Walk with me

My wife and I remodeled a house top to bottom. We literally did most of the work ourselves. It took a little over a year to complete. One night after we had just moved in I found myself unable to sleep. I got up in the dark in my new home. I walked from the bedroom toward the living room. I stopped at the bathroom. Not wanting to wake my wife I closed the door. On the wall are two switches one for the light and one for the overhead fan. I reached out and turned on the light. After I got my drink of water it dawned on me, this should feel like a strange house. We had only moved in about a week before. The more I thought about it the more I realized I was home. We had already spent a large amount of time in the house. Because we hung the doors, raised the ceiling, installed the plumbing; electrical as well as everything else. I was the guy who set up the light switches in the order that they were positioned on the wall. As I reached out in the dark to turn the light, not reaching for the fan by mistake, I realized that I was intimately aware of each and every detail of our new home.

It’s been about 5 years since that night of revelation. This morning reading through a devotional by Rick Renner on Galatians 5:16 I was reminded of that night in my home.

Galatians 5:16 reads “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.”

 In the Greek to walk literally means to habitually walk around in the same place. The idea is to walk one path so many times and for such a long time that you could do it in the dark because it is where you live it is literally your path, or in my situation, my home.

 I was immediately taken back to my trip through my house in the dark. I was so aware of the location of all the walls and light switches it had already been like I lived in my house for years.

 The more we practice walking in the Spirit, or living according to what God’s words say, the more we begin to live in the Spirit. It becomes a lifestyle rather than an anomaly or the strange thing that happens once in a great while. The Apostle Paul lived in the Spirit daily. The Father who put his Spirit in us and made us a new creation wants us to live life walking in the Spirit. When he tells us “no eye has seen or ear heard no mind has perceived what God has prepared for those who love him. He isn't holding out on us. Paul also told us “If God gave us his son who he loved dearly won’t he along with him give us all things?

 I want to wrestle against the opposition of myself and the influences around me to walk in the Spirit of God. I want to hear what he has to say through the Holy Spirit that he placed in me as a deposit keeping me for himself. God wants me to as well. Walking in the Spirit positions me daily to hear great things directly from the throne room. There is also another promise that goes along with this. I won’t go back to the sinful lifestyle I desire to live in every day. If I am living in the Spirit my mind will be focused on the things above not on earthly things that entice me to go back to the life I lived before I knew better. Before I had the freedom to make a better choice.

 Ahh to be called a son of the living God. I love to let my imagination soar to Heaven. Yeah I want more! The restful presence of God is found right here, walking in the Spirit, it’s safe here, the calm hiding place for my mind from the world around me is found here. I can yell out ABBA in this place and know my heart is near his. It is the only place that really feels like home. Who wouldn’t want to stay in a place like this? It is worth the struggle to live here.

 You can tell when someone lives in the Spirit. It's evident because that's when God visits earth and great things happen.



Walk with me.