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I'm going to read beginning in verse 13.

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For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die.

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But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

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For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.

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For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received

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a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

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The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

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And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we

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suffer with Him, in order that we may also be glorified with Him.

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In your worship folder today, you should have an outline which will lead us through this

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text just so that you don't get worried.

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We're only going to be covering point one today.

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The danger of printing the outline on Monday is that by Saturday you have so much more

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to say.

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And so we'll take point one today and we'll pick it up there later.

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Several days ago I heard about a fellow who died.

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Two of his friends walked by the casket and one of them began snickering.

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The other said, why are you snickering?

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And the other person replied, well, Pat didn't believe in heaven or hell.

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And there he is all dressed up and no place to go.

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Well, of course, that's a bit of a fallacy, isn't it, because it makes no difference

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whether one believes in heaven or hell because all of us are moving in one direction or the

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other.

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In the text that we've been looking at in Romans chapter eight, it tells us that a person

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either is walking according to the flesh or he's walking according to the spirit.

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If he walks according to the flesh, it's because he is in the flesh, which is a Bible phrase

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indicating a person who is unregenerated, who does not know God personally.

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Maybe religious, maybe very sincere, might even be a very moral person, but still in

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the flesh.

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There's nothing supernatural about him.

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On the other hand, there are those who walk according to the spirit and the Bible says

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that these are in the spirit, capital S, and the Holy Spirit is in them, indicating that

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a supernatural birth has taken place.

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They have been born from above or born again, as Peter says it.

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Those who walk according to the flesh are in death and are destined for eternal separation

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from God in a place the Bible calls hell.

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Those who walk according to the spirit are in life and their eternal destination is a

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place the Bible calls heaven.

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Every person is moving in one direction or the other.

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Most of Romans eight is given to instruction for those of us who are walking according

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to the spirit or who are in the spirit, that is, who have been truly saved, who have trusted

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Jesus Christ as Savior.

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As we have seen in verse 12, he reminds us that we are under obligation.

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That obligation is not to the flesh, but it's an obligation to the spirit.

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We will appreciate even more the debt we have to the spirit as we understand the work of

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the spirit in the Christian's life.

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In verse 13, we have the first work that we want to look at, and this is the one we'll

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cover this morning.

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We talked a bit about this last week, but I want to come back over to emphasize again

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the truth that the first work of the spirit is that he empowers the Christian.

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He energizes the Christian.

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He endures with strength the Christian.

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You'll notice that it says, but if by the spirit you are putting to death the deeds

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of the body, you will live.

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The apostle in saying that is giving us an expectation, and that means that those who

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are living in the spirit will be doing what he says here.

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They will, by the spirit, be putting to death the deeds of the body, and thus will live.

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That's a continuous thing.

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It doesn't mean that a Christian cannot fall into sin, because we all know better than

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that.

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We commit isolated acts of sin, but the point is that a Christian is not one who is characterized

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by fulfilling the desires of his flesh.

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He tells us that this obedience of putting to death the deeds of the body is not something

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that we can do in our own strength, our own self-generated power.

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And rather we can only do it, I point out again those three words, by the spirit.

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For the spirit is the one who empowers.

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Whether we talk about witnessing, or we talk about real prayer, or we talk about living

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the Christian life, which is the subject of our text, it is all by the spirit.

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Probably the most complete single passage in the New Testament dealing with this truth

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is found in Galatians chapter 5.

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Would you turn there with me please?

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Galatians chapter 5, beginning in verse 13.

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I'm going to read to the end of the chapter and make some comments along the way, so you

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follow along with me.

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He says, for you were called to freedom, brethren.

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Now what is the theme of Romans chapter 8?

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It's the same isn't it?

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It's our freedom, our liberty in Jesus Christ.

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Freed from the principle of sin so that we don't have to obey it, though we sometimes

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do, and freed from the law with its condemnation.

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Here again he says, you were called to freedom, brethren.

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Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one

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another.

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Now just quickly again, the flesh refers to that sinful tendency in our humanness, that

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unredeemed part of us.

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It's an ethical kind of thing.

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It's more than just the flesh and blood of our physical bodies, but it refers to that

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proneness of our unredeemed humanness to fulfill sins, desires.

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Now he says we should not use our freedom as an opportunity for our flesh to express

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itself.

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But on the other hand we're to serve one another through love.

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He says for the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, you shall love

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your neighbor as yourself.

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Now really that is a capsule of the whole Mosaic law, at least that part of it that

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refers to man and his relationship to man.

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And in a real sense that's what Jesus did on the cross isn't it?

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He was the fulfillment of an act of love when he loved us so completely.

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But he says in verse 15, if you bite and devour one another, take heed lest you be consumed

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by one another.

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And that's just the opposite of love.

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Now in verse 16 he says, but I say walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the

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desire of the flesh.

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And so here again we see those three words, by the spirit.

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Here he doesn't say put to death the deeds of the body, but he says on a positive note,

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walk by the spirit or conduct yourself by the spirit.

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And the result is you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

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I cannot be dominated by the spirit and fulfill the desire of the flesh.

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I cannot be dominated by the flesh and fulfill what the Holy Spirit wants in me.

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He goes on to say the flesh sets its desire against the spirit.

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And the spirit against the flesh.

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And these are in opposition to one another.

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That explains again the struggle that we see within us.

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And Romans 7 dealt with some of that.

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He says, so that you may not do the things that you please, but if you are led by the

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spirit you are not under the law.

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Now the deeds of the flesh are evident.

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First the plural there, the works or the deeds, the expressions of the flesh are evident.

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And he names them, he says, and includes immorality, impurity, sensuality.

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Those are sexual sins.

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The Holy Spirit does not lead to those.

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Rather it is the expression of sin within our bodies.

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It is sin using the appetites, the desires, the drives, the body, that it might pervert

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them for evil.

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Those drives and desires are given by God to us and they and themselves are not wrong.

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But sin, you see, in us seeks to take those good things and to have them expressed in

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evil, sinful ways.

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So he talks here very plainly about immorality and impurity and sensuality.

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He talks about religious sins, idolatry, the worship of idols, giving honor to idols.

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And he talks about sorcery, the worship of witchcraft, of Satanism.

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This is the word in the Greek, pharmakeia, which obviously is the root for pharmacy and

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involves drugs.

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The witchcraft then and still today involves very often the use of drugs or the abuse of

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drugs.

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And he talks about social sins from the flesh, enmities, people hating one another, strife,

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jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, how often churches collapse because

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of these expressions of the flesh, how often families degenerate and friendships fall apart

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because of these works of the flesh.

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And then he talks about personal sins of envying, that's something you can't see, but it's

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very real.

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He talks about drunkenness and carousings and things like these.

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Now what are carousings?

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Well that's a typical Saturday night crowd.

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That's going out in the town.

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Back in those days they would periodically have parades in their cities of the Roman

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Empire in honor of the god Bacchus.

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And involved with that would be a lot of immorality as well as drunkenness.

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And it would seem that Paul has this in mind as he talks about the carousing, the public

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partings with boozing and fornicating and all the rest that goes with that.

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And he says, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice

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such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

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Now he could not be more clear, he could not be more explicit than that.

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The people who practice that way of life, who live that way habitually, will not enter

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the kingdom of God.

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By the way that they live they are evidencing the fact that they are walking according to

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the flesh and they're headed for hell and eternal judgment and punishment.

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But the warning is very, very clear.

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It's possible for a Christian to have these expressions of the flesh evident in his own

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life.

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Not that he will practice them habitually for the rest of his life, but it's possible

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for him in isolated cases to allow the flesh to dominate him so that he will fulfill the

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desires of the flesh and even these things and things like them will be seen.

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Maybe that's where you are today.

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I don't know.

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God knows, you know.

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In contrast to that though, in verse 22 he talks about the fruit of the Spirit.

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Singular, it's not something we produce, it's the fruit of the Spirit.

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When he dominates, when he's in control, when we walk by the Spirit, here is what is produced

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in the life.

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Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

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Nine wonderful characteristics which really describe the very life of Jesus himself.

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If you go back to the Gospels you will find these characteristics over and over again

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illustrated in the way that he lived.

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He was perfectly empowered by the Spirit.

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There was no sin in him.

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Consequently, these expressions of the Spirit were very evident all the time.

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The Apostle says fruit here in the singular in the sense of a cluster of grapes, for example.

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Each of these are individual characteristics and yet they come together like a cluster.

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We cannot say, well I have love and I guess I have some faithfulness and maybe some gentleness

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but I don't have the rest of it.

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As you see they all come together and it's not that they're all going to be perfectly

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expressed all the time but they all come together when the Holy Spirit is in control.

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And he says against such things there is no law.

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Of course there isn't.

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There doesn't need to be.

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He says now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions

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and desires.

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More thought to Romans 6 where it talks about our dying with Christ, being put to death

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with Christ, except that that's passive and this is active.

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Here it's something that we have done.

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That's interesting isn't it?

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This is the other side of the coin.

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It's true that we are identified with Christ in his death and yet it says here that we

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have crucified the flesh.

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Actually the word that would describe what verse 24 is talking about is repentance.

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For when we come to Jesus Christ in faith it must involve a genuine changing of the

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mind.

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Whereas up to that point I loved my sin and I would not have anyone tell me how to live.

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And that those things I was doing were wrong.

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At that point I changed my mind and I realized that those things were sin.

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That God says they were wrong.

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And instead of looking at God like a bully trying to control my life and tell me what

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to do.

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At that point I gladly gave my heart to him and loved him.

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So it's a complete change of the mind.

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And here he tells me that when I came to that point of repentance I crucified the flesh.

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I nailed the flesh to the cross.

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A very graphic picture isn't it?

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Crucifixion.

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He says I took that sinful tendency, that humaness about me and I nailed it to the cross.

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I crucified it with its passions and desires.

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Notice he does not say that I must every day crucify the flesh.

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There are people who teach that.

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What we need to do is to keep crucifying the flesh every day.

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Crucify the flesh.

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He says we have crucified the flesh.

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Now what I need to keep doing is going back to that and claiming it to be true.

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I don't have to keep doing it all the time but I do have to look back to that cross and

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reckon it so each day.

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He says in verse 25 again, if we live by the Spirit let us also walk by the Spirit.

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The Holy Spirit is the one who made us alive in Jesus Christ through regeneration.

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And now he is the one who enables us to live, to walk, to conduct ourselves to the honor

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of Christ.

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Now how can we experience this walk by the Spirit?

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First we need to see that the very word walk has built into it the concept of dependence.

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I've talked about that before.

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I want to reiterate it, repeat it, to underscore the truthfulness of it.

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When you and I walk physically what we are doing is actually throwing ourselves off balance

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and then catching ourselves in a coordinated fashion usually.

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And in doing that we make progress by throwing our weight in a particular way and then stepping

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out and catching ourselves before we fall on our faces.

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And so when I walk by the Spirit what I am doing is throwing myself on the Holy Spirit,

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allowing him as it were to catch me.

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I am depending, relying upon him.

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I place my weight upon him and in doing that I make spiritual progress.

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Now let's tack this down with some specific thoughts.

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Number one, if I want to walk by the Spirit I must practice spiritual breathing.

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That is not a new concept with me nor is it new with Campus Crusade who uses it a great

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deal.

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It's a concept that's pretty old.

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When you and I breathe physically we exhale stale air with carbon dioxide in it and we

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inhale fresh air unless we live in Chicago or Los Angeles or somewhere.

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But we take in fresh oxygen is the point so that we can sustain our lives.

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So we exhale and inhale.

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We don't have to learn to do that.

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We don't have to go through exercises so we learn to exhale and learn to inhale.

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It's something that comes very naturally to us isn't it?

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In our walk by the Spirit spiritual breathing needs to come naturally and that will happen

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in time but in the spiritual realm we do have to practice it.

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That's the difference.

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Now what do I mean by spiritual breathing?

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In the first place I'm relating exhaling to confession.

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Confession of sin.

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When I am aware that there's a disobedience in my life that quenches or grieves the Holy

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Spirit I exhale by confessing my sin.

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First John 1, 9.

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I bring that before God and agree with him that what I've done is wrong.

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And then I have his forgiveness don't I?

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He's just, he's faithful, he will always forgive and cleanse us when we just bring it up and

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own up to what we've done.

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By inhaling I'm referring to appropriating the power of the Holy Spirit afresh.

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Ephesians 5, 18 says be ye being filled by the Holy Spirit.

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In other words I'm constantly to be experiencing that.

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It's to be over and over again that I experience the filling, the empowering of the Spirit.

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Ephesians 5, 18 confuses some people because they see filling being like this glass of

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water I've got.

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Pretty good.

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Except it's lukewarm.

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Some people see the filling of the Holy Spirit like a pitcher and if you pour water into

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a glass it'll overflow and that's not the meaning in Ephesians 5, 18.

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A better illustration of it would be a sail on a sailboat.

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So when the wind hits it the sail billows and it's empowered in that sense and it's

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pushed along on the water.

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And so when I inhale what I'm doing is allowing the Holy Spirit to release his power in me

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as it were to blow upon my life so that I as a vessel then am empowered and taken along

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on my journey for the rest of that day.

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Do you understand what I mean?

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I hope that's simple enough that we exhale, we inhale.

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And we need to learn to do that every time that we're aware of sin.

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You say well that'd be a hundred times a day.

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Well sometimes it seems that way.

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It does.

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But you know as we begin to walk in the Spirit we fulfill the lust of the flesh less so that

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it won't be a hundred times maybe next week.

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Next month it may be twenty-five.

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I don't know what it'll be.

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But just learn to get in that practice of spiritual breathing.

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Number two, if you're going to walk by the Spirit you need to be in the Word.

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You see we cannot separate the Holy Spirit from the Word of God.

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Now they're not the same thing.

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Don't misunderstand me.

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But the two work together.

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Ephesians 5.18.

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Turn over there a minute.

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I just forwarded the verse to you.

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But I want you to look at the following couple of verses.

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He says, do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation.

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That's waste.

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But be filled with the Spirit.

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Be empowered by the Spirit.

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Sing to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

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Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

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Giving thanks, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

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to God even the Father.

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In verses 19 and 20 we have the results of the filling of the Holy Spirit.

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Now turn over to Colossians for just a moment.

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I'm going to show you something that probably most of you know already.

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Colossians is a parallel book to Ephesians isn't it?

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They're sometimes called the Twin Epistles.

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Many similar thoughts.

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In Colossians chapter 3, in verse 16 it says, let the Word of Christ richly dwell within

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you.

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And what's the result of that?

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With all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with hymns, with psalms and hymns

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and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God in whatever you do in

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word or deed.

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Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father.

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See how similar that is to Ephesians 5?

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The point is this, that if we're going to know the reality of the walk by the Spirit

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and the kind of life that's described here, we cannot separate the Word of God from it.

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Being filled with the Word is not the same as being filled with the Spirit.

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One can be filled with the Spirit to some degree without being filled with the Word.

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But the point is that we dare not separate the two of them if we want to have a lot of

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maturity and growth in our lives.

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The Holy Spirit inspired this book to be written.

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It's called The Sword of the Spirit, Ephesians 6, 17.

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And so if I am not in the Word of God, really I'm in disobedience, aren't I?

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And thus the Holy Spirit is grieved.

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I need to be in the Word.

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Are you in the Word?

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Are you spending quality time in the Word of God, allowing it to soak into your mind

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and your heart?

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A third practical step I want to suggest is to exercise prayer in the Spirit.

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Again, Ephesians chapter 6, where in verse 18 it tells us that we are to be praying at

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all times with prayer in the Spirit.

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Literally, with all prayer and petitions, pray at all times in the Spirit.

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What does it mean to pray in the Spirit?

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Does that mean to have a certain emotional experience?

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Does that mean to pray in tongues?

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What does it mean to pray in the Spirit?

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Well, it does not involve emotions and it does not involve tongues.

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We start out there.

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What it does mean is that when I pray, I need to depend upon the Holy Spirit to lead me

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in my praying so that I don't get down with my prayer list, which is rather lengthy perhaps,

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and ritualistic and cold and just rattle off a lot of names.

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But I allow the Holy Spirit to lead me in my praying.

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That morning I may pray for one name on that list, but God will show me really how to pray

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for that person, will give me insight to it.

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It means in phrasing my request, I allow the Holy Spirit to show me how I should pray for

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that person, for that need.

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Then in offering praise to God, I allow the Holy Spirit to lay on my heart those things

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for which I should praise God and worship Him.

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As Skip led us this morning in our personal meditation time, he said that we should worship

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the Lord for those characteristics or attributes that would come to our minds.

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What the Holy Spirit does bring to our minds, certain characteristics of God that we should

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praise Him for, perhaps His faithfulness or His justice or His love or mercy or whatever.

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But when we pray, folks, we need to pray in the Spirit.

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I fear that many of us know how to say prayers without praying in the Spirit.

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I judge myself for that.

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I want to learn what it means to pray with the Spirit energizing me.

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And so if I'm going to know what it is to walk by the Spirit, if I'm going to know what

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it is to be energized, to be empowered by the Spirit, it involves spiritual breathing,

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being in the Word of God, and praying in the Spirit.

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Now if you work on these three specific steps, you're going to find that the flesh life will

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have less authority in your life.

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The flesh will not be able to dominate you so easily as it perhaps does now.

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The flesh will not be able to demand and insist from you that you follow a certain course

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of action, but rather because you are growing, maturing, and walking by the Spirit, you will

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be able to put to death the deeds of the body.

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It doesn't mean temptation won't be there, it will be, but it means that it will not have

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its allurement and that you will not find within you that tendency to respond so much

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as perhaps you do today.

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Now I want to emphasize the balance again that says back in Romans chapter 8, if you

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by the Spirit, you by the Spirit are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

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It's not all the Holy Spirit, it's not all me, it's me by the Spirit who does it.

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An illustration of this perhaps would be power steering.

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I'm glad I have that on my car.

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Power steering means that when I put pressure on the steering wheel in a certain direction,

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that pressure is immediately multiplied by the power of the automobile itself so that

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the turning is with ease.

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I have to initiate it and then the automobile picks up and empowers that turn.

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Some pressure is essential or nothing will happen, but the moment that I in my will say

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I will do this and turn, there's power there so that that car is turned.

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Do you see how that applies spiritually?

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I make the decision, I choose to obey, I choose to put to death that temptation, I choose

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to witness to that person, I make the decision I will do it, but once that decision is made,

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the Holy Spirit then empowers and enables.

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That's how the two work together.

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Now may God help us to put that into practice in our life this week.

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My Father, thank you for this truth.

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I pray that we will not just be hearers of the word but doers of it and thus be wise.

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Lord, all of us want a better handle on what it means to walk by the Spirit, to know the

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empowering of the Spirit.

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So I pray that we'll be learning more about it even this week.

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Teach us.

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Make it practical, Lord.

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We're very simple people and we need instruction of the Spirit in a simple way that we can

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get our hands on it.

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And I pray that there's someone here who doesn't know Christ who's in the flesh, that that

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one would trust him today.

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And may all of us who know the Savior be living for him and thus living by the Spirit we also

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be walking by the Spirit.

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In Jesus' name, Amen.