In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: All of us have to get on our face and say, "God, thank you that you said in your word, by grace you've been saved, and you said it's by grace that we are kept. You said in your word that no matter what goes on in our life, that your grace is greater than all of our sins." We are absolutely, totally dependent upon him.

The work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential in our life. The strength, the power that we have, where does all that come from? All that comes from the work of the Spirit of God within us.

Guest (Male): How do you live in true freedom? We experience liberty and joy only when we're depending on the Holy Spirit. Welcome to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. We're glad you joined us. Today, we'll learn more about the third person of the Trinity in part two of The Holy Spirit: An Absolute Essential. Let's listen in to Dr. Stanley's message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: One of the amazing things when I think about how many people sit in church week after week and they listen to sermons, they sing songs, pray prayers, and go through all the things that people usually do in different types of churches, and somehow they are still not growing. A natural, normal thing would be for us to grow in our relationship to him, our love for him, our devotion to him, our gifts to him. We should be more excited today about sharing our faith than ever before, but oftentimes that's not the case.

The reason is because oftentimes people will go through their whole life and never understand the absolute essential ministry of the Holy Spirit in their life. I believe one of the most freeing moments of my life is when I realized that God did not ever intend for me to live the Christian life. Now, I know that sounds like a real contradiction. What do you mean he didn't intend for you to live the Christian life? What kind of life you living?

What I want you to see is this: those disciples couldn't live it. They walked with him. Look at Peter, for example. Jesus is always having to say, "Peter, relax. Just take it easy." Peter is saying that's not going to happen to you. Here's God the Son speaking about what's going to happen to him, and Peter says it's not going to happen that way, as if he knew better than Jesus. Finally, Jesus had to say to him, "You're acting like the devil."

Then, of course, you remember he wants to fight in the garden. Of course, any of us who had been loyal to Jesus should have had the same attitude, but I think he enjoyed whacking off ears, probably. But Peter, that's his personality. Let's get out there and make it happen. We going to make it happen. So, he wasn't ready to live the Christian life. He wasn't ready to do the work that God called him to do until something dramatic happened to him, brought to his knees by his own failure.

The one thing about everything else Peter would have said, he said to Jesus, "Now listen, they may all leave you, but you can trust the rock." Can't you hear him saying that? "You can trust the rock, Jesus. You can bet on Peter when everybody else is gone." What did he do? He couldn't even stand up to a teenage girl by the fire. He said, "I don't even know him." Probably the one thing that the apostle Peter never got over his whole life.

I imagine that ricocheted through his mind many nights when he went to bed. No matter how much he knew that God had forgiven him, cleansed him, and blessed him, how God was using him later on in his life, for him to recall that moment in his life when he weakened to the point that he even, listen, did not say, "I'm not a follower," he said, "I don't know this man." That must have brought him to his knees, kept him on his face. It absolutely shattered him and broke him.

He had to be broken before God could work in his life to the fullest. That broken, shattered Peter, who sinned the sin of probably above most sins, and that is to deny that you even know the Lord Jesus Christ, what happened? Filled by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, he's the preacher of Pentecost. He's the man God uses when Pentecost comes from the Spirit of God comes to anoint and to indwell the church and every single believer from that moment on. But he had to take a man who was broken by his own sin.

The one thing God hates is pride. Therefore, he's not going to let any of us do it in our own strength. Failure after failure after failure is God's avenue to bring you and me to the point of recognizing that the Spirit of God came in order to enable us to live the life we cannot live apart from him. Now, look if you will in Galatians chapter five for a moment. Galatians chapter five reminds us of exactly who we are and where we are.

He says in the sixteenth verse of this fifth chapter of Galatians: "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh." We're not talking about flesh and blood. We're talking about a naturalness, those tendencies within us to rebel against God, that tendency within us that wants our way versus God's way, that tendency within us to want to yield to temptation, that tendency within us that wants to do what we want to do when we know that God has another plan.

What does he mean when he says, "I say, walk by the spirit. You'll not carry out the desires of the flesh"? Here's what that means: to walk by the spirit, to live by the spirit, to walk in the spirit, to be filled with the spirit means that we surrender to the prevailing control of the Holy Spirit. To walk in the spirit means that I am walking surrendered to the prevailing control. He's the one who is prevailing in my life. It is his desire, his wisdom, his will, his way, that everything else is surrendered to his prevailing control.

When somebody says, "What does it mean to walk in the spirit?" it means to walk under the prevailing control of the Holy Spirit, this person of the Spirit who lives on the inside of us, who knows perfectly the will and purpose and plan of God for each one of us, who is there to enable us to walk that way and to will the will of God and to walk in submission to him, walking in the prevailing control of the Holy Spirit. We cannot live the Christian life any other way.

Listen to what he says in this next verse. He says, "For the flesh, that is our naturalness, sets its desires against the Spirit, that is the desire of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." It's not a matter of whether we can or whether we can't. We can't. That is, you and I in our strength, we cannot defeat the devil.

Look at Adam and Eve. In their perfect innocence, Satan got them. You can go through the scriptures and servant after servant after servant, with a very few exceptions, Satan has brought down God's servants in one way or the other. Why? Because we cannot, and certainly in this life of ours, we cannot live the Christian life apart from the enabling, strengthening power of the Spirit of God.

What does he want from us? He wants us to acknowledge we can't. He wants us to acknowledge our weakness. He wants us to awaken each day realizing that if he doesn't live through us, the Christian life, we won't be able to do it. Listen, I can tell you trying harder only gets more and more defeat. If you and I could try in our own strength, if we could do it in our own strength, we would. Then we'd say, "I'm living the Christian life these days and everything is just going fine. I'm doing real well."

Most of us, in fact, I think probably all of us have to get on our face and say, "God, thank you that you said in your word, by grace you've been saved, and you said it's by grace that we are kept. You said in your word that no matter what goes on in our life, that your grace is greater than all of our sins." We are absolutely, totally dependent upon him. The work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential in our life.

The strength, the power that we have, where does all that come from? All that comes from the work of the Spirit of God within us. If you'll recall, look if you will in Ephesians chapter one for a moment. Here, Paul is praying his prayer for the Ephesian believers. Listen to what he says in this nineteenth verse: "That you may understand what is this surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might." That is, all that God does within us and through us, it is his life. It is his strength.

Think about this: he has so arranged your life and my life that he can gain great glory and praise and honor through your life, or he can get nothing. That depends upon our being willing to surrender to the prevailing control of the Holy Spirit in our life. When somebody says, "Why did he come?" Here's the reason he came: he came to enable us to do what? Live the life that he has called us to live. You cannot live the Christian life apart from the Holy Spirit.

I think about how many millions of people sit in church week after week and listen to sermons and think that their responsibility is to go out and be good, go out and do good, and go out and live the Christian life and be strong. What happens? They finally conclude they can't do it. Here's what they do: they see the standard of God is living a holy life. They think that's absolutely impossible, no way to do that because I'm way down here.

Instead of continually striving to be what God wants them to do, they just say, "Nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody sins. Everybody has their problems." So, what do we do? We bring the standard down so low anybody can live it and call themselves a Christian. Because all it means when you get down that low is you go to church, read your Bible once in a while, pray once in a while, give a little bit, and then you're a Christian.

First of all, you don't become one that way. You become one by being born again by the Spirit of God, trusting Jesus Christ, his atoning death at Calvary having paid for your sins. The moment you confess him as your Savior, you are saved by the grace of God. That's his goodness and love and mercy to you in spite of what you are, in spite of what you deserve. It's God's gift through his Son. Living the Christian life is God's gift through the Holy Spirit living in us, working through us.

Paul said in Romans chapter seven, "What I want to do, I find myself not doing. What I don't want to do, I find myself doing." That's before he came to Romans chapter eight and talked about his liberty and the strength that he had in the Spirit of God working in and through him. First of all, he came to enable us to do the work that God has called us to do. Secondly, he came to enable us to live the life that he's called us to live.

It was a freeing moment in my life when I realized he didn't call me to live the Christian life, but he called me to live surrendered to the Holy Spirit of God who lives on the inside of me, who is willing moment by moment, decision by decision, to have his way, have his will, and to work and to exercise his life through me rather than me trying to conjure it up myself. What a wonderful freeing moment that I didn't have to do it, all I had to do is to let him live his life through me.

What's a Christian? A Christian is a person who has trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and one through whom the Holy Spirit is living out the life of Christ. You recall the Bible says the Spirit of God is one who points us to Jesus. The Spirit of God is the one who always brings glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. He never refers to himself. Nowhere in the Bible does the Holy Spirit say you to do this and that and the other for me. It's always pointing people to Jesus.

Let me just briefly just as when I say that it's absolutely essential for us to have the Holy Spirit working in our life, enabling us to do what God wants us to do, and also enabling us to live the life that he wants us to live. I want you to think for just a moment exactly what that Holy Spirit is doing in your life. Sometimes you don't realize that. First of all, he's the one who convicts us of sin. He's the one who not only convicts us of sin, but he is the one who baptizes into Christ, that is, puts us into Christ Jesus, makes us a believer.

He is the one who likewise indwells us continuously and uninterruptedly forever and ever and ever. He's the one who has sealed us as a child of God and has sealed our eternal security once and for all. He is the one who reveals to us truth. He's the one who teaches us what the word of God means. He's the one who guides us and we get direction from him. He's the one who points us to Christ. He's the one who gains glory for the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who comforts us.

He's the one who gives us the spiritual gifts that we are to have. He's the one who empowers us for the work and for the life. He's the one who comforts us. He's the one who likewise fills us with himself in order that you and I can live out, experience, and enjoy his life. The works of the Holy Spirit in your life and my life are many, many, many works of the Holy Spirit that we are not even aware of. We don't even realize what's going on, but he's the one.

When you're sitting here listening to a message, you think, "I understand that." The Spirit of God's giving you understanding. You may say, "He's making it mighty clear." No, God's making it clear. It is the work of the Spirit. Everywhere you turn, the Spirit of God, listen, he is working and moving in your life. Doing what? Bringing you from stagnation to growth, from emptiness to joy, from failure to success. The Spirit of God is moving you in a direction that brings glory to the Father and will honor you and exalt you in his way, in his time, to do well whatever God has called you to do.

Now you say, "What's my responsibility? How do I get this to working in my life? If he is a person of the Trinity, if he is the promise of the Father and the gift to every believer, and that includes me so I have him, if he came in order to enable me to do the work that the Father would have me to do and to live the life that he would have me live, how do I make this work? What is my personal responsibility?"

Well, first of all, I think there are two or three things here that I'd mention, and if I'm going to live under the prevailing control of the Spirit, then I must be filled with the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the Holy Spirit means that at that moment in my life, I am living under his prevailing control. So, it requires surrender on my part. What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It means that the Holy Spirit who lives within you is in control at that moment.

How long can I live under the control of the Holy Spirit? As long as I choose. You see, every time you and I make a decision, that decision determines whether I remain filled or not filled. Because the Spirit of God can't be in control along with me. Either he's in control or I get in control. My flesh, my naturalness naturally wants to be in control. But the Spirit of God desires to be in control.

You and I are the ones who make the final determination. Will I yield to the Spirit or am I going to do what I want to do? So, if I'm going to allow the Holy Spirit to work in my life, to accomplish what God has set me out to accomplish and to be the person God wants me to be, then first of all, I must be filled with the Spirit, which means I must operate on the basis of his prevailing control in my life.

What is required of that? First of all, I must look at my life and see if there's any sin there. Because you see, his prevailing control, I have to decide, am I in charge here or is he in charge? So, first of all, there's repentance of all known sin. As long as I hold any aspect of my life for myself, for me, in spite of everything else, then he is not in control. What does that require? Repentance of my sin, asking the Holy Spirit to fill me, and believing that he does.

He says, "This is the confidence that I have in him, that if I ask anything according to his will, he hears me. And if I know that he hears me, I know that I have the petition that I desired of him." I know one thing for certain: it's his will for every single one of us to be filled with his Spirit and live under his control. So, I don't have to pray, "God, fill me with the Holy Spirit if it's your will. Let me walk in your spirit if it's your will." You can forget the "if" business in that request. That's the will of God for every single one of us.

The question is this: he sent him. He is absolutely essential for you to accomplish in your life, in your vocation, not just serving the Lord, serving the church, yes, but in your vocation. If you want God's best, if you want God's best, if you want to make progress, and in your spiritual life you want to make progress in every aspect of your life, total surrender. Is it easy? No. Will it cause weeping in some people's lives? Yes. Will it mean giving up some things you love? Yes.

Who makes that decision? You do. And you know what? Not even you and I can make it apart from his strength. We may have to say, "God, I don't want to. Lord, I want to but I don't want to. God, I want to but I don't want to. Please do, but don't mess with this." Back and forth and back and forth till finally we say, "God, have it your way." And you know what? His way is absolutely the best.

I'm here to tell you that the Spirit of God will zero in in your life in a loving way. What will he do? He'll sift and sand and cleanse till he can get you absolutely surrendered to him, and then you'll taste of life. You'll get a taste of something you have never tasted of before, and this world can't match it. I want to encourage you to surrender your life to Jesus.

I mean simply this: you ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sin. You tell him that you believe the witness of scripture that when Jesus died at Calvary, he took your sin debt in full and that if you ask him to forgive you of your sin, he will, on the basis of the death of Jesus, who paid your sin debt for you. He said, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

You can be saved right now. All you have to do is to say to him, "Father, I want you to forgive me of my sins. I do receive Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. Here is my life." And that moment you become a child of God. The Spirit of God indwells you. The Spirit of God seals you. And everything I've been talking about begins operation in your life.

What about all of us who've been a Christian a long time? You know what? I look at my life sometimes and think, "God, I'm absolutely inexcusable." Cannot excuse anything but total surrender. I just ask you this question one more time. Do you have a greater love for God than you did a few years ago? Do you understand his word better? Do you have a greater hunger to serve him?

Are you more available to him than you used to be? Are you still fretting over, still struggling with, still stingy with God's time and keeping it for yourself? Are you still spending God's money on things for yourself and wondering why you don't get ahead financially? Are you still hesitating to tell anybody about Christ? Are you still struggling over reading the Bible daily?

Are you still wondering why God isn't answering prayers, big prayers that you're praying, big needs that you have? Are you still wondering why God doesn't meet needs in your life that you know are so absolutely essential? All those things you're wondering about, here's what happens: when you and I surrender ourselves to the prevailing control of the Spirit, then he takes control and he begins to straighten out all the messes we make in our life. The question is, do you want the prevailing control of the Spirit of God in your life and see what he will do if you'll let him have his way?

Guest (Male): God intends for us to continuously walk in the Spirit. And as we're reminded today on In Touch, moment by moment, we must decide whether we'll act in response our way or yield our desires to the will of our Heavenly Father. The more you know about the Holy Spirit, the more equipped you'll be to live the life God intends for you to live.

Through our many insightful resources at intouch.org, we can help you understand and apply this truth. You can also go back over what you just heard by following the link to Today on Radio. If you go to the bookstore page, you can order a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message today. It's called The Holy Spirit: An Absolute Essential. Again, you'll find these resources at intouch.org or call or text us at 1-800-INTOUCH. To write to us, address your letter to In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357.

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Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. Believers who feel at a crossroads will find direction and comfort by turning to the Lord through this prayer. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: All of us face obstacles and situations and circumstances in life that cause us great anxiety and difficulty and heartache. You say, "How do I face this? I'm a Christian and yet I'm into all of this and can't understand what's going on." One of the wisest things you can do is to start your day with the Lord Jesus Christ, asking him to give you wisdom and direction and to believe what he says in his word when he says he cares for you.

If he cares for you, he'll see you through it. I'd just like to take a moment to pray that God will show you exactly how to respond in those difficulties that you are facing right now, because he will help you. He desires to, simply because he loves you.

Father, how grateful we are to know your love, your goodness, and your mercy. No matter how strong the opposition, how difficult our circumstances, how painful these things are, you said you care for us. You love us. We accept that by faith and know in our heart you have never disappointed one of your children. You've never failed a one of us.

We pray that every single one of your children would claim by faith your simple promise that you're with us no matter what we face in life. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Your capacity to rest in God's ability and faithfulness grows each time you exercise faith in him. Learn more at intouch.org. Is there a new insight you received from today's program that helps you grow in your faith? Tell us about that today. Tomorrow on In Touch, there are incidents that cause us deep pain, but we don't have to live with hurt for a lifetime. On our next program, we'll hear biblical principles for healing our hurts. I hope you'll join us for that Friday on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.