Spiritual Regeneration

A committee of ministers in a certain city was discussing the possibility of having D. L. Moody to serve as the evangelist during a city-wide evangelistic campaign.

Finally, one young minister who did not want to invite Moody stood up and said: "Why Moody? Does he have a monopoly of the Holy Spirit?"

There was silence.

Then an old, godly minister spoke up: "No, he does not have a monopoly of the Holy Spirit; but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly of D. L. Moody."

Does the Holy Spirit have a monopoly on your life?

If not, the good news is you can make God's Spirit to lead you.

You see, Spirit-filled Christians like D.L. Moody are just ordinary people like you and me. What made them different is they learned how to marinate their mind with scriptures and live by it.

But I tell you what: You can decide if you want to be a Spirit-filled Christian or remain in your level of faith.

It's completely in your discretion.

You can decide if you want to memorize scriptures or not. But you have to realize that your decision can lead you to be closer to God or farther away from Him.

Have you ever had a time when you were in a spiritual black hole in your life? I have. The pressure was unbearable. No sense of God's presence. No sense of anything going on around me. God was about as far away as the man in the moon - at least from my perspective. I think every Christian who is called to make a significant difference in his world experiences times like these. These are the times when we question the reality of God, the love of God, the personal care of God. And He demonstrates to us that He was there all the time. These are "faith experiences" that God does in every person who is called to a higher level of relationship with Him. These times are needful in order to know that we have the "heat shield" that can withstand the incredible heat that comes when we follow Him with a whole heart - a heart that is radical in a commitment to fully follow His ways. Elisha had that spirit. He slaughtered his 12 oxen and burned his plowing equipment so that he would not have the opportunity to return to anything if God didn't come through (see 1 Kings 19:21).

Be Spiritual Minded

 The apostle Paul asked God to remove the heat from his own life one time. God's answer was not what he wanted to hear.
⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 
(2 Corinthians 12: 9, 10)
  
People who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves. Everyone who is ruled by the Holy Spirit thinks about spiritual things. If our minds are ruled by our desires, we will die. But if our minds are ruled by the Spirit, we will have life and peace. Our desires fight against God, because they do not and cannot obey God's laws. If we follow our desires, we cannot please God. 

 
You are no longer ruled by your desires, but by God's Spirit, who lives in you. People who don't have the Spirit of Christ in them don't belong to him. (Romans 8:5-9 CEV)

As Christians we constantly battle against our sin-nature, against our old way of independence. Our society encourages our sin-nature to say, “I can do it”, “I know best”. This attitude is so strongly ingrained in us that even among Christians it is not very popular to seek godly counsel.

The genius of God's moral system is that everything He asks of us is for our good. Often the Ten Commandments are seen by people as restrictive, keeping them from doing something that would make them happy. Initially, perhaps. But ultimately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sin is self-destructive; righteousness is self-constructive. It makes no more sense to sin willfully than it does to become a drug addict. In both cases, the person is destroying himself.

Abandon yourself to the moral law of God. It is glorifying to Him, but it is also good for you. Understood in this light, we see the truth in the statement that anything less than the glory of God is anti-human.

That is why the Bible says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world" (1 John 2:15–16).

There is nothing wrong with being blessed by God with things like a nice home or a good career. In fact, the Bible tells us that God "gives us richly all things to enjoy" (1 Timothy 6:17). But if those things have become the most important to you—more important than God Himself—then that is a problem....

Blessings,

Raj Kosaraju