As the Spirit Moves

John 3:5-8
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

As the Spirit Moves

We live in a world of natural and spiritual. The natural things we perceive and understand through our senses. They are based on taste, touch, seeing, hearing and smell. We have experienced a natural birth. The water broke and we came forth from the womb. Just as we have a natural birth we must have a spiritual birth because they are not one in the same. Jesus is making a comparison. Natural begets natural, but Spirit begets spiritual. Our natural birth brings us into this world, but our spiritual birth brings us into the heavenlies and the dimension of the kingdom of God. We have been born from beneath and now we must be born from above if we are to enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus compares it to the wind. It is often hard for us as natural beings to quantify, analyze and rationalize the spirit realm and that part of us. Jesus says it is much like the wind. It doesn’t move under our control, but it blows where it will and wherever it pleases. We can’t see air or wind, but the wind shows itself as it is manifested through natural things. The wind will pick up dirt and leaves and give a visible sense of its presence as these are moved, not through there own initiative, but through the power and the force of the wind. It is much as the Sprit moves in and through us. Sometimes He is very still and we don’t feel his presence at all and yet we know He is there because He is the spiritual air we breathe.
I think of how the Lord came to Elijah when he had fled to Horeb, the mountain of God, discouraged, fearful and ready to give up. There, in 1 Kings 19:11-13, the Lord showed Elijah how to discern between the natural and the spiritual. “The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
You see Elijah, like most of us, had allowed his eyes to view things in the natural and not in the Spirit. God was not in all of those natural calamities and forces of nature, He was in the still small voice that spoke to the inner man. Be careful about judging things from the outward circumstances. It is God who rules and is upon the throne. Here, God showed the wind of His presence was in the still small voice that spoke to him in his spirit. We may see God move as a gentle breeze, blowing across His people with His presence and anointing. Sometimes He is a forceful wind to be reckoned with. However the Lord is blowing upon our lives we want to bend in His direction and be sensitive to His movement. We are the manifestation of His presence. We are the natural elements that are moved by Him as He blows upon our lives. Just as you can never tell about the wind, where it will blow or where it will go, so we never know when we will be moved by the Spirit of God in this direction or that situation. We do want to hear His still small voice within us assuring us that His work is not finished, but that this is the way of the Lord now be faithful to walk in it.
The Lord may be asking us what we are doing before Him in our fears, doubts and unbelief. We must remember whom we have been birthed into, who we are in Christ Jesus and that we are called according to His purpose and design. Now allow His still small voice and His breeze, not the natural elements of circumstance to move you wheresoever He will.

Blessings,
#kent

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God Breathed

2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God Breathed

Have you ever thought that as you read the scripture and meditate upon it that you are in effect inhaling what God has breathed? The Holy Spirit that was breathed to inspire the writers of His Word is now inhaled through these words to become the breath of His Spirit within you. We know that without our air we would cease to be. It is necessary to sustain our natural life. God’s Spirit is the air that our spirit man breathes. It is what sustains him and upholds him. Whatever is Spirit purposed and God anointed has been breathed upon by the breath of God.
Have you ever walked down a back alley behind restaurants where food has been thrown out and become putrefied and rotten? It creates an atmosphere where there is a horrible stench in the air. It is not some place that you care to remain, because it is repulsive to your sense of smell. This is the atmosphere and stench that is created by sin and ungodliness. It should be repulsive to our spiritual man. He delights in the atmosphere of worship, praise, the word of God and the fellowship of the saints. This is the air that the spirit man loves to breathe, because in it he smells the sweet incense of the presence of God. It is like breathing in oxygen. It regenerates and empowers that spirit man.
Deuteronomy 9:5 tells us why the Lord brought His people into Canaan to drive out the inhabitants. It was because it had become a stench. Their sin rose up to the nostrils of God and He abhorred the smell of their sinfulness and wickedness. It says, “Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” It wasn’t because the people of Israel were so righteous or upright it was so that He might perform His Word which He had promised to their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. His Word would clear out the stench of sin and renew the atmosphere of His presence in this land of promise. It is His Word that clears the air of our soul. It teaches us, rebukes us, corrects us and trains us in His righteousness and His ways.
Perhaps a scripture that is so descriptive and exemplifies this principle of living and breathing in God’s Word is found in Deuteronomy 30 as Moses describes the blessings and curses of God. We choose the air that we breathe into our spirit man. As we conclude with this passage of scripture, be mindful of how it applies to our lives today and the choices that we make concerning the Word of God.
“When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. 6 The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. 7 The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. 8 You will again obey the LORD and follow all his commands I am giving you today. 9 Then the LORD your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land. The LORD will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers, 10 if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Deuteronomy 30

Blessings,
#kent

A Mighty Wind, A Gentle Breeze

A Mighty Wind, A Gentle Breeze

John 3:8
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

How do you know there is a God and a Holy Spirit? As I listen to the chimes outside sounding their eclectic notes both loud and soft I know that the wind is blowing. Why, because I physically see it with my eyes? No. How do I even know there is air, except that it sustains my life? Can I see the electrons flowing through an electrical wire and yet I can experience the power of their presence. The evidence of the Spirit of God is all around us. Do we see Him with our natural eyes and senses? No, not normally. Like the air and the wind He moves in our lives and in our spirits. Sometimes it is gently through the still small voice, sometimes it is like a storm that shakes us at our foundation and sometimes He is still and we don’t sense Him at all, but like the air He is always there hovering over us. It is that precious wind of the Holy Spirit that blew upon us as believers and blew back the spiritual veil of darkness that had covered the eyes of our understanding and kept us ignorant of the Truth. Then He breathed into us the breath of spiritual life and new birth. Again, it was that wind that blew upon our spirits as it did in Acts 2:2, “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” It brought power, authority, anointing and gifts of the Spirit into the lives of believers that forever changed them and the world around them. That wind is still blowing today. Sometimes we dwell in our ceiled houses of natural thinking and living and fail to step out into the Spirit to experience the exhilaration of its wind blowing through our spiritual hair. We wall ourselves up in the safe places of our lives where we don’t have to deal with the issues of the spirit and we prevent the Spirit from dealing with us.
Open the doors and windows in your heart and life today and allow some fresh air into your soul. Let the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit in to purge out the stench of stale air and stagnant odors that have accumulated. It is springtime! Step out into the Son and feel His warmth on your face and heart today. Breathe deep the freshness of Spirit Life and come alive in newness of spirit and commitment. The Holy Spirit is alive, moving and blowing today. Step out into the wind of His blessing. Let Him blow the cobwebs away and refresh you with the power and unction of His Being. If we don’t know there is a Heavenly Father, Son and a Holy Spirit it is because we are spiritually dead. The evidence is all around us. May the wind of His precious Spirit blow through your life today bringing renewal, revival, power and refreshing. He may ruffle your feathers and blow everything out of order in your life, but that’s okay. He is the order of the day.

Blessings,
kent