Living in the Power of the Spirit: Part 1
I’ve always said if you ever wonder what any preacher struggles with, he’ll preach about the very thing that’s got him by the throat. I think that we often do not avail ourselves of what God has given us in His divine presence living inside us. This mystery that Paul says that has been hidden for ages and generations is now disclosed to the Lord’s people, and that mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
I’d like to try to bind together two sections of scripture that have now become inseparable to me. Before my study on this, I had never really made that connection. These two sections are 2 Peter 1 and John 14-16, there in the upper room discourse.
Right in the middle of the upper room discourse in John 15, we have a passage that is so comforting and so familiar: Jesus says, “I am the vine and you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.” But he goes on to say, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
If we are abiding in the vine, that natural process of that growth is the fruit. But he says apart from me, you can do nothing. I don’t know what it is about the word “nothing” that we don’t get. 100% of the time in my life, there’s not a time where I don’t believe in Jesus—that I don’t have faith or believe that this Word, Jesus, became flesh. I believe that 100% of the time, but a very large percentage of my time, I am doing anything but abiding in Christ. I am living in my strength, in my own will, in my plans, and in my own power—and I just don’t get what the word “nothing” really means.
The NIV gives us this word, “remain,” which is used in “remain in me.” When I was in school, if math class lasted an hour, I had to remain in that math class until the bell rang and I was able to leave. But I was certainly not abiding by anything else that was going on in that class. I could have cared less. I was thinking about what I wanted to do after class. To remain is a different thing. To abide in Christ, to live in His presence, to abide in His power, to know that He is living inside me, this mystery—it’s something that escapes me.
This word “nothing” means that anything I do in my own strength and power has absolutely no eternal value. It has no significance in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. The things I do—I may be able to say big words and impress people, use Greek terminology, Hebrew, or Latin—but it doesn’t matter. I may be able to impress them on a fleshly level, but I will never speak to the core of the spirit of God living inside them and moving them.
The reason I want to connect these two things is that you have to understand that Peter was sitting at the table with Jesus in that upper room, hearing the very words Jesus spoke. So Peter writes in 2 Peter 1 verses 1-4:
...To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours. Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
I want you to look at the beginning. Often we think, “Man, if I just had the faith of Peter—if I had the faith of Paul.” But Peter just told us that our faith in Jesus Christ is on equal standing with his. He’s a guy just like us. In Acts 4, he and John are speaking to the Sanhedrin, who make note of the fact that these are unschooled, ordinary men. In the Latin Vulgate [4th-century Latin translation of the Bible], the word is idiota—these are common idiots. I’m a common idiot. I have nothing before Jesus Christ. I have nothing apart from Jesus Christ. I can do nothing apart from Jesus. What he is saying to us is that you don’t have to be somebody that you’re not. Be exactly who you are. You have equal standing with us.
Here Peter uses the word “knowledge” over and over again, but here we are talking about a different type of knowledge. When we usually think of the word knowledge, we think, “I need a degree, I need book smarts, I need all of these things.” This is not the case here. The word here is a Greek word called epignosis, which denotes relationship.
Now, I know Ryan Lee. I’ve hung out with him, we’ve eaten together, and we’ve done mission work together, but I do not have an epignosis relationship with Ryan. Miranda, his wife, I guaranteeknows him in the epignosis way. She has that relationship—that one flesh relationship—and this is what Peter is referring to.
What promises do you think Peter is referring to in those verses? He doesn’t articulate any of the “great and precious promises” here. However, I would argue this is what ties together 2 Peter and John. Jesus makes incredible, staggering promises with us. John 14:16 states:
Jesus said, I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him or knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.
These are the great and precious promises that Peter is referring to here in 2 Peter 1. He says, because of His divine power, because of His glory, His excellence, and because He has called us, He has given us the opportunity to be partakers of the divine nature. Do you think of yourself as someone who partakes in the divine nature? Well, if this mystery, Christ in you, the hope of glory, is inside you, Jesus says “I will be with you forever. I will come to you.” And he begins to tell us the role of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s take a look at this word partakers—in relation to the Lord’s Supper, for example. Let’s say I am in the WFR auditorium on a Sunday morning, and they are observing the Lord’s Supper. If I’m in its presence, and it goes by me and I don’t partake of it, am I participating? Even though it’s right there—even though it is something that is so close—in order for me to be a partaker in that meal, I have to pick it up, put it in my mouth, chew it up, and swallow it to where it becomes part of me.
It’s the most intimate thing I could possibly do, and Jesus says, “This is my body—this is my blood.” But I think we treat the Holy Spirit this way sometimes. We want to know that He is there, we want to be comforted by Him, but do I ingest Him? Do I partake of what He has given me, inside of me?
It is one thing for me to have food on the table and to be starving to death. I can look at it, I can know it is there, but if I never pick it up and put it in my mouth and eat it, I’ll starve to death. I believe I walk around in my life most of the time in that vein. I concentrate on my own thoughts and my own plans. I’m remaining in Christ, but I’m certainly not “abiding” in what He wants to do. This is exactly what Jesus is telling me:
Apart from Me you can have a form of godliness, you can have some kind of ministry, but in order for it to have any eternal relevance, it’s got to be connected with Me—it’s got to be from Me.
So how do we become partakers of the Holy Spirit? How do we become partakers of this divine nature? In John 6: 53-56, Jesus says this:
Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
Let’s think this out. The first thing that I’m going to look at is Luke 9:23, which says “Whoever would come after me must take up his cross daily, deny himself, and follow me.”
How many times in our ministry do we make plans, we get our things together, and we ask the Lord to follow us in our ministry? Jesus didn’t say “I’ll follow You.” Jesus said to take up your cross because you’ve been crucified with Christ—you no longer live, but Jesus Christ lives in you. He says, “I live in you—I am leading you.” This is not my ministry, it’s not your ministry. It is Jesus’ ministry, and we follow Him in that. We ingest Him daily, we pick up His body and His blood, and we ingest that.
Here are the ways that I do that:
First thing I need to do every day is give Him permission. I give Him the full right to myself. Because I have been crucified with Christ, I no longer live. We have our lists, we have our plans, and what we want to achieve each day. What we need to do, when we’re getting ready, and we come out of that bathroom, we need to take that list and we hold it up to the mirror and we say “Jesus, I give you permission to totally wreck this list.”
Because I have a plan—I want to do this, I want to do that—and sometimes Jesus says, “No, that’s not exactly what we’re going to do today.” Whatever permission you need to give Him to interrupt your day, to bring whatever person that you don’t see coming in front of you, do it. Maybe that is the person that He wants you to talk to today and not the meeting you have scheduled at 1:00. In doing that, I eat His flesh and I drink His blood. Ingest Him and say, “You are in charge, this is Your ministry, this is Your day. I will follow You and not ask You to follow me.”
I think very much about Luke 9:33. Peter is at the transfiguration. He sees Jesus, and there’s Moses and Elijah, and he says, “Hey, I’ve got an idea! I’m going to put up three shelters and it will be like a Disney World of Jesus! It’s going to be awesome! I can see it in my mind!” But Jesus says, “Thank you and I love you, but that’s not what we’re going to do. That’s not my plan, that’s not my ministry, and you need to follow me.”
Philippians 3:10 says—and here’s this word epignosis again: “I want to know Christ—I want to know the fellowship of his suffering.” We all suffer for Christ. But how much power do we attribute to the enemy when we say “Oh, this is going against me, this computer won’t work, I missed my flight, they canceled this conference, etc.”
What do we do in those situations? We say, “It’s the enemy fighting against me.” Well, maybe the Lord doesn’t want us to go that way. The Lord leads us by preventing and permitting. He closes one door and opens another, and that’s how He directs our path. That’s how He directs our feet. He wrecks our day, He wrecks my plan, He does something that is not on my list, and when I say Amen I am saying “let it be.”
Let it be as You say, Lord. This is Your ministry, this is Your mission, this is Your day, this is Your plan—not mine. You become greater and I become less. And I eat His flesh, and I drink His blood, and I give Him full authority in every facet, every moment, and I praise Him. When things go wrong, I say Amen.
“That conference has been canceled Larry, you’re not invited to speak anymore.” AMEN! Maybe I shouldn’t have gone there in the first place. He directs us by preventing and permitting.
So, give Him permission. Give Him authority. Give Him the full right. Every morning you pick up His flesh, you drink His blood, and you submit to Him.
Larry’s article concludes with “Living in the Power of the Spirit Part 2” here.
Larry Bowles and his wife Cathy are two of our favorite partners in Christ. They live in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma where they are members of the Muksogee Church of Christ. Together, they minister to former Muslim refugees in Athens, Greece at the AcroCenter.
The Bowles family has been instrumental in connecting us with refugee ministries in Athens, and we are always grateful for their selfless service, insightful wisdom, and incredible hearts for Christ.