Our Only Power Source

Sometime back the Associated Press carried this dispatch:

“Glasgow, Ky.–Leslie Puckett, after struggling to start his car, lifted the hood and discovered that someone had stolen the motor.”

The man could not drive without his power-source!

One thing for sure brothers and sisters in Christ, no one can steal our power-source, since it is God the Holy Spirit Himself!

In Romans 8:9-11, we see our only power-source for victory.

“However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

In vs. 9, Paul contrasts the believer’s position with the unbeliever.

We aren’t in the sphere of the flesh, but are in the sphere of the Spirit, since the Holy Spirit dwells in our human spirit.

Only believers belong to Christ because He has taken up residence in our spirit.

This means we can now walk by the Spirit’s power and have victory.

Even though we are not in the sphere of the flesh as believers, we can still choose to “walk according to the flesh” as we saw in my last blog.

Since we are placed in the sphere of the Spirit, we are to choose to “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” as it says in Galatians 5:16.

We see in vs. 10, that our bodies do not have the ability on their own to reproduce Christ’s life, because of the power of sin.

Since Christ is in us through the Holy Spirit indwelling our spirit, we are alive because of His righteousness.

In vs. 11, we see we have a new power source for victory in the Holy Spirit.

It is only the Holy Spirit who can reproduce Christ’s resurrection life through us.

He will do this as we yield to Him.

One New Year’s Day, a number of years ago in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit.

It was out of gas.

The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas.

The amusing thing was this float represented the Standard Oil Company.

With its vast oil resources, its truck was out of gas.

We have vast resources in the Holy Spirit, who indwells our spirit.

We can neglect to tap into Him as our power-source and find ourselves out of gas.

May we, moment-by-moment, tap into our only power-source to live victoriously in Christ!

Blessings!
Pastor Ken Keeler, Director of Church Ministries