Living Empowered by the Spirit
Being human is the greatest experience we are invited embark on.
Today, I took an opportunity to receive and reflect on the beauty of my own life. I’m hoping this may also stir something in you as we process the human experience and how following Jesus the Rabbi changes how we process everything, even emotions.
For many years, we built homes and as a family we did it regardless of the weather. We simply adapted to the weather. Living in the Midwest, I can remember days so cold, we would keep tools next to the exhaust of a running truck to get them warm enough to work. Six months later, I can remember days so hot that it often was hard to breathe and drinking more than a gallon of water while never using the rest room. I’m grateful to have been taught how much power our minds have and how we must teach our bodies that we were capable of more when our bodies told us to quit.
When it comes to our emotions, realizing the power of our minds presents us with relief knowing we are not subject to how we feel, but rather we can push ourselves past feelings. Those feelings though, are often where the greatest gift of living is found. The challenge is not to be controlled by those emotions, but also to not ignore them.
The Bible expresses the dangers of leaning into our emotions but uses other terms such as living by the flesh. The alternative to living by the flesh is living by the spirit.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)
We are constantly making choices; in fact, it’s believed that the average person makes approximately 35,000 decisions each day. Those decisions are based off thought patterns that we have embedded into our brains. Easy enough to understand, but what if our decisions are based off inaccurate information?
As the beautiful script of the sacred texts unfold, we see an incredible story of God as creator, his desire to commune and partner with mankind to expand creation, the downward spiral that came over humanity as they waivered in faithfulness to God, and the ultimate redemption and new life that is offered back to humanity for those who choose to come back to where we truly know real life can only be found. This story isn’t about us, it’s about God, but we are created to do what he does and care about what he cares about. The theme of the Exodus is first found in the beginning of the Bible, but Paul brilliantly expresses it’s theme through the letter he wrote the Christian community in Rome. This community were of both Jewish decent as well as a multiethnic culture of Gentiles all of whom were learning a completely different way of living.
Paul was essentially laying the groundwork for this community to truly understand the story of God’s desired relationship with mankind and his eternal purpose. There were a lot of things that had to be rearranged in their thinking and understanding and Paul used the theme of the Exodus to communicate this. Living by the flesh is living by whatever we feel is best or most logical. The problem is, we change, and therefore experience a lot of inconsistency, brokenness, discontentment, and uncertainty. That’s what it’s like to feel dead inside. You feel like you cannot escape those emotions. The Israelites were slaves to Egypt, being controlled and used by people, not experiencing any freedom, essentially dead.
We were never designed to be apart from God, but we can still choose to be. When we do, when we live by the flesh. Living by the flesh is making ourselves our own God by using worldly wisdom and understanding to determine what’s true and what’s right.
Paul discusses the consequences of sin and separateness from God. Just as the Israelites needed rescuing from slavery, so did we from the death we had brought on to ourselves by choosing a life void of true wisdom and connectedness to God. After the delivery from their own slavery, the wilderness was a classroom intentioned as a time to establish a relationship with God and to learn to live life according to God’s good order. They are no longer slaves to Egyptian rule, set free by the mighty hand of God and we see the same beginning in Romans 6. Romans 7 shadows the challenging dichotomy of wavering in faith and steadfastness to God, while Romans 8 is a declaration of the empowered new life that is available to those who are steadfast and believe.
When we would build houses, we were building something in an area that had never been built on before. It was considered virgin soil, and it was a process to dig, establish a foundation, and step by step put the pieces together in proper order to build a home. Most often these sites didn’t have electricity, and a generator was needed to create the electricity needed to perform the necessary construction. Granted, things have been and can be built without electricity, but it makes life much more arduous, not to mention the amount of time that’s needed to build is extended immensely.
We can live a life pursuing Jesus but still be living in a way that feels arduous and void of life. The Israelites wavered in faith, belief and steadfastness to God and they wore a burden in their hearts that God had already delivered them from.
They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Exodus 14:11 niv
They were enslaved once again to their emotions, letting go of what they had already experienced God doing in their life. While God was wanting to give them a new understanding of life, they were still processing life through their own reasoning. Things began to not add up to how they think things should be going, and they began to complain about the one who rescued them. This is living by the flesh.
The generator provided electricity to assist in building and constructing in ways that human hands never could. Just like our relationship with God needs nurturing, devotion, and understanding to live by his spirit, so did the generator on the job site. It needed to utmost attention and care as it changed the way we did everything.
I remember one home is specific where our generator wasn’t working. The house was had a main structure built and we were completing the roof. I was given a bucket of nails and was told to get on the roof and begin nailing. What would normally take a few hours, took a few days to complete. The job of course got done, but the entire experience was completely different. I had experienced a much different way of living because we had not taken proper care of our main source of electricity and now it was affecting the entire job process.
Jesus will not take away our emotions. They are part of the incredible gift of being alive. Being human is the wildest ride we will embark on and it’s experiencing the downs of life are what can make the ups oh so sweet. The gift we now have is the choice to not be controlled by what we feel, but rather to be empowered by the spirit of God allowing him to give us wisdom and insight into all this world has to offer.
Jesus will open us up to experiencing life in a whole new way.
This is the first year where I truly had no expectations about a birthday. In the past, whether I said it or not, there was always some expectations about what I wanted or desired to happen to celebrate me. It sounds selfish, I know, but maybe I’m not alone. What the Lord gave though in return was an experience of complete freedom. Fleshly, earthly, materialistic things have no weight or bearing, but the only things that do are the relationships and the incredible, life-giving energy they provide. It’s a whole different set of emotions that we are not controlled by, but we get to experience.
I’ve been on a journey of diving in and being mentored to understand the Bible as a whole and to process through some of the deeper complexities of understanding God. Many who embark on theological journeys end up lost in their humanity but engorged in their knowledge. I never wanted to be disconnected to the one who freed me. What good would it be if while studying the one who is the source of all life, I lose my own life in the process? I could find myself even more dangerous of a person than ever before having all knowledge of God yet being void of knowing God. As much as I want to know about God because of how good he’s been to me, the true gift is simply knowing and being known by him.
The types of emotions change as we grow deeper in our relationship with Jesus, but they don’t go away. He will open us up to seeing and experiencing life in ways we never knew existed. We will be motivated to do things that never motivated us before. The air will smell different, food will taste different, hugs and kisses have different meanings, colors look different all simply because of faith in Jesus. This type of life cannot be made with human hands. It must come from a divine source of understanding. It must come from a source of knowledge and wisdom that is beyond our own very narrow experience and knowledge.
A house can be built without a generator. We can struggle our way through the building process of faith hammering one nail at a time trying to reason to understand the things of God or we can trust in the process and simply live as empowered life sources, giving vitality to all our hands touch. This past year has reflected divine electricity. Relationships are deepening, many close to me are diving into complete devotion to the Lord and their lives are testimonies of his restorative power. It’s been truly a life-giving year and I’m grateful to those who have contributed. We don’t have to be subject to emotions, but we can experience the gift they have to offer. Rather than contentiousness, let compassion well up.
Rather than thinking we have all the answers, let humility pave the way to deeper understandings.
My prayer would be that you step in wherever you are at to knowing how deep is the love of God that is offered to you and in return you are designed to give away to others.
Paul pours his heart out to the people of faith and non-faith alike in many of his letters, but he uses a word in his letter to the Ephesians that is like what Moses was trying to allow the Israelites in the wilderness to understand.
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:18
Being empowered by the spirit is to be enabled to see life according to how God does and that often means stepping far beyond the shallow physical world that is right in front of us and allowing God to open us up to spiritual realities. The word power or in Paul’s words, exischuó, means to “have the strength to overcome”. He is saying that living life by the spirit as he exhorts us in Romans 8 can only happen through truly allowing the Lord to give us insight into His was of doing things. It’s an invitation into the divine life even here and now and it simply keeps getting better. This is what the Israelites were being invited to understand, this is what Paul was inviting the Jews and Gentiles to understand in Rome, this is what he was reiterating to the churches in Ephesus, and this is what we are invited to boldly step in to believing.
I’m grateful to all the incredible hearts who have made this year one to remember, but I’m expectantly hopeful of what’s to come as well. The good, the bad, and everything in between, given completely to God, can and will produce a bounty within our hearts. Let his name be glorified in my life and in yours as we move further into knowing and being known by the author and perfecter of life itself.
May God bless you on your own journey, today.
