drunk tonight”, the big events. If that is the only time then you will succumb to your fleshly desires. But it is the little decisions, the little things that then take care of the big things.
- When we don’t listen to the Spirit in the little things, we become vulnerable to the prey of the big things!
- Blow up with angry outbursts
- Sexual sins
- Pride and defensiveness
- We cultivate the Spirit’s leadership by what we say, what we look at, how much time we give to feed our spirit.
- The Holy Spirit wants leadership over our time; He wants to feed our spirit!
- It is not about the big things: I won’t commit adultery, smoke dope, etc.
- We overcome the flesh by putting our spirit under the Holy Spirit’s leadership.
- LISTEN: If you don’t have a daily relationship with the Spirit, if you have a minimal relationship with the Spirit, you will lust in the flesh!
- The Holy Spirit is not giving us options: He is God, He is commanding us! He is to be obeyed! We need a revelation of the Spirit…He is God, not just some good idea!
3) Vs. 25 Living by the Spirit
- This is the Diamond of Dominion: We must have the leadership of the Spirit, be walking in the Spirit, and live in the Spirit if we are going to have dominion over the flesh.
John 1:4-5
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
- Feed on the light, and the darkness will flee.
- Ex. A person is in a dark room and tries to pour the dark out with a bucket. But another guy just turns on the light…it is far more important to work on turning on the light than trying to get the darkness out. The light will get the darkness out!
- We are not to live in a quenched spirit: if we do, we are ignoring His leadership and starving our spirit.
This sermon was produced at Mountain Springs Church in Colorado Springs, with Senior Pastor Steve Holt. www.mountainsprings.org
|
Email This Page