I Don t Have To Do Anything By Myself

Transcription

1 I Don t Have To Do Anything By Myself By Dr. Dan Cheatham The Holy Spirit is the only person here on earth capable of being ENTIRELY PLEASED AND SATISFIED with you!...mike Murdock I Don t Have To Do Anything By Myself. I Don t Have To Do Anything On My Own. I m NOT alone! The Holy Spirit is Aboard Indwelling Me, Infusing Me, Leading Me, Embracing Me, and Shedding Abroad His Love in my Heart. He is the Translucent One! Examples: 1. Helmsman + Captain 2. Tourist + Tour Guide 3. Traveler + GPS Google Map (Inertial Navigation System) I LEAN BACK ON THE EVERLASTING ARMS! I LET HIM CARRY ME, MOVE ME, INSPIRE ME, INFORM ME, INCUBATE ME, INVITE ME, IMPART TO ME! The Holy Spirit is not just a force, or a power, or a dove! He is a PERSON filling me and accompanying me. He has pledged to help me with every detail of life. He is my Navigator! He is my Tour Guide! THE TOUR GUIDE IS EMINENTLY FAMILIAR WITH THE TERRITORY AND LANDSCAPE, ALL THE LANDMARKS, ALL THE HISTORY, AND ALL THE BUMPS AND DETOURS ALONG THE WAY. HE KNOWS WHAT I NEED TO SEE AND WHERE I NEED TO GO. I TRUST HIM! The Bible never says, May the force be with you! Rather the Bible says: 2 Corinthians 13:14 (KJV) - 14The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. Philippians 2:1 (KJV) - 1If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies... In other words, MAY THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT BE WITH YOU! -or- MAY THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT BE WITH YOU! -or- MAY THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT BE WITH YOU! (NOT may the force be with you!) Page 1 of 5

2 The Holy Spirit is so much more than a force or power. Yet He is forceful and powerful indeed. He is God! One of the problems we face in this modern world of entertainment, fantasy, sound effects, visual effects and animation is that we are surrounded by counterfeit excitement and make-believe. So much so, that we often forfeit REAL GLORY and REAL POWER and REAL EXCITEMENT by trying to get another thrill elsewhere. Even people of the world, sinners estranged from Christ, know intrinsically that there exists something or someone invisible in the world that has power, but they cannot harness it (Him) or enjoy it without Jesus who reveals and gives the Holy Spirit. It (Him) ever eludes them by that inferior, but everpresent power of sin. They unconsciously know He is there, but they don t know Him, which alienates them from Him, though He is closer than their breath. The very moment they repent and call on the name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit unveils Himself and leaps into action, just as the Spirit leaped into action when God said, Light Be! He is hovering but inactivated to a large measure in their lives. But He stands ever ready to MOVE RIGHT IN! Hallelujah! He is: 1. My Comforter My Soother reassuring me. 2. My Counselor My Adviser and Teacher training me. 3. My Confidant We share secrets with one another. 4. My Companion My Best Friend accompanying me at all times. Greek for Comforter is Paraclete One called to another s side to aid and assist. I don t have to navigate these waters by myself! Living in this Sin-Fallen Earth and Demon-Infested Culture has many Hazards and Danger Zones. Without the assistance of the Holy Spirit I would surely fall into many traps and be defeated at every turn. I AM DEAD IN THE WATER WITHOUT THE WIND OF HIS LIFE-GIVING BREATH! I don t have to walk through this Mine Field of hidden explosives all by myself! The Spirit knows exactly where the mines are buried underneath the dirt, and safely guides my feet around them unconsciously and occasionally even consciously. No accidents! No explosions under my feet! My paths are supernaturally safe! I don t have to be a good husband to my wife on my own. I have a Helper!!!! I don t have to pastor people with tenderness on my own. The Anointed One will help me lead, nourish, and feed His people. I don t have to parent my children on my own. He is there to give me instantaneous wisdom. I don t have to love others by my own power and intellect. I don t have to worship the Father by my own power or by the fickleness of my emotions. I don t have to do my menial tasks around the house and the challenges at my workplace all by myself! I don t have to evangelize souls by myself. I HAVE HOLY GHOST POWER AND ENERGY AND HIS SUPERNATURAL HELP TO DO ALL THESE THINGS AND SO MUCH MORE! Page 2 of 5

3 O precious Holy Spirit, CARESS me this morning and CARRY me throughout this day! This I pray today... O CARESS & CARRY I pray, Sir. O limitless Spirit of God, I expect You to make this day exciting and fulfilling. Vouchsafe my day, Sir! Make sense of this day for me, O Spirit of Truth and Love. You are streaming from the Father s Throneroom into my heart! Your river runs through it! The Holy Spirit is Three-Dimensional (3D) in my life: WITH me, IN me, UPON me! As such, He is my Advocate at my right hand, just as Jesus is my Advocate at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the believer s Advocate... ever present at the right hand of the believer! Glory! WITH me for intimate fellowship. ON me for empowerment to live and help others. IN me to grow me, duplicating His own character traits and attributes into my person. I don t have to OBEY GOD without this ever-present Invisible Someone to help me. As a matter of fact, I CANNOT obey God without His Help. He must empower me and endue me to do so. The Translucent One is all around me, superimposed upon me and living and breathing within me, active and moving, speaking and painting a picture of the Lord upon the canvas of my heart at all times! The Holy Spirit Himself is taking the sentences of the scripture, the letters and passages in This Book, which would otherwise just be plain words... and making them VERITABLE LIFE to me, SO VERY REAL to me, and FRESH like a fresh love-letter from the heart of God. He makes the WORDS OF THIS LIFE SIZZLE into my heart like a hot knife dipped in honey and butter! Or like a sizzling hot plate of Fajitas being served before my heart. Romans 7:8-8:39 MSG - 8Don't you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of forbidden fruit out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, 9and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it. 10The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong. 11So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. 12But the law code tempt me to do what would finally destroy within God's good commandment, sin did far more mischief than it could ever have accomplished on its own. 14I can anticipate the response that is coming: I know that all God's commands are spiritual, but I'm not. Isn't this also your experience? Yes. I'm full of myself after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. 15What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. 16So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary. 17But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! 18I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. 19I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. 20My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. 21It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. 22I truly delight in God's commands, 23but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. 24I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of Page 3 of 5

4 my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? 25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 8:1-39 MSG - With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. 2A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. 3God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. 4And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. 5Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them living and breathing God! 6Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. 7Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. 8And God isn't pleased at being ignored. 9But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. 10But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells even though you still experience all the limitations of sin you yourself experience life on God's terms. 11It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's! 12So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. 13There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. 14God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! 15This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike What's next, Papa? 16God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. 17And we know we are going to get what's coming to us an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him! 18That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. 19The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. 20Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in 21until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. 22All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. 23These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. 24That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We Page 4 of 5

5 are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. 25But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. 26Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. 27He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. 28That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. 29God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. 30After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. 31So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? 32If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? 33And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? 34Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us who was raised to life for us! is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. 35Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: 36They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. 37None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. 38I'm absolutely convinced that nothing nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, 39high or low, thinkable or unthinkable absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. Page 5 of 5