I’m talking to that believer who is working with the Holy Spirit, surrendering to the Holy Spirit, doing what they can in their own power, in partnership with God’s grace to resist the temptations of the sin nature.
I’m talking to the struggling believer who’s frustrated with their own behavior who says, I don’t want to do those things, but I keep doing them or I know I should do those things, but I can’t bring myself to do them.
You should know that the Holy Spirit abides even when you sin.
And this is something that friends of the Holy Spirit know because as you continue to walk long term with the Holy Spirit in a way where you’re aware of his presence in a way where you’re aware of his nature.
As you continue to walk with him, there will be moments that you make a mistake, there will be times where you fail him.
And in those moments, you’ll know that the presence of the Holy Spirit remains with you.
So this is not an encouragement to sin.
This is simply to say that even in our flawed state, the Holy Spirit abides John chapter 14 verses 15 to 17, say this.
If you love me, obey my commandments.
And I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.
He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.
Now, let me stop there just for a moment to acknowledge that very clearly, Jesus is instructing us to obey the commands of God.
So here we see both grace and truth. You must obey His commands.
If you truly love Him, you will aim to keep God’s Holy standard.
And then he says, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.
He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.
The world cannot receive him because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him.
So unbelievers do not have the Holy Spirit. And we understand that the Holy Spirit is omnipresent.
He’s everywhere at all times. But the scripture makes it abundantly clear that there is an indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer that is different than the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit.
This is a heightened influence of Him. It’s how God marks His people.
But you know Him because He lives with you now and later will be in you.
The Holy Spirit will never leave a true believer.
Now, some might ask if someone becomes a true believer, can they stop being a true believer that’s often debated.
We’re not talking about that. But what I am saying is that the Holy Spirit does not leave a true believer.
When you are a true believer, the Holy Spirit abides with you.
In fact, we need him for the work of sanctification.
We need the Holy Spirit to abide to help us get it right.
First, Peter 12 says, elect according to the fore knowledge of God, the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace unto you and peace be multiplied.
So, sanctification of the Spirit is unto obedience.
So it is the work of the Holy Spirit in your life that enables you to obey.
We can pray incline my heart to your statutes, incline my heart to your word.
Lord, make me willing to obey you, bend my will. That’s what the Holy Spirit does.
When we surrender to that process of sanctification, we surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit.
He begins to do things in us that causes our nature to be transformed.
Second Thessalonian 2 13 says, but we are bound to give thanks always to God for you brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth.
So we believe the Holy Spirit sanctifies Romans 8 13. For if you live after the flesh, ye shall die.
Scripture is abundantly clear there. But if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
So here, the scripture is telling us that in order to subject the sin nature, in order to subject the effect that the sin nature has to the physical body, we must do so through the power of the Holy Spirit.
It’s through the spirit that we mortify or put to death, the deeds of the flesh.
So how is it that the Holy Spirit can dwell where there’s sin? This is a good question.
How can the Holy Spirit dwell with a sinful person? Well, remember this is the work of the cross.
This is atonement. This is the ministry of Reconciliation. This is imputed righteousness to you through faith.
When you as a born again believer place your faith in the finished work of the cross, there’s a great exchange that takes place when God looks at the cross and he sees the suffering of his son and he had poured out his wrath upon the Son.
When God looks at that sacrifice, when God looks at Christ on the cross, he sees your every mistake.
It was our sins that put Him there. When God looks at the cross, he sees your flaws.
He sees your mistakes. He sees your iniquity.
He sees your sinful attitudes, your sinful thoughts and that exchange took place in your favor.
Because now when God looks at those who placed their faith in Christ, Jesus, he sees Christ’s perfection on them So God is redeeming us.
Let me ask you this when we sin, who is the one sinning?
Is it someone else another person that we might be able to blame?
No, is it some demon? No. Is it culture sinning through us? No. Who is the one sinning?
When we sin the Bible makes it clear that when we are carried away by our own sinful desires, that’s when we give into temptation.
So when we sin, we are the ones who sin the sin nature in us that we choose to allow to have influence.
Now who is the one being redeemed? You are God is redeeming you.
So there is something redeemable about us because of what Christ did on the cross.
So this is how the Holy Spirit can abide with you even though you still make mistakes.
It’s because the imputed righteousness, it’s because of the atonement.
I mean, think about this, if the Holy Spirit couldn’t dwell with us, just because we make mistakes, then that means any time we ever made even a small mistake, if you can call it a small mistake compared to the holiness of God, that would mean that any thought, any action, any lapse in judgment would cause the Holy Spirit to abandon us, which would mean that the Holy Spirit would come and go and come and go and come and go.
Well, that’s not what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit doesn’t abandon us when we make mistakes.
Sure we should feel convicted. Yes, there are consequences to sin. Yes.
Sin is still very destructive in the life of the believer.
And yes, there are still even eternal consequences to sin through the loss of reward in the life of the believer.
But what sense would it make for God to remove from you?
Your only chance at being holy as a punishment for not being holy? Well, think about it.
The Holy Spirit in you is what allows you to resist the sin nature.
So if you make a mistake and God removes from you, the Holy Spirit, what chance do you have now?
How will he possibly help you to resist if he’s abandoned you?
So, the very fact that the Holy Spirit abides with you is proof of His mercy and compassion.
And therefore, when the Holy Spirit abides, he’s working with us against the sin nature Galatians 5 16.
So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives, then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.
Watch this verse 17. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants.
And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires.
These two forces are constantly fighting each other. So you are not free to carry out your own good intentions.
Sin has no place in the life of the believer. There are consequences to sin.
Sin is destructive and there is even eternal loss of reward if we continue in sin on this side of eternity.
But the Holy Spirit isn’t going to abandon you because you make a mistake.
This is the other side of the coin. The Holy Spirit is gracious. He’s more faithful than we are sinful.
He’s more patient than we are stubborn. He abides with us faithfully.
This is something that friends of the Holy Spirit know when you’ve walked with the Holy Spirit closely, when you come to know him and his word, you understand that there’s a certain security in walking with the Holy Spirit, not to excuse your sin, not to allow you to continue in sin.
But he abides that he might remain with you and help you get it right.
He stays with you and says, let’s correct this. He’ll convict you harshly.
I mean, like the psalmist wrote your hand weighed heavily upon me.
That’s what the Holy Spirit does when you’re not living like you should the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of a compromising believer can bring about very strong conviction and make you quite miserable.
He won’t let you sleep. He he won’t let you enjoy things until you get that sin, right?
And that’s his mercy. He loves you too much to leave you to your own compromise and your sin.
So you can mess up, you shouldn’t, but you can mess up and the Holy Spirit still abide, you shouldn’t try to, we should all strive for holiness.
But this doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit is going to abandon us. Friends of the Holy Spirit.
Know this about Him. They don’t take advantage of that though.
See, this is the mark of a true believer.
A true believer will look at the mercy of God and say that inspires me to do better, that inspires me to live holy, that inspires me to get it right.
Someone who’s not a true believer will look at that and say, well, now I’m free to sin.
Well, that’s prove that the Holy Spirit isn’t working in them because the Bible very clearly says that the Holy Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what our sin nature desires.
Someone right now could just think the Holy Spirit.
I want you to just thank the Holy Spirit in the comment section right now. Thank you Holy Spirit.
You can word that however you want.
I don’t know about you, but I’m thankful for the faithfulness of the precious Holy Spirit.
He abides not to excuse our sin.
He abides not to allow us to continue in sin, but he abides that he might liberate us from sin and continue to work with us to make us more like Christ.
So again, how can the Holy Spirit abide there with sin present in your life?
It’s because of the blood of Jesus. It’s because of the work of the cross.
It’s because of what Jesus did in that great exchange at the cross.
Remember this, it was at the cross that the best that God had to offer met with the worst that man had to offer.
Man offered sin, rebellion, stubbornness, pride. God offered his son the best that God had to offer.
And the worst that man had to offer met at the cross and was expressed right there in that moment when the great exchange took place and now you and I can have the Holy Spirit because our record is clean because of what Christ did.
So when God looks at us, he gives us Christ’s perfection, that’s imputed, righteousness.
He looks at us and says, I see my son. And so that’s how you can make a mistake.
Don’t take advantage of it. Because if you truly love the Holy Spirit, if you, I’ll say this, if you’re truly born again, you’ll have no desire to take advantage of that truly born again.
People don’t desire to take advantage of God’s grace.
They use God’s grace for what it was intended to be free from sin.
But that’s how a believer can keep the Holy Spirit even when they sometimes make mistakes because of the work of the cross.
God is not redeeming angels. God is not redeeming demons.
God is redeeming you and that’s why the Holy Spirit can stay with you even when you make a mistake.
What a privilege it is. Angels don’t understand this. Angels don’t even know that work of redemption. We do.
We have that privilege. God so loved us that He chose to redeem us. Thank you Holy Spirit. Indeed.
I wanna pray with you right now and I want you to ask for the Holy Spirit’s help in causing you to walk in a way that pleases him.
Father, I pray for that one receiving this now.
And first of all, Lord, we thank you that your mercies are new every morning and every moment we ask you to forgive us for the ways that we’ve grieved.
You precious Holy spirit. Come on, just tell him, tell him I’m sorry, Holy Spirit. Tell him that.
Say this, say help me to please you and not grieve you.
Now. Precious Holy Spirit be their reminder and let them live in an awareness of the nearness of your presence.
Thank you Lord, that you will buy in the mighty name of Jesus. We pray.
I want you to say it because you believe it. Say amen.
I know it’s tempting to click onto something else.
There’s lots of content that we offer on various different topics, but just for a moment, hear me out.
I want to ask you my brother, my sister, I need your help with something.
Look, we in the body of Christ need each other.
The Lord obviously is the one who’s increasing his ministry.
The Lord is the one who brings in the resources that we need to accomplish the work of the gospel.
The gospel is free but the means to deliver the gospel that can cost especially when you want to deliver the gospel message on a mass scale like we’re doing that takes resources and we understand that the Lord is the one who does it, but he does it to his Children like you, his Children like you who have generous hearts.
I’m asking you to not let the screen disconnect us.
I’m asking you to not say well, you know, someone else will give or someone else.
I’m asking you to listen and ask the Holy Spirit what you should give.
I’m asking you to give a one time or a single gift.
I should say a single gift to the ministry right now or give a monthly gift by becoming a monthly ministry supporter.
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Give today help the ministry keep going and growing strong.
And remember until next time, nothing is impossible with God.