Theme: THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
INTRODUCTION
God Almighty empowers His children to enable them to carry out His will, purpose or plan. This empowerment comes through the Holy spirit which is thus a very important resource all believers in Christ must have to be able to measure up to the demands of true discipleship. (Ezekiel 11:19, 20; 36:27; Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:22, 23).The Bible shows that without the power of the Holy spirit children of God cannot overcome sin. (Romans 8:13) The Holy spirit also imparts gifts to God’s children which they use to advance His work and glorify His name. In the days following we shall consider the gifts of the Holy spirit, and how it makes converts to be true disciples of Christ.
Text: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”- Romans 8:9.
Comment: The sinful nature of humans carries with it tremendous constraints in so far as the practice of righteousness or holiness is concerned. Apostle Paul rightly captured the situation when he stated: “For the flesh lusted against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other…’ (Galatians 5:17) The flesh in humans account for various sins committed today in that the devil could exploit this weakness to lure people to sin. To overcome the lusts of the flesh therefore, all sincere and committed Christians must be filled with the Holy spirit to enable them to keep His commandments, do His will always and resist satan the devil. St. Paul stated: “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:9, 10) In our Guide for today, Apostle Paul affirmed that anyone who is not controlled by the Holy spirit is not a child of God. This is a statement we Christians must give serious thoughts to and pray God to endow us with His spirit as enjoined by Jesus Christ in Luke 11:11-13.