Daily Devotional
Word of the Day
Equipped to Live in Power
Pastor Scott
Saturday, January 29, 2005
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"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
(John 14:26)
We want to understand God's great gift to us of the Comforter--the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "I'm going to leave you another Comforter." The disciples at that time wanted to keep Him back, but He said, "I'm going back to the Father."
They said, "How can we live without Your presence?"
He said, "You're not going to be without My presence. My presence is going to manifest itself in a better way. I was with you physically; the Comforter will come and be with you spiritually. I could be separated from you by time and space; He will dwell with you and be made one with you. You will never be forsaken; you will not be comfortless." That is probably one of the great promises that we can rest on in the time that we're living right now. It's a world of turmoil and confusion; men are calling good evil and evil good. Yet God has equipped us to live in this hour by the power of His Spirit. That's the rest that we have as we embrace the fullness of this great gift.
Isaiah 11 tells us what the purpose of the Holy Spirit was as He came upon Jesus without measure. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the true apprehension of the fear of the Lord is what the Holy Spirit is doing in each one of our lives right now. He is constantly bringing us this wisdom, understanding, anointed power, and fear of the Lord. In a day when God is being mocked, we are a people that truly humble ourselves before Him. Everyone around us is deifying man. We are no better naturally than anybody else, but we are illuminated, renewed and are creatures who have come out of darkness into the marvelous light of God. Yet if we fail to hear this voice, if we move back from the illumination of His Word, we will fall back into that same darkness. We will reason like they reason. We will fear like they fear. We will trust in our own strength and in our own resources instead of the presence of God, because that's the tendency of natural man. Unless the Spirit is increasing in control of our lives, then we are losing this race that we're in and this battle that we're waging.
Are you increasing in the grace and the strength of God? Are you coming to a greater reliance on God's wisdom and not your own? The world is constantly mocking faith, yet asking you to live by it based upon their wisdom, philosophy and technological advances. Which wisdom are you choosing to live by? That's what we're really talking about. One of the main reasons that I wanted to spend time to understand the Person of the Holy Spirit in us is because of the warfare for your minds that's taking place. How subtly the spirit of this age--the spirit of antichrist--is eroding simple faith within the churches and professed Body of Christ. We are living now by our own strength and our corporate strength, but not relying upon the Person of the Holy Spirit. Each one of us needs that anointing. Each one of us needs that personal relationship and the awareness that God has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of Himself.