Monday, March 4, 2013

Empowered for Discipleship



eDevotion
Encouragement for your daily walk with God


Do you think of yourself as a disciple? “Are you kidding me,” you may be thinking, “it’s too cold where I live to wear sandals! Not to mention wearing a robe in public is out of style. Besides, I don’t have time to be a full-time disciple.”
Believe it or not, if you have chosen to follow Christ, you are a disciple—that’s right, a modern day disciple. And God will work in and through you just as He has worked in and through His disciples for the past two thousand years, by His Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is not a thing, a ghost, a force, or merely a power, He is a living being and part of the Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
When you put your full trust in what Christ did for you on Calvary, the Holy Spirit made His residence in you (see Romans 8:9; 1st Corinthians 3:16). Because He lives in you, He enables you to understand Scripture (see John 14:26). He empowers you to be a witness for Christ (see Acts 1:8). He develops in you His own characteristics—Fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23).
Furthermore, He sealed you for God (see Ephesians 4:30; 2nd Corinthians 1:21-22). Likewise, He has destroyed (Greek text uses the word luo, meaning loose or loosen) the works of Satan in your life (see 1st John 3:8). But while you are no longer under Satan’s control, he doesn’t stop trying to neutralize your Christian witness. He wants to diminish your faith to the point that you are ineffective in serving God (see Ephesians 6:10-12).
How do you deal with Satan’s clever tactics to wipe you out? The answer is in Paul’s prayer for the disciples in Ephesus, “That he would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16).
The point is simple, yet profound: You get strength to be Christ’s disciple from God’s Spirit—the Holy Spirit.

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