Transcript

Charles Swindoll wrote the following: A number of miles from the Los Angeles basin there is a river.

The river has been damned up by man, and through the genius and innovation of engineers, they have put together a dam that has, in its process of working, housed electricity—hundreds of thousands of volts that are fed into the Los Angeles basin.

And if you were to go to the plant, the source, and follow the lines that come into the city, you would come to various transmission plants along the way that would be marked, “Danger, High Voltage,” “No trespassing. Danger.”

Hundreds of thousands of volts are available in energy for your home, but who needs a hundred thousand volts, unless he wants to burn up his home?

Knowing that, the engineers have built transformers into the system—not transmitters, but transformers.

And the transformers do nothing more than break down into meaningful units just the electricity you need.

I have in my home, for example, another transformer. One Christmas I gave myself an HO gauge train. I put my son’s name on it, but it was really for me.

So we had a great time putting it all together. And there’s a little tiny unity called a transformer on the train set, and it breaks down the 110 volts from the wall to even less.

If you plugged into a straight 110 outlet, that thing would go “pzzzttt!” for one second and be burned to a crisp.

But that transformer breaks it down to where a little tiny train, whose engine can be held in your fist, can just putt, putt, putt all around the track and entertain me for hours on end—all because there’s a little transformer that dispenses it in the needed level.

The Holy Spirit, like a Transformer, takes the almighty power and wisdom of God, and dispenses it just the way you need it, giving it to us in a way we can handle that we can take and use for our Christian lives.

In this episode, we’ll be looking at the power of the Holy Spirit and how He empowers us in our lives during the dispensation of grace.

1 Thessalonians 5:19: “Quench not the Spirit.”

Power is the special and peculiar prerogative of God, and God alone. God is God; and all power belongs to Him. And it remains His forever.

He delegates it to believers by the Holy Spirit, yet it still is His power. It’s by grace, that the Spirit empowers believers with His power.

The Holy Spirit indwells every member of the Church, the Body of Christ, and thus His power is inside of us. God’s power resides in every believer. It is not a power that must be prayed down or worked up.

In seeking the power of the Spirit, we must note the mode in which He works under grace.

And under grace, this power does not result in the speaking of tongues. It doesn’t result in healings, miracles, emotional experiences, or knocking us down to the ground. We should not expect to feel His power when it works.

It is an invisible power, a quiet power. It’s about inner strength over sin and temptation and to comfort us in our sufferings. It is about enablement in our service to God. By the Spirit, we have power to live for the glory of God.

The word “quench” means to extinguish, to stifle, to put out. It is the picture of extinguishing or putting out a fire, or pouring water on a fire.

In Matthew 25:8 the Lord in a parable says, “And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.” “Gone out” is the same word as “quench.”

The Holy Spirit is depicted as a fire in Scripture. In Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit came to Israel on the day of Pentecost, there “appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (2:3,4).

Paul’s instruction for the Body of Christ is to not put out the Spirit’s fire; don’t pour water on that fire; don’t stifle the work of the Spirit; don’t hold back the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer at the moment we trust Christ as our personal Savior.

And it’s possible for the believer to quench the Spirit’s working and influence in our lives. The Holy Spirit can be quenched, obviously, or Paul wouldn’t have commanded this.

The Holy Spirit can be quenched, and He can also be resisted. In Acts 7:51, Stephen accused the rulers in Israel, “ye do always resist the Holy Ghost.”

There were some spiritual fire fighters in Thessalonica, guilty of extinguishing the Spirit’s fire in their lives, and Paul is correcting them here. He didn’t want a flickering flame, or for the church to be smoldering spiritually, or have no fire at all.

Paul wanted the church to be on fire, burning bright with a white-hot passion and zeal for the things of God.

The Spirit is a fire within us to refine our faith and character within, to soften our hearts to God, to make us feel and sensitize us to spiritual things and the needs of others. He heats up our passion to serve God, and tell others about Christ and the gospel of grace.

But the believer has the choice to not listen to His voice, to smother His influence with a blanket of stubbornness, to pour water on His fire by selfishness or living only for the temporal.

But, as He works in us by grace, the Holy Spirit does not and will not force us to do God’s will. He works through our surrender and yielding to God.

And if we fan the flames and turn to Him in dependence, faith, and obedience, we’ll experience His active power within our lives.

The Holy Spirit is Holy, obviously. His ministry in us is about His desire to move us along a path to ever-increasing holiness in our lives. And the Holy Spirit moves us toward a holy life by His Holy Word.

Two times in 1 Thessalonians, Paul wrote of God’s desire for holiness in our lives. 1 Thessalonians 3:13 and 4:7: “To the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness.” “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.”

Holiness isn’t just pureness only. Holy just means “set apart, separate.” In Christ, we are holy, we are set apart and belong completely to God.

Now in practice, the Spirit, in His power, wants to work this out practically in our lives. He wants to work in our lives to separate us, and bring us closer and closer to Christ, by separating us further and further from sin, selfishness, and worldliness.

The Spirit’s desire is for us to live as one who belongs to God. He can do this through His gentle power and humble working in changing our hearts. But we can quench, limit, hinder, extinguish this refining work in our lives, and be content as we are.

A man went in for a job interview. He was asked “Tell me one of your weaknesses. He responded, “I can be very stubborn.” “Will you please elaborate?” And he said, “I will not.”

We can tell the Spirit “I will not” too, and stubbornly quench the working and power of the Spirit in us. But God’s desire, is that in response to His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, that we humble ourselves and allow the Spirit to teach us and mold us.

Stubbornness is one way we can quench the Spirit, and there are other ways as well, such as, by not doing as 2 Timothy 2:15 tells us to do, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.”

By not rightly dividing the Word, and living in light of God’s program for today for the Body, but instead trying to live by promises made to Israel under a previous program and dispensation, we can quench the Spirit.

The Spirit works by His Word rightly divided, according to how God is working today. We are under grace, not under the law.

The revelation made known to Paul reveals God’s will for the Church and how it is to function and serve under the dispensation of grace.

As we live by that instruction by faith, the Spirit’s power will be released in our lives. But if we try to live by the law or by how the Spirit worked in the past through signs, miracles, wonders, tongues, healings, we quench the Spirit under grace.

Another way we can quench the Spirit is by knowing God’s Word, but not applying it to your life. The Holy Spirit is quenched through one who treats the Bible as strictly an academic exercise, who knows the Bible, but doesn’t trust it. “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth,” 1 Corinthians 8:1 says.

Another way the Holy Spirit is quenched within our culture is busyness. Eugene Peterson once said: “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality. It is often doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is many times filling our time with only our own actions, instead of paying attention to God’s actions.”

We need to take charge of our spiritual lives, and to not quench the Spirit by allowing no time for God. God would have us have Job’s heart regarding His Word, “I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12), and to do as Paul challenged the Church, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16).

When we do that and we live by His Word, the power of the Holy Spirit will be unleashed in our lives.

Galatians 5:16-17: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

In Galatians 5:16, the word “walk” is in the present tense in the original Greek. This teaches us that God desires a continuous, regular action on our part. And by a habitual way of life, it is God’s will for us to “walk in the Spirit.”

Walking implies progress, going from where one is, to where one ought to be and where we are headed. As believers submit to the Spirit’s power, we move forward in our spiritual lives.

And the command to “walk in the Spirit” here involves human responsibility and choice on our part to obey. The believer is instructed to walk.

God’s desire is that we make the choice and to take the step of faith and obey God’s command. And the Spirit works through our obedience.

He also works through our dependence. If we depend on ourselves, we won’t find power, and we will fail continuously. The way we find strength is by dependence on the Holy Spirit, the source of all power, true power, as God.

Pastor and author Tony Evans wrote: One day I was in an airport rushing to catch a plane. I was sweating and puffing when I looked to my right and saw a man walking half as fast as I was, but going faster. He was walking on a moving sidewalk.

When we walk in the Spirit, He comes underneath us and bears us along. We’re still walking, but we walk dependent on him.

Our connection to our relationship with God is where our power is. And walking in the Spirit is about depending on Him for spiritual strength. And He will carry us along.

To be taught of God to “walk in the Spirit” teaches us that we are not strong enough in our own power to walk and make progress in our Christian lives. We need His strength and enablement to walk and move forward spiritually.

Scripture links power and weakness together in a wonderful way. Not as power succeeding weakness, but actually as both existing together.

1 Corinthians 2:3-4 reads, “And I was with you in WEAKNESS, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of POWER.”

In 2 Corinthians 12:10, Paul wrote, “for when I am WEAK, then am I STRONG.”

The power of God is given to faith, and faith grows strongest in the dark, in our weakness.

The Spirit hides Himself in the weak things. He is there in our weak moments. His power is revealed clearly in ones who acknowledge their weakness and need of the Lord. And His power is demonstrated through the weak so that God gets the glory.

Many pray for power for their work and do not receive it, because they do not accept the position through which God’s power comes: faith, submission, and humility.

As D.L. Moody once said “We may easily be too big for God to use, but never too small.” This attitude of smallness and humility is necessary for God to use us and our work for Him. And it’s a correct orientation, because we are small and weak, but we have a great God. Pride quenches the working and power of the Spirit.

Our mindset can also be to get possession of God’s power and to use it. But God wants to get possession of us and use us by His power. Walking in the Spirit is about yielding and living as one given to a power that has entire possession of our innermost being.

Faith and surrender to God’s power in the inner man is how we are clothed in it.

As Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:16, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.”

Surrender to His guidance and will in the smallest of everyday things leads to a walk in the Spirit. We must start there and then faithfully continue to yield to the Spirit. We take it one step at a time following the path the Spirit lays out for us in His Word.

The Spirit does not give His power for our enjoyment or to save us from trials or deliver us from effort on our part to serve the Lord. The Spirit gives His power for the sole purpose of glorifying God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And bringing glory to Christ is often done by the Spirit in the midst of our hard times when our faith and dependence on Christ grows by our sufferings and weakness.

And Christ is glorified as the Spirit works through our service to others and we keep our heads down and labor hard for the Lord for His honor and praise.

Christ is glorified when we turn away from sin and temptation and instead do what is right and good by God’s standard of His Word. Christ receives glory when we allow His grace and love to transform our lives into being godly spouses, parents, and employees.

The Spirit empowers us in and through these everyday things. He empowers those who, in their weakness, submit to the Spirit and are faithful to His purpose of bringing glory to God’s Son and our Savior.

And as we walk in the Spirit, which again implies going from where one is to where we are headed, where we are headed and where the Spirit leads us in His power, is toward Christ, to being more like Him. Because as the Spirit inspired Paul to write in Romans 8:29, each believer is predestinated “to be conformed to the image of His [or God’s] Son.”

And as 2 Corinthians 3:18 teaches, we “are changed into the same image [of Christ] from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” It’s the Spirit’s power that enables us to live for the Lord. It’s the Spirit’s power that leads us to be like the Lord.

The way the Spirit conforms us and changes us into the image of Christ, is by us knowing Him more. And we know Christ by His Word.

Think about Abraham the father of the Jews and the father of faith. Faith is what the Holy Spirit calls each of us to do with the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God.

God appeared to Abraham when he was in Ur and He called him to get out of his country and to leave his family to go to a land that He would show him.

Abraham responded by faith and courage and departed from where he was, in order to follow God into unknown territory.

Abraham left and followed the Lord and went to Canaan. He is an example of going from where one is to someplace else and to a place of blessing based on the Word of God and faith and obedience to it.

This is exactly how transformation takes place in our lives as well. By faith in God and trusting and obeying His Word, the Holy Spirit takes us from where we are in our lives to someplace else and someplace better, to the place of blessing in being more like Christ.

Like Canaan was unknown territory to Abraham, to be more like Christ is unknown territory for many believers. Thus, there is fear and a reluctance to move.

As we are all prone to do, we like to stay where we are at and with what we know and where we are the most comfortable. We can each dig in our heels to stay where we are.

It takes faith to walk in the Spirit and to follow the Spirit on this journey toward Christ-likeness. It takes a willingness to leave behind the way we are to become something else.

As we surrender our wills to God and walk in the Spirit, the Spirit can work through us and He will change and renew our thinking and our entire lives by His Word.

And there is only blessing to be found in walking in the power of the Holy Spirit and allowing Him do His powerful, quiet work in us.

Without any if’s, and’s, or but’s, Paul tells us in Galatians 5:16 that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust and desires of the flesh. The reason being is that we are talking about the power of Almighty God here.

If we live by the Spirit’s power, and allow our conduct to be directed by the wisdom of the Spirit, we absolutely will not do what our flesh desires. The only way that we can faithfully overcome our fleshly desires is by walking in the power of the Spirit.

At salvation, the Holy Spirit creates and imparts a new nature, a new man, in us, and this is His base of operations from which the Spirit works in, on, and through us.

2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.”

The way the inward man is renewed is by the Spirit working through His Word in us. As Paul put it in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, “the Word of God, effectually worketh in you that believe.” When we grow in it, and trust and obey it, we are renewed.

While we each have the Spirit and this new nature in us, the old nature remains. Now having two natures, the old and the new, the flesh and the Spirit, every believer has an ongoing, internal battle.

The desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit are and always will be at odds with each other. “These are contrary the one to the other,” Paul wrote in verse 17.

Verse 17 points out how the battle is so fierce and constant that the flesh often keeps us from doing the things that we really want to do to please God.

This battle does not need to cause you to doubt your salvation. If you have trusted Christ alone as your Savior, you are saved and on your way to heaven.

Every single believer has this unrelenting, internal warfare going on inside of us, because we each have these two opposing combatants in us with different desires for us. The issue is control. And the solution is submission and surrender to the Spirit.

As we yield to the power of the Spirit, we will not indulge the flesh. If we yield to the lusts of the flesh, we failed to yield to the power of the Spirit.

There is no gray area with this. It’s cut and dry. Our failures are our own fault and responsibility. Because we have the power of the Spirit within us to turn from sin and the desires of the flesh.

In Romans 8:11, Paul wrote, “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken [give life to] your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

This verse is not just talking about the future and our future resurrection, but also right now. We have the same power in us that raised Christ from the dead. This power can give us victory over the flesh and sin right now.

Having this great power in us we are able to live lives that give glory to God. All that is required is faith to choose to obey the truth of the Word, and the Spirit supplies the power.

As a result of this resurrection power in us by the Spirit, as Ephesians 3:20 tells us, God “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, ACCORDING TO THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US.”

Paul gave a list of the “works of the flesh” in verses 19-21, things such as: “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings.”

None of these things are like Christ. All of these things are sinful and like Adam. They are fruits of the old, sin nature and not the fruit of the Spirit.

This work of the flesh list in verse 19-21 and the fruit of the Spirit list of verses 22-23, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance are as Paul wrote, “contrary the one to the other.” But as we walk in the Spirit, by His power, He will produce the fruit of the Spirit in us, which are the fruit of Christ-likeness.

And we’ll look at this fruit of the Spirit in our next episode.