Following the Spirit

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ!

The Lord is teaching us what it means to walk in the Spirit and yesterday we saw that to follow the Holy Spirit is to submit to His authority. We learned that,

• Submission is positioning one's self under the will of God.
• To submit is to give permission.
• True submission is choosing to obey God's will.
• Obedience to the Law is forced obedience but the way of the Spirit is chosen obedience.

• Authority means source of power.
• Jesus is the Author of our faith and therefore the source of power in our lives.
• To believe in Jesus as Lord is to surrender one's will to His will so that He becomes the source of power in our lives and not self.
• To know Jesus as Lord is to submit to His authority.

The Lord also showed us that the natural reflects the spiritual and therefore our attitude towards authority in the natural reflects our attitude towards spiritual authority. Examples of authority are:

1. Parents and children. Col. 3:20; Eph. 6:1-3
2. Husband and wife. 1 Peter 3:1-7
3. Spiritual leaders and church. Heb. 3:17
4. Individuals and the law of the land. 1 Peter 2:13-19
5. The believer and the Word of God. James 1:22,23
6. The believer and the Lord. James 4:7; John 14:15; Rom. 8:14

We need to recognise that the way we treat the authorities in our lives demonstrates our attitude toward all authority, both natural and spiritual because God appoints authority in our lives! We also need to understand that true submission is unconditional. That means it is not based on whether the authority is perfect or whether the authority meets one's expectation of what a leader needs to be before one will submit to them. True submission means submitting unconditionally to God's appointed authority so that the believer can in turn exercise authority. It is only when we come under authority that we can exercise authority (Matthew 8:5-13; James 4:6,7)

If God doesn't reign in you, He won't reign through you!

The Lord is preparing us to be a habitation for His presence, power and love and we praise Him for teaching us His way to true revival! Hallelujah!

This Friday we will be celebrating Christ's victory and triumph over sin, death and the devil as we meet together to worship and reflect on the passion of Christ. The meeting is at 3pm at Treffpunkt Leben followed by "Kaffee und Kuchen."

We're also looking forward to our next New Life Celebration on the 6th of April at the Freie Evangelische Gemeinde Nord-West in Eschersheim where we will be baptising some new lives in Christ.

God is moving in Frankfurt and we're excited to support a wonderful project called Himmel über Frankfurt (www.himmelueberfrankfurt.de) that seeks to proclaim the Word of God on posters all over Frankfurt and to encourage the Body of Christ to join together to lift up the name of Jesus! We would like to encourage all who read this to come and join us on the 20th of September as we march through the streets of Frankfurt for Jesus!


Quote of the week:

"The more we are submitted to Jesus, the more of His authority can be expressed in what we say and do in His name." Colin Urquhart

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