Devotions

Consider these promises God has made to us and see if your response to them is “Yea and Amen”:

1.  The Lord has established you, sealed you, filled you and anointed you with His Holy Spirit. “He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1:21–22).

You can’t walk in the Spirit until you believe you’re filled with the Spirit. And the truth is, the Holy Ghost is with us at all times, even when we have done wrong. In fact, we need Him as much when we have done wrong as when we’re doing right.

2.  Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would “abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth. . . . He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:16–17, 26). In short, the Spirit fills our minds with truth and guides us by that truth. So, have you committed a divine “yes” to this promise? Are you able to say, “Amen, Lord, let it be so in my life”?

3.  Jesus promised that the Spirit would be the inner voice to guide us, to glorify Christ in us, and to show us things to come. “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth . . . and he will shew you things to come” (16:13). Are you still wavering as to whether such a great promise could be true? Does it seem just too good that the Spirit wants to direct you in every step of your life? Or can you say, “Yes, Lord, let it be so”?

4.  God has promised to provide you with direction for all your ways. “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:6). Have you accepted His direction for your comings and goings—literally every step of your week, your day, this moment? Have you fully committed to this kind of walk? Is it yes and amen to you?

I asked the Lord to open up to me the meaning of Paul’s phrase, “Let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). As I approached this subject, I prayed, “Lord, make it all clear and understandable to me.” Here is how I believe the Spirit answered me: the golden key to understanding our walk in the Spirit is not complicated. It requires no theological training. In fact, it’s so simple that most of us can’t see it. Yet, if we’re able to grasp this one truth, we can enter into a life that’s free of distress, full of assured direction, and marked by perfect rest. The Spirit impressed on me these three simple words: “Just say yes!”

JUST SAY YES!

As soon as this phrase flashed into my consciousness, I replied, “Lord, that truly is simple. But what does it mean?”

It all goes back to a verse that Paul wrote to the Galatians. The apostle boldly stated, “All the promises of God in him are yea [yes], and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Corinthians1:20). According to Paul, walking in the Spirit begins when we give a confident, intractable “divine yes” to all of God’s promises. It means having the unwavering confidence that the Lord will keep every promise in His Book. It is saying, “Father, I have read Your promises, and I say yes to all of them. I believe Your word to me.”

Consider James’ admonition: “Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord” (James 1:6–7).

Now we know what a “divine yes” is. So, what does Paul mean by the “Amen” in the same verse? The word itself means, literally, “So be it. You can trust it.” In the context of the passage, “Amen” means saying, “I believe Your word to me, Lord. So be it in my life.”

“Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed. At the commandment of the Lord they rested in the tents, and at the commandment of the Lord they journeyed: they kept the charge of the Lord” (Numbers 9:22–23).

The cloud that guided the children of Israel through the wilderness was eventually lifted up to heaven. But another cloud descended from heaven centuries later, at the Upper Room in Jerusalem. The Holy Ghost—the same Spirit who had hovered over the wilderness tabernacle—came down and hovered over 120 worshipers who had gathered in the Upper Room after Jesus’ death. This cloud came farther down, into the very room where the people sat, and it dwelled upon the people’s heads as cloven tongues of fire.

The Greek word for cloven means “thoroughly distributed.” In short, this cloud of fire had split up and sat on each person in the Upper Room. Then the flames possessed the people’s bodies.

At that point, Jesus’ followers were “in the Spirit,” with the Holy Ghost living in them. Yet it is one thing to have the Spirit abiding in you, and something else entirely to live in total submission to the Spirit. You can be filled with the Holy Ghost, but that doesn’t mean you’re walking in obedience to His leading and allowing yourself to be governed by Him.

We who love Jesus today also have a cloud to follow. We may be filled with the Holy Spirit—praying and singing in the Spirit, or experiencing manifestations of the Spirit—but we still have to commit to taking orders from Him. If we don’t wait for His direction in all things, we simply aren’t walking in the Spirit. Paul’s instruction makes this distinction clear: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).

We are to walk in total submission to the Holy Spirit, just as Christ walked in absolute submission to the Father. Jesus testified, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (John 5:19). 

“I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (5:30). 

How can we possibly think we don’t have to depend on the Father for all things, when Christ Himself said He did? As lovers and followers of Jesus, do we dare think we can do what our Savior and Lord couldn’t do? Jesus waited on the Father, always seeking to have the mind of God.

If we are honest, we’ll admit that heaven is often the last place we turn when we need direction. Most often, we run to counselors, or spend hours on the phone with friends, seeking advice: “What do you think? Is it a good idea for me to go in this direction? Do you think I should do that?” Sadly, we go to the Holy Spirit as our last option, if we go to Him at all.

In Numbers 9, we read of a cloud that came down and covered the tabernacle in the wilderness. This cloud represented God’s constant presence with His people. And for us today, the cloud serves as a type of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.

At night, the cloud over the tabernacle in the wilderness became a pillar of fire, a warm glow in a dark place: “So it was alway: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night” (Numbers 9:16).

The children of Israel always followed this supernatural cloud, however it directed them. When it rose above the tabernacle, the people pulled up stakes and followed it. And wherever the cloud stopped, the people also stopped and pitched their tents. They moved or stayed according to its clear direction.

The Israelites were careful to move only as the cloud moved, because they knew it was God’s provision of guidance. It might move every day, or every week, and then not again for months at a time. Yet, day or night, the people always moved as it directed them (see Numbers 9:18-19).

To remind ourselves of the radical results of the resurrection, my wife Kelly and I have learned to repeat a certain phrase to each other: “Jesus paid it all.” He finished the work, He rose again, and He has blessed us with newness of life. We are to claim His resurrection power, putting it on like a suit of clothes. “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:54, NIV).

Paul says boldly that without Christ’s resurrection there would be no reason at all to be a Christian. There are voices in the church that say it doesn’t matter whether there was a resurrection. Some have famously written, “I would be a Christian even if it were proved that there was no resurrection. Christianity has made me a better person and it has made the world better.” Some scholars hold that Jesus’ encounters after the crucifixion were just mythical stories meant to encourage the early church.

Paul rejects all of this in the strongest possible terms. He says that if Christ wasn’t resurrected, the consequences are dire: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15, ESV).

Paul is saying, in effect, “If you don’t believe Christ was resurrected, then stop believing in God at all. Everyone stop preaching, evangelizing and doing good works in Jesus’ name. We’ll all be better off. You would do better to get wisdom from Dr. Phil or Oprah or a pop psychologist. They have more to say than someone whose every action is based on something that never happened.”

In short, the Christian faith is not some moral code to be kept. We don’t gather on Sundays just to get solace about eternity. Christ is either risen or He is not—and if He isn’t, then our sins were never forgiven.