March 12 I Tuesday

Deuteronomy 16-18

Mark 13:1-20

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”    

—Ephesians 3:16-17

The Holy Spirit is the member of the Godhead who operates in our everyday lives and experience. It is He who regenerates us, which means “to impart new life.” Paul’s prayer is that we may be strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit because it is the Holy Spirit who imparts the life of Christ to us. People receive the Holy Spirit, are baptized by the Holy Spirit, and filled with the Holy Spirit, but the defining issue is receiving the Holy Spirit.

The New Testament teaches that it is vital we know the Holy Spirit is living and working within us. To know to what extent will either deepen our relationship with Christ or prompt us to seek more of His Spirit. If we are going to experience all that God will do in our lives, we cannot be passive about the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. It is He who undertakes the task of equipping, directing and empowering us, and becomes the ongoing source of our strength and enabling for which the Christian life depends.

There are three indications that give evidence of the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives. The first is a hunger to know Jesus. It is the work of the Holy Spirit who Jesus says will testify about Him (John 15:26), bring glory to Him (16:14), and the Spirit will take from what is His and make it known to us (16:15). By the work of the Spirit, Jesus Christ will become central in our lives. He is going to step out of history, out of the Bible, and become a living person within our hearts.

The second evidence is a hunger to be Christ-like. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). These are all embodied in Christ, and the Spirit will produce in us a hunger to be like Him. Thirdly is a hunger to serve Christ. The Spirit of God will breed a “servant spirit” within our hearts, in which we discover a new compassion for the world. As we bring our lives under the lordship of Christ, our focus changes from what we want to what Christ wants and we have a hunger to serve Him.

The word ‘hunger’ is used deliberately because, in this life, we will never know Christ in His entirety, never be fully Christ-like and never perfectly desire to serve Him, but we continue to have a hunger to do so. In fact, the more we are fed by the Holy Spirit, the more our appetite increases, so we are always hungry for more.

Prayer: Sovereign Lord, I want to experience as much of You as I possibly can. Grant me an ongoing hunger to
know You, to be like You and to serve You. Thank You, Lord.