Several
weeks ago I began teaching/preaching a series on the Holy Spirit in everyday
living. I felt impressed by the Lord to explain how the Holy Spirit
participates in our life. It started with knowing that when we are born again
we therefore have the Holy Spirit sent into our heart by the Father. When we
ask Christ to come into our hearts, He does; by way of the Holy Spirit. This is
not the baptism with the Holy Spirit as the series will eventually lead to
explaining what exactly that is. We covered the fruit of the Spirit, those
characteristics of Christ which are imputed to us by Him being in our hearts
and how we learn to allow Him to express Himself through us as opposed to us
trying to express Him to others on our own. Yesterday we began a series within
this series! Knowing that the Holy Spirit dwells within our heart we need to
learn how to let Him lead our thinking and our behavior. One of the ways we do that is to listen to our
heart and not just our mind. We have the power within us to think any thought
we choose. Many of the thoughts we think are not what the Holy Spirit would
have us think. That is why I used the term learn. Following the leading of the
Holy Spirit does not come naturally. The Bible teaches that the natural (hu) man
cannot understand the things (thoughts, teachings) of God as these things must
be spiritually discerned.[1]
The
session yesterday began with understanding what thoughts the natural heart
thinks. You can find those in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 15[2].
That is why the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our hearts instead of our
minds. His thoughts are totally different than those listed in Matthew’s
Gospel. Once we learn the difference between what we naturally think and what
the Holy Spirit thinks and imputes His thoughts to our mind, we will understand
what the Apostle Paul was saying when he taught that we need to have our mind
transformed.[3]
Our
next session coming up will begin dealing with the heart; not the fleshly organ
that pumps blood but that “core” of the human being. Jesus taught that people’s
hearts fall into one of the four categories He described.[4]
Some are soft hearts, hard hearts, distracted hearts, and “half” hearts. The
heart type is directly related to receiving the Holy Spirit into it.
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