In my early Christian years, I understood in theory what someone meant when they said that Jesus was the solution to the various problems I had, but I didn’t really get how that played out in my day-to-day life. “Okay,” I would think, “I understand that I shouldn’t just buckle down and try harder to be better. I need the gospel to transform me from within in order to see real life change. So…what do I do now?”
That’s a fair question that I think a lot of people are asking when we tell them to allow the gospel to change their lives. People want to experience the change that comes with letting Jesus work in their hearts, but they probably need a little more to go on than just, “Pray and read your Bible.”
When it comes to the very common and difficult problem of habitual sin, we simply lack the power to see victory on a continuous basis. We are like an elaborate and beautifully constructed house with every amenity you could think of…but the electricity has been shut off.
No doubt you’ve experienced a power outage before. These can be quite common if you live in an area of the world that is no stranger to fierce lightning storms in the summer or dangerous ice storms in the winter. When the power goes out (especially in the winter), it feels as though your entire world has shut down. There’s no light, no heat, no refrigeration for your food, no charging of the battery on your phone. Your home becomes a cold (literally), empty shell of what it once was without electricity, because it was never built to operate without power. The same goes for us.
Trying harder to be a more pure person is simply impossible. We lack the power to make this happen because we are frail and feeble when we try to go toe-to-toe against the behemoth that is our sinful nature. On our own, it cannot be done…but with God all things are possible.
When someone accepts the free gift that God offers to us in the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, we enter into a relationship with Him, and the third Person of the Trinity comes to dwell inside of us—the Holy Spirit. God, the Holy Spirit, is the electricity that makes our house run properly. He gives us the power to experience victory over sin in ways that never would have been possible on our own. And because He lives inside each and every believer when they say “yes” to the gift of Jesus, we can tap into this power any time we want to in order to see success.
It all happens by faith. We access the power the Holy Spirit offers by asking Him to do the work of Christ within us, and then trusting that He’ll do what He promised. Many followers of Jesus try to live the Christian life in their own power, and this leads to frustration, anger, and eventually defeat. Trying to “just be better” or “stop it” to experience success in your walk with God will lead to defeat. When you come into a relationship with God, it is by faith, and in the same way, you live the Christian life by faith. Ultimate freedom from sin comes through ongoing surrender to Jesus, and this can only be done by faith.
Through faith.
As Christians, we trust God to work in us, and bring life to the dead areas of our lives. And even though buckling down and trying harder isn’t the answer, we ourselves do in fact have a role in cultivating the Spirit’s influence. God calls each of us to “fan into flame” the Spirit’s power and influence. Here’s a biblical example of this:
…addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:19-21, ESV)
Like any living space, the heart has an ambiance all its own, and what Paul describes here is an atmosphere of the heart that fosters the greatest influence of the Spirit. This is the experiential reality of the Kingdom of God living and laughing in our hearts, but it’s an atmosphere that must be created, almost like a party we have to throw each day.
These are the mechanisms of spiritual transformation—praising, thanking, worshipping, singing, fellowshipping—because these are the elements of a party. And this “party” plays host to the presence of God, filling us with His Spirit, and the Spirit’s filling is what transforms us.
Understanding and living this out will change your life. It changed mine. Although this is still a continual struggle, finally grasping what it meant to live a victorious Christian life was the light that broke through the darkness for me. It wasn’t about trying to be better. It was about allowing the Spirit of God to work in my life right now, so that He could usher in triumph where there was once only defeat.
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