Video Transcript: Led by the Spirit

Video Transcript - Led By the Spirit (Dr. Feddes)

We'll know more broadly how to know God's will, in a number of messages. And today I want to reflect on what it means to be led by the Spirit. And we're going to read from Romans 8:1-17. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life, set me free from the law of sin and death, for what the law was powerless to do. God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be met in us who live not according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit. Paul has written this right after writing about the terrible struggle of wanting what's right but still doing what's wrong. And he says God's way is that he sent his son to pay for what's wrong, and then give us His Spirit to lead us and empower us in what's right. 

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their mind set on what that nature desires. But those who live in accordance with the spirit have their mind set on what the Spirit desires, the mind is sinful man is death. The mind of the Spirit is life and peace. The simple mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit. If the Spirit of God lives in you, and if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ The dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation but it is not to the sinful nature to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die but if by the Spirit you put to death, the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you to not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs heirs of God and co heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. This ends the reading of God's Word and God always blesses His Word to those who listen. 

Sometimes we hear people say, I felt lad, or the Spirit led me. Maybe that's something that you sometimes say yourself. What do we mean by that? What do we mean by being led by the Spirit? Well, before we get into that in more depth, let's just think again about what it means to receive guidance from God period, and how we can get supernatural guidance and direction in our lives. And previous message we talked about how not to do that. A lot of people do want to know what the supernatural or the divine realm is up to, and to figure out the next step into their future so that they can make that future turn out well, and the Bible speaks of various things and real life around the shows these things being practiced. People would dig into the innards of animals and look at their liver and their intestines and their guts and, and have these things mapped out as to what they meant for the future, and then they'd make their decisions accordingly. People would look at the stars and make their horoscopes and consult their astrologers thinking that the stars were giving them insight into the future. And if only they could figure out the movements of the stars, they would know the map for their own life and to be aware of what steps to take next. There was fortune telling and still is in various forms, whether it was looking in the liquid at the bottom of a cup that somebody had drunk from or reading tea leaves or tarot cards or Weegee board or crystal balls or little dangling crystals or palm reading or what have you, ways of trying to figure out the future and then make good decisions based on that. 

And then there was the terrible practice of trying to get in touch with the spirits of the dead and seances and finding out what dead people were telling you was going to come next and The Bible is very fierce in denouncing these practices and saying, You go that route, you are in deep trouble. Why should people monitor and consult spirits to the law and to the testimony, if they don't speak according to this word, they don't have the light of day. That's what the Bible says about these kinds of attempts to discover divine plans. But as you read the Bible, you also find out that God did give guidance and sometimes very specific guidance. And those of us who are wanting to be guided by God, who wants to make decisions, according to His will, may look back at such a time and say, Wow that was guidance. In the time of Moses, you didn't have to wonder who was supposed to be the leader, or the leaders. God told you. Moses is my prophet. Aaron is the priest. Erin's descendants are going to continue to be the priests. When we need a new later Joshua was the guy and so on if God told exactly who was supposed to lead next, same with kings, King Saul was chosen then King David was anointed. 

And God made it very clear who he wanted. God told him what uniforms to wear the priests, stitching and the color of their clothes and the type of fabric they were to wear was spelled out in detail. You didn't have to wonder, well, I wonder, should I wear a suit or casual today? You, you were told what your uniform was. If you were a priest, you were told which foods were allowed and a long list of foods that you had to avoid. You were told certain things about your haircut, and your hairstyle and your clothing and what kinds of fabrics were permitted or weren't permitted. They didn't have congregation debates about the building project, or the budget or how to put it together. God said here are the plans for the tabernacle following them to the letter. God spelled out the minimum amount of the offering that they should bring. God told them when to camp, when to move, how far to travel in a day, where to camp next. And maybe a part of you says, wow, I wish I had that specific guidance today where all the particulars were spelled out by God. And I knew exactly what I was supposed to do at all times. Well, just a couple of questions. One of the things you already know that you're supposed to do, how are you doing with that? What do you like to add to the list? And secondly, how did this work out for those folks? 

By the time of the New Testament, the apostles had fallen . Peters said, Hey, we have that law God did give it but it was a burden. That was more than we can bear; that kind of micromanaging of our lives was never God's ultimate will for his people; it was given to guide them during a certain time when God spelled everything out. And in a sense, the Bible even says he was treating them like little children, little children, those of your parents, just a real quick parenting tip micromanagement works a little better when they're three than when they're 16. Okay, you need to be a little cautious about thinking that we little children, because they enjoyed getting all your orders, maybe they didn't even enjoy it at that time. But you tell them almost everything when they're young. And as they get older, you don't give all that particular guidance all the time. You want them to make some good decisions on their own. At any rate, there was detailed guidance in the time of Moses. And when you're looking at the Old Covenant throughout the Old Testament, there were different ways that God would use to communicate his will to his people. Sometimes God just spoke there. heard the voice of God, or God would send a message through an angel and they could hear that angels speaking. 

And those were God's words to them. And that made it very clear. And over the time of the Old Testament, some of those words were written down as God inspired holy writers to write them down so that he would have that down on paper, or down in stone, the 10 Commandments were written by the finger of God in stone, and other parts of the Old Testament written on parchment or the paper of that time. So God's voice and God's writings were a very important part of Old Covenant guidance. Then there was just the guidance God gave for a particular occasion. Sometimes when they were supposed to fight a war or not supposed to fight a war, a Prophet would tell them to do that. One time when Saul lost his donkeys. He went to the prophet to find out which way they went because he'd been looking for a while and couldn't find them. God gave these commands through his profit. And his promises, his warnings he would speak through prophets, then there were kind of articles that seemed to be almost like some practices that some of the pagan nations were using as well. 

We read the urim and the thummim, nobody's quite sure what they were. So I will not launch into a long explanation of what the urim and thummim were, if you read a long detailed explanation, you may be assured that it is not based on known fact, we just don't know exactly what the urim and thummim were. But a couple of the best guesses were that it was a couple of sticks, one white, one black or a couple of stones of different colors. And you could get a yes or no, depending on the configuration, but whatever they were the euro and the sun and we know what they were used for the high priest of Israel would have these to use that critical decision points in Israel's history on decisions affecting the nation, and they would consult the high priest. And there were even sometimes when the urim and the thummim would just say God wouldn't speak to the king because he was not on talking terms with them. But the urim and the thummim Were a means of using that another means of sometimes discerning what God was saying was casting laughs are equivalent, maybe flipping a coin or what have you. 

But casting locks was used to divide property. That's how the land of Canaan was parceled out. God also gave specific directions in the lots exactly the way the directions that he had given had gone. Sometimes when they captured a lot of plunder during a war. How did the property get divided up? Well, they cast lots for it. Sometimes choosing a leader, God would identify who that leader was. That's how King Saul was chosen in front of the people. God had already anointed Saul to be king through the prophet Samuel before any of that happened. But then when it was time to identify who the king was supposed to be, they would cast lots and oh, it's the tribe of Benjamin Castile out again. Oh, it's from The clan of Kish, and then Oh, the castle begins and it's Saul, he's out hiding in the baggage because he already knows he's supposed to be king. Anyway, they would use locks to find out who a leader was supposed to be in the New Testament, you read about Metius, being chosen by a lot to be a disciple to replace Judas, who had hanged himself after betraying Jesus. Sometimes you cast lots to find an offender. 

When Jonah was on a boat and a huge storm came up, the sailor said, Hey, somebody's got to be blamed for this. So they cast lots and eventually the lot fell on Jonah. So sometimes the casting of lots was something that God would use. It's noteworthy though, that we never ever read of casting locks again in the Bible. After the day of Pentecost, even the only time the New Testament is mentioned in the choosing of Matius occurs before Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit. A couple of other ways that we read about repeatedly are through dreams, whether it was Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, or Joseph or Daniel, sometimes they would have dreams that would communicate with them. In the New Testament dreams were still used sometimes to communicate messages from God. And then there were the signs, the burning bush that Moses saw the pillar of fire that told the people of Israel where to camp, where to move, how far to go for 40 years, that pillar of fire was their GPS and it guided them to the exact spot and then they would be there and then when it moved, they would move. Gideon would go a little different direction. God gave the pillar of fire getting asked for a fleece, he asked for a sign, but you have all these different ways of Old Covenant guidance. 

And then it becomes a question well, now we're supposed to live by the Bible. So if God micromanaged things and told people what clothing to wear, and what food to eat, and everything else during the time of Moses, and if you use urine and thumb and lops and all of that, what is that? For us today when we want to follow God's leading in our lives. And it's important to realize that we live in a somewhat different era than the time of the older covenant. That does not mean that everything in the Bible in the Old Testament is just to be ditched. But God's way of administering things is different today than it was during the Old Testament time. And we need to keep that in mind. Bruce waltke, who wrote a book on these matters, and has some valuable things to say, he says the common idea of defining God's will that is trying to find out the future ahead of time is either a pagan notion that we Christians need to let go of, or a mode of administration that God no longer uses. 

God has given us a program of guidance that involves getting to know him through his word and letting him shape our character, our hearts and our desires. And then as we know the mind of God, we can live out his will. That doesn't mean that God never again uses a dream or never prompts somebody. With a message from him, but it does mean that the main way that God guides us is quite different from giving us every detail from outside us. God gives less details for directing us than he did in the Old Testament time. And he does it not just from outside, but from the inside. And by prompting inwardly rather than by giving, just giving the commands in the orders and the signs outwardly. And so let's focus now on what is meant by that phrase led by the Spirit. two passages that are kind of parallel are Romans 8 and Galatians 5 and in both of those, it's talking about how our flesh, our fallen sinful nature is always trying to control us, and how the Holy Spirit is battling against that fallen sinful nature and leading us in a very different direction. 

Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear but you received the Spirit of sonship and by him We cry Abba, Father. Galatians five says, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law of Moses. If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit. So being led by the Spirit or walking by the Spirit. If we want to know how God guides us, and leads us in our life today, we need to understand more of the working of the Holy Spirit and what he does in our lives. So I just want to focus on five different areas where we find the Spirit's leading. One thing the Spirit does is that he continues what Jesus was doing, he keeps on teaching us and he continues this ministry of Jesus by an interactive relationship and by showing the big picture. You see, we live in a different time than the old covenant believers did. Let me just highlight that again. The Old Covenant believers didn't yet have the whole Bible, the fullness of the Scriptures revealed they did not have the full character of God displayed clearly in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not know how the way of salvation was going to work out fully. They had prophecies and hints. And God was very good in giving them those. But they didn't have the full realization that it would be to the death of Jesus Christ and through His resurrection, that God would forgive sins and bring eternal life to the world. 

They did not know God's kingdom plan for the whole world or how history was going to end up. And in the New Testament, God revealed how he was going to bless all the nations and then bring history to its conclusion. And perhaps Above all, they did not have the indwelling Holy Spirit to strengthen and guide them. And that's a huge difference. Between the old covenant in the new camp, the Holy Spirit was active in the Old Testament, but his special indwelling within believers and doing it on behalf of Jesus Christ, identifiably Jesus. Because now he had come that wasn't happening in the Old Covenant, it is happening now. The spirit is pointing us always to Jesus, Jesus said, I have many things to tell you more than you can now bear. But when the spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will bring glory to me by taking from what's mine, and making it known to you. So the spirit is keeping up and continuing what Jesus does. When you read the book of Acts. It starts out by saying, well in my first book, and Luke is talking about the gospel, according to Luke about Jesus life, in my first book, I told you about all that Jesus began to do and teach. And then the book of Acts is about what Jesus continued to do and teach through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is an interactive relationship the Bible speaks of Christ in you. The Bible says in that passage we just read from Romans 8. If you don't have the Spirit of Christ, you don't belong to Christ. Christ is in you, by the Holy Spirit.

There's a prayer that Christ will dwell in your heart through faith. There is an exclamation. I've been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And so it is this reality of Jesus Christ living in us, in me by His Holy Spirit, that is the key to all of this. Are you aware of something different inside you have somebody different inside you have a life and of a power? That's not just you have a way of thinking that's different from the way the average person in our world thinks there's somebody, if you're a Christian at all, there is somebody living in you. And it's very important that you become more and more aware of his presence and his reality and to understand who he is, and how he communicates with you. Another thing in addition to connecting with us with Jesus, and helping us to know Him more, which is by the way, his supreme job, the Holy Spirit is always pointing people to Jesus, he gives us the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Lord is the spirit or the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom and we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same lightness from one degree of glory to another. And this comes from the Lord Who is the spirit. 

That's what the Bible says. He's always leading us to Christ and transforming us, and how does he go about doing that? Well, one way is and his main way really is through the Scriptures through the Bible. He helps us to understand the Bible and not only to understand it, But to accept it, to believe it, to be glad in God's message there to rejoice in it. Because without that Ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Bible is going to look like a very fat, boring book at best, and totally out of tune. Weird, unbelievable book at worst. The Bible says the message of the cross that you are saved by the death of a Jewish Carpenter 2000 years ago hanging there and bleeding, that that somehow is important for everybody in the world. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. The man without the spirit cannot understand the things that come from the Spirit of God says the Scripture. He cannot understand the things that come from the Spirit of God, because they are foolish to him and he cannot understand them because they're spiritually discerned. The spiritual man can make judgments about All things, because we have the mind of Christ. That's what the Bible says about these things. If you don't have the Spirit of God working in us, the Bible is useless and worse than useless. And that's one reason why it can be a danger. Even for Christians who teach on God's guidance to say what you need to do is just read your Bible, read it very carefully, study it harder and try to apply those principles to your life. 

There's a lot of truth and wisdom in that except you can't understand the Bible, without the Holy Spirit working in you. And you can't have a sense of how the Bible applies without the Holy Spirit guiding you. He's the one that inspired the writers of it, but he's also the one who illumines the readers of it. And so do not separate the work of the Holy Spirit from the Bible either by saying I can use the Bible, and I don't need any weird stuff going on from some spirit inside I can read that thing. I mean, the words are they're not so fast. You need the spirit to open your eyes to what it's saying. And on the flip side, don't say, oh, I've got the spirit. He's my inner guy. Doesn't the Bible say you have an anointing from God, you have no about it, no need of anyone to teach you. Well keep things in their context. He did give us the Bible. And so do not separate his ministry of guidance from the Bible. What he does is through the Bible, he shows you God's plan for history. He shows you the way of salvation in Christ. He shows you who Jesus is, so that you're not just stuck with Well, I have certain vibes about Jesus, and I have certain thoughts about Jesus. And so that's what Jesus is no, you can check those inner impressions and beliefs about Jesus by the objective truth of the Bible. It's written there so that you can have something that's a check in a measuring stick for what's going on inside you because it's quite dangerous to think only in the spirit, but not The Scriptures.

And then in these passages in particular that we've been reading, we find that a major job of the spirit is just fighting our old fallen self, fighting our flesh, fighting those urges, and desires that tend to dominate our lives. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, your God is your gut by which it just means the urges, desires, the bodily functions, the whatever that just drives you, but there's nothing supernatural or spiritual about you. When the Holy Spirit is in you. You have somebody to counteract just I'm going to do whatever my body is telling me to do lately, I'm going to do whatever I feel like doing well, the Holy Spirit reorients what you feel like doing, he shows you some things that you feel like doing shouldn't be done. And he also gives you a feeling for some new things, desires for some new things that you want to do. And he fights that old self and he makes us holier And he makes us wiser. Just a couple of phrases that the Bible uses: Holy Spirit, not just spirit, but often Holy Spirit or spirit of holiness. 

The spirit is in the business of making us more like our Lord Jesus Christ. We want God's guidance to say, well, Lord, what should I do on this big decision I have next week? Well, that's a worthy thing. We should pray for wisdom on such decisions. But it is more important in this whole area being led by the Spirit, that just who we are, is getting reshaped by the Holy Spirit of God, living in us and making us holier, and then wiser as well. The Bible when speaking of Jesus says, The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom, and understanding the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. That's the kind of Spirit that Jesus had a spirit of wisdom and understanding and then in the new There is a prayer for believers for you and me that we will have the spirit of wisdom and understanding. God did not redeem us to be dunces. He didn't want us to be morons. The spirit he gives is the spirit of wisdom, that wisdom that guided our Lord Jesus Christ and made him the smartest human who ever lived as well as of course, the all knowing God. But that same spirit he gives to those who belong to Him. And when he lives in you, he makes you smarter, he makes you wiser. It doesn't mean necessarily that you're going to know physics better than the average physicist, or that you're going to know law better than the average lawyer. In many cases, the spirit will actually improve your capacity to learn things that you might have had a hard time learning, but it doesn't turn you into the Spirit's presence doesn't turn you into a know it all necessarily, but it gives you good judgment. It makes you wiser and helps you to make right decisions. In good decisions, how's it go about doing that? 

Well, again, it's not just guidance from the outside, okay, there's a pillar of fire over there. There's a voice coming audibly from over there. Those are not the only are the primary ways by which God guides his people today. He puts God's thoughts in our minds, and he puts God's desires in our hearts. The Spirit works from the inside out. What does it say in Romans eight the spirit testifies with our spirit. He testifies as spirit with our spirit. In the Old Testament, the Book of Proverbs that says the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. And people who have fallen away from God that lamp has grown very dim or gone out completely. But when the Spirit comes into he ignites that lamp, and again, your spirit becomes his lamp that makes things brighter within you and to understand this world of spirit And, and the Bible says, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father will give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation. So you may know him better. I pray that he will open the eyes of your heart. So you can know the riches of the inheritance to which he's called you. 

So he gives you this spirit of wisdom revelation, the main point is simply to know God better not just to know next week's decision better but to know God better. And when you know God better your decision making is going to improve dramatically. He wants to make you know God better. And how he does that is he opens the eyes of your heart. Your heart has eyeballs. They're not the kind that that sees stuff. But your heart has a sense that God awakens and that the Spirit gives you and we it's very mysterious. I don't fully understand it and I can't put it all into words but I do want to say this There is a mystery to God's operation and his work by His Holy Spirit in your spirit. It is not just a matter of reading carefully doing the logic and then making the smartest decision as you happen to think about it. But be sensitive to the guidance and to the promptings of the thoughts that God is putting in your mind and the desires that he's placing in your heart. The spirit is there. He's also called the spirit of truth, to help us understand more of the truth of God and experience more of the reality of God. There's phrases in the Bible, such as the love of God is poured into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us. 

That's not verbal. I have read about God's love and I take it that logic tells me that God is very loving, logic better than nothing but the love of God poured into your heart. Is something the Holy Spirit does immediately on your spirit where you feel loved, where you experience love. The work of the Holy Spirit is to give peace we read in the Bible the peace that surpasses understanding. And that Galatians 5 passage about walking by the spirit of being led by the Spirit says the fruit of the Spirit is love, and joy and peace, and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self control, these attitudes, these, these feelings, who feelings are bad, Well, hi, Joy. Joy is rejoicing. I'm sorry, but I'm rejoicing. Peace is not chewing off your fingernails and being paralyzed with fright. It's feeling that God is there with you, and having peace in him. It's more than a feeling but it's not less than that. And so God stirs our heart and our affection and our feeling As well as our minds, and our logic. And then a final thing that I want to highlight here in the Spirit's leading of us is that he frees us as grown sons and daughters and his heirs. And he's not making every decision for us, and telling us explicitly what we got to do every time, there is a choice that needs to be made. Let's think again about Romans 8, and it says, we received the Spirit of sonship, or the spirit of adoption. 

Now we read that and we think about adoption nowadays. And when we think about adoption nowadays, that's a wonderful thing that a child who maybe one person didn't want or couldn't care for, but they would love them enough to at least give them bring them to birth, and then let someone else parent them. That kind of adoption is a wonderful thing. And when we picture our relationship to God that way, it is a beautiful thing that we who were outside God's family and enemies of his could not only be forgiven, but that he would adopt us as His own show. And then by a spirit that moves us to call him daddy, Father Abba is a wonderful thing that enemies of God can be children of God. There's another layer of meaning to be considered in this passage when it talks about the spirit of adoption. It was, after all, Romans 8. Where do you think Romans 8 was written? Well, it was written to Rome, and a bunch of Romans. And when Romans heard of adoption, they sometimes heard of somebody adopting somebody officially as an heir who was not their own child. But very often, adoption was a ceremony that occurred with your own kid. This ceremony was when you officially declared that person to have all the privileges and responsibilities of an adult. And so there was this ceremony where somebody who had been treated as just a little kid, or as Galatians talks about as a slave Paul says, Hey, even somebody who's born into the household isn't a whole lot better than a slave. They're just getting ordered around. They don't have any privileges. Yeah, some of you kids say, Yeah, I hear you there. I'm just a slave. Oh, man, my life is tough. Well, yeah, we parents have our own slavery at times, too. But anyway, I digress.

Nonetheless, Paul says, you know, sometimes with a kid, you don't have to, you know, you're always being told what to do. And you're not let in on what the adults are thinking you just got to follow their orders. But when you hit that point where you're adopted as the son, then the Roman father would make that son, the official heir and even head of the estate, sometimes he would even step back somewhat, and let that kid take over. But the ceremony of adoption was adult privilege, adult responsibility, and no more treating them as a little kid, or almost the equivalent of a slave. It's wonderful that God adopts us who are his enemies, but it's also wonderful that God would give us such privileges. And such responsibilities and treat us as more and more grown up people in him. Now I love my kids and I want my kids to make good decisions. Thus far with my grown children I may have had him some may have said this or that that they took as an order but I have never told my kids what place they had to go to college. They could choose somewhere else if they so desire. I haven't told my kids what person they ought to marry. 

We sometimes joke around knowing it's the kiss of death. If we mentioned somebody's name that of course that will be crossed off the list immediately. But, I don't give them explicit orders on which person they should date or marry. I haven't kicked out the house that my grown children have bought and told me now that's the one I'm ordering you to buy. I haven't told them Exactly how many children they ought to have. And you might say, well, that's good, because they probably wouldn't do it anyway. They know you, father doesn't know best. So. But what I'm saying now, it's very possible that I might care about them a lot, and not give them the specific order on every decision that they make. What if our Father in heaven follows a similar procedure? He cares about us very much. But that doesn't mean that he is always going to say this house and not that one, or this person, and not that one as a date or a potential spouse. Or you choose without this job and not that one, this school and not that one. Sometimes you may have prompting from the Lord that may come in a variety of forms, but you have a very clear and specific and strong prompting and you believe that it is God guiding you. Well, then, go ahead. But don't become totally frustrated if you don't get one of those on an important decision, he might be dealing with you through the spirit of adoption. And saying, You're my child, you're my heir, you're my grown son and daughter, you can start acting like it's my spirit in you. 

Pay attention to the thoughts that you have that are of the spirit and, and the feelings and desires you have that are of the spirit and if you're guided by the Bible atmosphere, you'll be able to sort out more and more what is the spirit and what's of the flesh, but then make decisions in the joy and in the freedom of the Holy Spirit. God has called us to freedom in the New Covenant not just micromanagement with every detail, spelled out what a blessing it is, to be led by the Spirit, led out of sin into holiness, led out of bondage into freedom, led out of ignorance of God into knowledge of God. In the face of Jesus Christ, dear friends, I just pray that that is a reality for each one of you, that the life of God, the love of God, the peace of God and yes, the guidance and leading of God will be more and more a reality that is experienced by you in your own life. Let's pray together. 

Dear Lord, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you for all that he does. And we pray especially on what we've been thinking about that we may be led by him in all the ways that are so important be led to Christ, be led into the reality of God be led into godly living, be led into love and joy and peace and all those fruits of the Spirit and led to Lord in the decisions that we make, that they may be pleasing to you that they may be wise and holy, and always in step with the spirit for Jesus' sake, amen.