Now is the time to be adopted
If God’s Spirit has taken residence in your heart then you can be thankful that you are not an orphan. Jesus said in John 14:18, “I will not leave you comfortless (orphans): I will come to you” (KJV). This promise made to Jesus’ apostles would be forgotten until the Holy Spirit descended upon them with power. At first they felt a painful loneliness after Christ’s death, making them feel like orphans; however, Jesus didn’t intend that they should stay as orphans. He said that He would come to them through the Holy Spirit.
How is it with us? Have we spent time to receive Christ in our hearts, or were we orphans today? Christ desires our relationship with Him to be a permanent one, and He knocks on our door each day, but we still must allow the Spirit the permission to come into our lives daily.
Too many of us pray so little. When the Spirit prompts us to pray, let us not stifle the inner urge. Stifling the inner urge quenches the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). Prayerlessness will eventually lead to spiritual suicide. Only he who doesn’t pray will most likely commit the “unpardonable sin,” attributing to God the spirit of Satan and vice versa. Eventually, Jesus said in John 16:2, these people will kill you and “think he’s serving God” (ISV). Without the Holy Spirit man can become so self-deceived!
The fellowship of the Spirit
The Bible offers no substitute for the “fellowship of the Spirit” (Phil. 2:1, ISV), and after all, “the person who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ” (Rom. 8:9, NCV). As DeWitt Osgood said on page 29 of his book The Promise of Power:
Fellowship involves more than a “touch-n-go” relationship. There should never be a time day or night when we act or think without an awareness of the Spirit’s presence. And when we heed the promptings of the Holy Spirit, this awareness awakens new and holy motivations.
DeWitt Osgood, The Promise of Power, p. 29
God desires to work through us, but this can be only through His Spirit, and ultimately complying with the Spirit will lead us to receive “the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 3:19, Mt. 28:18). Luke 10:19 says, “I give you authority… over all the power of the enemy.” And when we receive the authority and power in Christ, we have all power to use for His honor and glory.
Only the Spirit can make God’s word clear to us. Proverbs 1:23 states, “I will pour out my Spirit upon you, I will make known my words to you” (ISV). Only the Spirit can rightly interpret the meaning of God’s words for our individual lives.
Therefore, let us be adopted each day into Christ through the Holy Spirit in prayer (Eph. 6:18), thereby avoiding self-deception and rather utilizing the power and authority to honor and glorify God.
Kevin Michalek
Image: “The Light of the World” by William Holman Hunt, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.