When the people saw the new Saul, the man with a new heart, and heard him speaking differently, prophesying along with all the others, they were shocked! They exclaimed, “What!?” As if to say, “Who is this? We can’t believe what we’re hearing; it’s as if he’s a different person!” The effects of the Holy Spirit on a heart and life are so amazing that others can't help but take note!
When the Holy Spirit comes powerfully on us, gives us a new heart, and makes us new people, the effects are truly remarkable. Shocking even.
For example, notice the change spoken of here: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). For us who are born clinging to our flesh, comforting and gratifying our flesh, if we instead begin to crucify our flesh, well, that is shocking! That must be Christ living in us!
In the area of weight loss and exercise, the Holy Spirit can make such dramatic changes in us that we completely turn from our flesh, crucifying it and putting to death the misdeeds of our body, so much that we are hardly recognizable. We become new people with changed hearts, and we walk free! And then people begin noticing; they might even say, “What happened to you? It’s as if you’ve become a new person!” or "How did you lose the weight?"
Imagine telling them that this dramatic change has come to you apart from counting calories, tracking fat grams or any macros, or even weighing at all. Wow! Now, that’s the power of the Holy Spirit! That's Jesus Himself living His life through you.
As we end this lesson, please remember this: the Spirit of God comes and makes these changes in us as we wash at the cross, as we rejoice in our forgiveness and pardon, as we see Jesus bleeding and dying, finishing the work He came to do. Please do not disconnect this powerful working of the Holy Spirit from the love of Jesus in dying in your place because the two are intimately connected.
Let’s finish today with this passage, and please note the intimate connection between the cross of Christ and the power of the Spirit:
“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power” (1 Corinthians 2:2-5 NIV).
Question 5. According to 1 Corinthians 2:2-5 NIV, what happens to us as we focus on the message of the cross?
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