MY TESTIMONY

Jesus said the the gospel of John that we should "abide in him" for without him we can do nothing.

 

So our study starts with acknowledging the fact that without the grace (enabling power) of God we cannot serve God or even please Him. It is therefore vital to our Christian life that we walk in this power every day, for if we fail to do so, we shall "dry up and wither" as a branch on Christ's vine, and eventually be cast off. We can observe that some Christians die spiritually in this way, some slowly, some more dramatically.

Well before they openly lose their faith in Jesus, something was not right with their relationship with God. While we can make every effort to assist people in having a healthy and happy relationship with God, it is ultimately the responsibility of each individual to have this relationship, and no one else can be blamed for our own lack of spirituality. And yet how many people do you see blaming others for their spiritual failures? If we do not abide in the love and discipline of the Holy Spirit, an evil spirit can take over our lives and replace love with a life full of bitterness and hatred towards God and those who tried to help us on the way.

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO US!

So how do we maintain this healthy relationship? Firstly, we must be diligent to maintain our private prayer life with God. We cannot blame circumstances that we were so busy doing doing daily duties( even charitable activities), that we had no time to pray.  But many a lazy person would rather sleep than pray through a crisis.

However, I have still found that I am not always as "inspired" as I would like to be while performing my daily tasks. There are certainly wonderful moments when we feel so full of the Spirit that any service to God is an absolute joy. I treasure such moments and memories. They are like our "first love" experiences. But as any married couple will tell you, those feelings come and go, and it is unrealistic to expect that they are going to be present every moment of our walk.

Rather than desiring to be spiritually "HIGH" all the time, I do believe that God's Spirit comes to us mainly as a peaceful contentedness. When I am "in the Spirit", I don't feel angry, lonely or upset, for I know God's living presence in my heart.

When we lose this peaceful contentedness, we should take note of this as a serious warning sign that something is not right and needs to be fixed in our spirit. There are so many "malcontented" people in the world. God forbid that we should become such negative and destructive personalities.

Now let me apply this back to something I do much of the time, i.e. street witnessing. Make no mistake; this is front line soldiery. If we do not have our relationship with God sorted out, it will all unravel out there on the street where we fight Satan's Kingdom head on day after day. Satan will mercilessly expose all our weaknesses and temptations there to our own heart, and we must be spiritually en guarde!

Some days I feel wonderfully inspired to be out there. Other days I will feel inspired one hour and discouraged the next. Some days I go out there with something like grim dogged determination to just get through the session.

I think its normal to go up and down like this to a certain degree. God teaches us that faithfulness is more important than having wonderful feelings. It is a vital spiritual lesson to be obedient to God when our feelings may try to trick us to stop serving him. People who only serve God when its "fun" cannot  be relied upon in any serious crisis.

But the days when I have stuck it out with grim determination have usually been rewarded with blessings later on in that day or week.

If however, we find ourselves drudging through our walk day after day, we need to start making changes to either our attitude, our schedule, or our prayer life.

 

This is what I see as the difference between what Paul describes as being "under law" or "under grace". When we are "in the Spirit" we are working in or under the grace of God. It is a contented condition where you are happy to serve God and others. It seems to flow out of us in an almost supernaturally natural way. Sometimes however, we are not so spiritual. When we are not under grace, then we go back to being "under the law". In other words, the law is there to tell us what is good and what is bad, and we should obey the rule because we know it is good even if our attitude is not perfect.  This is NOT an ideal state, but it IS better than being lawless!  So being under grace is not a lawless state as often decribed by religious preachers, but a higher spiritual state that cannot be achieved by simply following the Law. 

Other passages of scripture talk of the Law as being like a school master for children.  Children need simple straightforward rules to guide their behavior.  But Adulthood presents us with complex situations and decisions that no amount of simplistic Laws can cover.  As adults we need the guidance of the Spirit in order to help us apply the laws in a mature and just manner. 

 We talk about people who have a "Martha" spirit. They are usually very hard working practical people. They know that it is their DUTY to serve others. But when a person gets out of the spirit, they are just working as though under the law.  Sooner or later they are getting grumpy and resentful with others and even angry at God at having so much work to do. They get angry that others are not working as hard as they are, or are not showing enough gratitude to them for all their efforts to serve them. At this stage the person has completely lost the plot and needs to  stop working, slow down, pray, and repent of their bad attitude.

But the "law" cannot perfect a person's attitude. It's not really possible to stay a Christian and live at the level of being "under the law" for any length of time. If we are living at this level it can only be a stop gap measure with the aim of getting overselves back in the spiritual state of being "under grace" again. The Old Testament really is mostly about being under Law. Jesus came to show us a better way, the way of being under grace. 

So when we see these signs within ourselves, it is our personal responsibility to do something about our spiritual state.  We need to get to the bottom of what is going on in our spirit. It may be that there are people around us who are upsetting us.  Deal first with your own attitude and only then you will be able to see clearly enough to help someone with their problem. But we won't be able to help them if we are angry or out of the Spirit ourselves.  (Galatians 6:1)

 Don't stop seeking for wisdom and answers to your condition until you return to the peaceful and contented heights of living in the Spirit under the grace of God.