I know I’m free but how do I walk with my freedom?
Colossians 2:20-23 NLT
In summary, we can’t earn our salvation it is Christ + NOTHING.
We are coming to a time when our ability to walk in freedom is even more relevant than ever before.
I want to try and address how we walk in the freedom Jesus has won for us on the cross with grace and humility.
Ok you say now I have spiritual freedom, do I have to obey all these laws given by the government etc? Yes
This passage of scripture is telling us that we don’t have to follow man made rules to be spiritually in touch with Jesus.
Here’s an example: Someone says to you “the right way to pray is using this book, I find it brings me closer to Jesus”.
Now that is helpful, it might be helpful to you but if you don’t do it or you forget to pray according to that book, do you feel condemned or defeated?
It’s easy to say “of course not” but sometimes these things find a crack in our armour and wound.
Don’t give it the elbow of greeting, elbow it out.
In the end please don’t take a lifetime coming to this conclusion, it is about your relationship with Jesus. Read your bible, study it with others, pray but make sure you wait to hear from Him in that still small voice and be filled with the Spirit.
Walking by the Spirit is not always easy. It is not a perfect science, it requires faith and patience but worth it for eternity. Surround yourself with others who can encourage you to develop and speak into your relationship with God.
This is perhaps one of my recurring themes in my teaching and I hope you will find it help if provocative.
Be filled. Filled to over flowing. Continually overflowing.
The Friday morning prayer group prayed for the four elders being loaded with the Spirit. That image developed in my mind and I felt the Holy Spirit remind me of a programme about painting. What I learnt was that sometimes you have to load the paint brush with paint. The same goes when decorating. You have to dip the brush in the paint but not scrape it off the brush on the side of the paint tin. Tip it in and tap it on the side, keep doing this and it builds up a reservoir of paint in the bristles of the brush.
To make up various Colours, you have to mix different colours together. I felt the Holy Spirit tell me that the fruit of the Spirit is like the different colours.
Galatians 5:22-25 NLT
This matches up with the argument in Colossians.
So be filled.
Just to spell it out, we are like the paint brush. Load yourself up with the spirit of God. The fruit of the spirit will come out.
Sometimes we are in a situation where we are under immense pressure, we might need patience and gentleness at another time we might find a friend in distress and we will need kindness and gentleness.
We will be encouraging you all to load your brush with the spirit of God now that we can start to mingle and pray for each other.
We need to be filled again, it has not been easy other the last 16 months. You need to reload, be refilled be filled for the first time in the spirit. Be hungry, be expectant be open to the Spirit there is no law against Him and you being filled.
Questions
Being filled with the spirit is such a joy and available for us all. It’s not a badge of honour but something we should all encourage each other in. In times such as we have been through for the last 16 months we have had few opportunities to pray for each other.
1 Do you feel full of the spirit?
2 How do you engage with the Holy Spirit to be filled. (We are all different but we all need Him to fill us.)
3 I used a paint brush analogy but did you understand my point?
4 Discuss the fruit of the spirit and how each gift is like a colour that makes up who we are and how we react in circumstances.
I know I’m free but how do I walk with my freedom?
Colossians 2:20-23 NLT
In summary, we can’t earn our salvation it is Christ + NOTHING.
We are coming to a time when our ability to walk in freedom is even more relevant than ever before.
I want to try and address how we walk in the freedom Jesus has won for us on the cross with grace and humility.
Ok you say now I have spiritual freedom, do I have to obey all these laws given by the government etc? Yes
This passage of scripture is telling us that we don’t have to follow man made rules to be spiritually in touch with Jesus.
Here’s an example: Someone says to you “the right way to pray is using this book, I find it brings me closer to Jesus”.
Now that is helpful, it might be helpful to you but if you don’t do it or you forget to pray according to that book, do you feel condemned or defeated?
It’s easy to say “of course not” but sometimes these things find a crack in our armour and wound.
Don’t give it the elbow of greeting, elbow it out.
In the end please don’t take a lifetime coming to this conclusion, it is about your relationship with Jesus. Read your bible, study it with others, pray but make sure you wait to hear from Him in that still small voice and be filled with the Spirit.
Walking by the Spirit is not always easy. It is not a perfect science, it requires faith and patience but worth it for eternity. Surround yourself with others who can encourage you to develop and speak into your relationship with God.
This is perhaps one of my recurring themes in my teaching and I hope you will find it help if provocative.
Be filled. Filled to over flowing. Continually overflowing.
The Friday morning prayer group prayed for the four elders being loaded with the Spirit. That image developed in my mind and I felt the Holy Spirit remind me of a programme about painting. What I learnt was that sometimes you have to load the paint brush with paint. The same goes when decorating. You have to dip the brush in the paint but not scrape it off the brush on the side of the paint tin. Tip it in and tap it on the side, keep doing this and it builds up a reservoir of paint in the bristles of the brush.
To make up various Colours, you have to mix different colours together. I felt the Holy Spirit tell me that the fruit of the Spirit is like the different colours.
Galatians 5:22-25 NLT
This matches up with the argument in Colossians.
So be filled.
Just to spell it out, we are like the paint brush. Load yourself up with the spirit of God. The fruit of the spirit will come out.
Sometimes we are in a situation where we are under immense pressure, we might need patience and gentleness at another time we might find a friend in distress and we will need kindness and gentleness.
We will be encouraging you all to load your brush with the spirit of God now that we can start to mingle and pray for each other.
We need to be filled again, it has not been easy other the last 16 months. You need to reload, be refilled be filled for the first time in the spirit. Be hungry, be expectant be open to the Spirit there is no law against Him and you being filled.
Questions
Being filled with the spirit is such a joy and available for us all. It’s not a badge of honour but something we should all encourage each other in. In times such as we have been through for the last 16 months we have had few opportunities to pray for each other.
1 Do you feel full of the spirit?
2 How do you engage with the Holy Spirit to be filled. (We are all different but we all need Him to fill us.)
3 I used a paint brush analogy but did you understand my point?
4 Discuss the fruit of the spirit and how each gift is like a colour that makes up who we are and how we react in circumstances.