Hosanna Restoration Church

I guess the question we have to answer is what spirit lives in us. Jesus once told Peter that he was acting from a wrong spirit. He told the Pharisees that they did not know what spirit they were of. He went on to tell them that they were acting in the spirit of their father the devil. Ouch! Now that has to hurt.

If we are honest, we probably all need a little fine-tuning as to which spirit we are going operate in. How is it that blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth? Oh you don’t swear. Do you gossip? Do you run people down? Do rejoice when others have problems? Are you jealous if someone else is successful? Do you try to stop someone else’s success? Are you one who builds up or one who tears down? Do you look for good and promote it, or do just see what is wrong and magnify it? Okay, that is enough meddling; I think you can see the point here. God does not want us to be this way. And if we are, then we are robbing others and we are robbing ourselves of what God wants to do in and through our lives.

Everywhere I go, I tell people that I live in the greatest place in the world. There are some things that may not be perfect, but they are few compared to the good things I see. I tell people that because that is how I feel. The truth is that we can find the good in the things we want to find the good in. In some cases we will make a lot more allowances than in others. In His word, God tells us that the Spirit of God is peaceful. He also says blessed are the peacemakers for they shall see God. I think it would be all right to go on and say that people will see God in peacemakers.

God has chosen to reveal Himself to this world through us. He first sent Jesus to be the example and Jesus left us with instructions to go in the world and live according to the example that He gave us. It is true that no one has perfected that task, but it is also true that sometimes we just don’t try all that hard to accomplish it.

Why don’t we try harder? Why don’t we press for that mark? I think it is because we forget just how serious God is about our obedience. We can get very good at excusing things that we know the Holy Spirit is talking to us about. The more we brush off the Holy Spirit the easier it gets to ignore Him, until He has to stand back and wait for us to realize what we are doing.

It is good for us all do a little spirit check from time to time. I pray that today you were right on course for the prize. I pray that you never moved out of the Spirit of God. As for me, I had to repent as I wrote this, because I missed the mark today. I only ignored the Spirit for a little while. Wish I could say that I did not ignore Him at all. I thank God that I have some of today left and that tomorrow I can aim for perfection. God did say that we should be perfect as He is perfect. Talk about setting the bar high!