MattGlover.com

It was a hard message to give on Sunday night. One of those subjects that I think is really important, but not well understood - not by me, or anybody else for that matter. I was squirming before the service, squirming during and continued to squirm after. Living life in the Spirit seems such a fundamental thing to Paul, but how the heck do we do it?!

As I shared on Sunday night, perhaps some of my awkwardness comes from recognising that speaking in tongues, healing miracles and prophetic words have never been part of my ministry. I know they were big features of the disciples in the early church and even today some churches seem to focus on them in a big way. Some go so far as to say that you can’t be a Christian unless you do these things - they are the only sign of the Spirit being within you.

But I don’t. But does living in the Spirit mean that I should?

Before we looked at Paul’s thoughts in Romans 9, we took some time to remind ourselves about who or what the Spirit is. We talked breiefly about the SPirit being part of the Trinity of God, before going way back to the beginning of Genesis to see how the Spirit was there in the beginning, hovering over the unformed land (Gen 1:2). When God breathed his Spirit into man, he became a living being (Gen 2:5-7). Skipping forward to the day of Pentecost in Acts, the Spirit is poured out in a spectacular way and begins to form a new comunity that became the church.

Traditionally, the work of the Spirit has been called sanctification. An ugly word for ‘being made like God’ or ‘being made holy’. You could say that from the New Testament onwards, the Spirit began a recreation that saw humanity start to take on the shape that it was originally intended to have.

In summary, the Spirit gives life to all beings, and in those who accept the invitation to participate in life with God, the Spirit begins to transform life into what God wants it to be.

But what does that life look like? Perhaps the reason that it is so hard to define is that it is as diverse as the human race. But I thought Paul had a few good things to remember as we work out what it meant to live life in the Spirit.

1. Living the Christian life means acknowleging the Spirit dwells within us. (Rom 8:5-14)

Paul is adamant that the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is the same spirit that dwells within us. You can’t feel it, touch it or see it, but it slowly but surely works away inside us. The Spirit takes those things that God wants to recreate, and replaces them with unique expressions of the fruit described in Gal 5:22-25.

This is a promise. The Spirit does dwell in you! And there’s no hint of tongues or miracles being a requirement.

2. Living the Christian life means knowing the Spirit prays for us. (Rom 8:18-27)

This seems a bit freaky to me.

The Spirit is God, and prays to God on our behalf. And becasue the Spirit dwells in us, the Spirit (technically a she by the way) can see into the depths of our being - right into those places that need a regenerating touch from God. The Spirit doesn’t pray that we pass our exams or get a new car, but instead it prays for the deep things that we can’t, or won’t, bring up.

It’s a mysterious thing. Even frustrating too. Because it is impossible to know what the Spirit is doing (see John 3:8) it’s impossible to know just what things might be around the corner for us. At the same time, I find it incredibly motivating knowing that the Spirit is praying, even groaning, prayers that are so heartfelt they are beyond human words.

What difference would it make to you if you were to acknowlege that at every moment, of every day, the Spirit that dwells within you is also praying for you like nobody else can?

3. Living the Christian life means having God on our side (Rom 8:28-39)

This passage is even more amazing. Not only does the Spirit pray for us, but so does Jesus! And to top it all off, God the Father is on our side anyway, cheering us on and allowing no thing or person to separate us from him. The three ‘persons of the Godhead’ are all rejoicing when we get thigns right and urging us to keep going when we don’t. How cool is that?!

We need to remember that this doesn’t mean everything is going to be rosy for us. Heb 12:4-7 is pretty clear that God sometimes has to put us through some tough things in the process of recreating us. I don’t like those times. I don’t think anybody does. But they are necessary if our faith is to mature.

There was no ‘to do’ part of this message. Basically, all I wanted was people to go away and ‘know’. Know that the Spirit of the creator was withing them, making them into new beings and praying for them at everystep of the journey, cheering them to lives lived to the full. I think the ‘knowing’ needs to motivate our ‘doing’ and in the process, tranform our ‘being’.

Thus for me to live life in the Spirit is not a spectacular, miraculous thing. Sometimes, probably most of the time, it is a mundane and boring thing. But I too easily forget that God wants to be part of the everyday, boring things in my life. God wants to reveal things about himself to me through the mundane and transform the way I see them. In the process God transforms me too - and I can’t ask for more than that.