Search results

2 Corinthians 5:17, if you are a new creation, why do you still feel like the same you? That question is not a lack of faith, that question is the doorway into what 2 Corinthians 5:17 actually means, because most people read that verse and hear one thing, a fresh start, a clean slate, God hit...

Romans 8:9, consider the name, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, but there is something else hiding in that name. This is worth sitting with, because it is reflection, not a doctrine you will find spelled out in a dictionary, the Spirit of Christ is...

Romans 8:9, in Ephesians 1:13-14, Paul says that when you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a pledge of our inheritance, sealed, pledged, and in 2 Corinthians 1:22, Paul says God sealed you and gave you the down payment of the Spirit in your heart, a down payment...

Romans 8:9, the Spirit of Christ is not a new idea invented in the first century, he is the fulfillment of a promise God made centuries before, consider what the prophet Ezekiel wrote hundreds of years before Jesus was born, Ezekiel 36:26-27. A new heart and the Spirit within, that was the...

Romans 8:9, in Galatians 4:6, the Spirit of his Son, there is the phrase again, the Spirit of Christ and what does he do, he cries, abba. Father in your heart, the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit who makes you know God as your Father. That is not a feeling you have to manufacture, it is the...

Romans 8:9, go back to Romans 8:9, but consider the way Paul meant it, but if any man doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. The Spirit is the mark of belonging, not your church attendance, not your knowledge, not your family background, not how you feel on your best day, the Spirit...

Romans 8:9, Paul is crystal clear about what each room produces, Romans 8:6. Life and peace, that is what the Spirit produces, not anxiety about whether you measure up. Life and peace and then Romans 8:9 comes in and it tells you which room you are in, but you are not in the flesh but in the...

Romans 8:9, look at what Paul just did, in one sentence, he used two different names, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, two phrases, one breath, no explanation. The second name is the key, because if you understand what Paul means when he says the Spirit of Christ, you will understand...

Ephesians 1:13-14, how do you carry the sealing of the Spirit into a Tuesday afternoon? The seal changes how you face your worst moments, when the fear comes, the fear that says you are not really God’s, you do not argue with the fear, you remember the seal. You remember that the Spirit of the...

Ephesians 1:13-14, the Spirit in you is the proof that you are genuine, not a forgery and you are secured, held, protected until the day of redemption, then Paul adds the word that changes everything. The Spirit is the down payment, the first installment of the inheritance already paid into your...

Ephesians 13-14, the day of redemption is not wishful thinking, that is what the seal is for, it is the guarantee that the full payment is coming and that the ones who were sealed are not lost. The question that is probably forming in your mind, if I am sealed, does that mean I can do whatever I...

Ephesians 1:13-14, so what is this inheritance? Paul says the Spirit is the down payment of your inheritance to the redemption of God’s own possession. Redemption, that word means to buy back, to set free by payment. And God’s own possession, do you hear the echo in that? In the Old Testament...

Ephesians 1:13-14, consider Acts chapter 2, a small room in Jerusalem, a handful of believers, still grieving, still confused, still not sure what to do next. And then the sound, like wind filling the whole house, tongues of fire resting on each one of them and they began to speak in languages...

Ephesians 1:13-14, the sealing was not your work, it was done to you at the moment you believed, yet consider what happened next in that house church in Ephesus. The letter is being read aloud, because that is how these letters worked, a reader stands in the middle of the room and the believers...

Ephesians 1:13-14, consider following a sealed document for a moment, because this is where the image gets its teeth. A courier leaves the port city carrying that contract to a buyer 200 miles away, he crosses mountains, he sleeps in roadside inns where thieves watch the door, he passes through...

Ephesians 1:13-14, one word in the Greek and in the world Paul lived in, that one word could settle a legal dispute, prove who owns something and keep a letter safe across a thousand miles of Roman roads and Paul says that word is what God has done you. The word is sealed, Ephesians 1:13, most...

(Personal actions of the Holy Spirit,) now the title has been answered, scripture gives the Spirit the actions of a personal subject, he communicates, knows, wills, directs and relates and scripture places him within the identity and work of God. But the deepest consequence is still ahead...

(Personal actions of the Holy Spirit,) then Romans 8:26-27, this personal action is intercession, the exact nature of the groanings is debated. Some understand them as the Spirit's own inexpressible intercession, others understand the Spirit working through the believer’s wordless groaning, some...

(Personal actions of the Holy Spirit,) at this point, scripture takes you beyond personhood, the Spirit is not merely a created personal messenger standing near God. In Acts chapter 5, Ananias lies about money he has kept back. Peter says he has lied to the Holy Spirit, then says he has not lied...

(Personal actions of there Holy Spirit,) the Holy Spirit is not standing outside God waiting to be briefed, he knows the depths that already moves beyond the picture of an impersonal influence. But Corinth’s problem requires more than knowledge, the church is not only asking, who understands, it...