HOW CAN WE KNOW WE HAVE THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST?

  Greetings in the name of Jesus:



 Believe it or not, this is one of the big questions asked in the world today by those who are truly seeking God. How can I know that God is actually in me?  The whole purpose of Christ sending the power of God's Spirit to us is so that we would not face this world alone.  1 Corinthians 2:10-16 begins to speak to this issue: "But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, for who alone knows the thoughts of a man except for the man's spirit within him? and in the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except for the Spirit within Him that we might understand what it is God has freely given us? This is what we speak, not with word taught by human wisdom, but by words taught with the Spirit expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are Spiritually discerned. The Spiritual mad make judgments on all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
 For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?" but we have the mind of Christ."

  We should indeed have the mind of Christ when we submit ourselves to Christ's Lordship of our lives   There are many teaching out there about the use of prayer as a  guarantee of getting whatever we ask for in Christ, but that isn't what the  Holy Spirit does.  The Holy Spirit should very quickly be starting to change the patterns of our own thoughts to start thinking as Christ would think and not as we would have things to be.  You see our minds and our desires should be curbed toward God's will and not to our will.  That is where the prosperity gospel gets it wrong because our desires and wants should match up with God's own desires and will for us.

If we don't see that happening there are problems with the Spirit of God being able to move in, and the reasons may be that someone else is still trying to claim ownership of space within you.
  Many of you have heard me speak about life addictions.  Just like the drug addictions, life addictions are not so easily gotten rid of, and we may fall back into that trap or temptation many times as we fight for our life in Christ. Like it or not we are set on a course of great struggle for our lives with these things we have allowed to rule us for most of our lives 1 Corinthians 9:25 tells us that we run in a race that has a prize to only he who endures the race, and that is what begins to be the catch 22 here because God is looking for those who really believe enough to give their lives in the cause of Jesus Christ to this world, and not those who merely give Him lip service.

  If we really want to know if we have the fruit of the Holy Spirit within our lives we can easily find out by comparing what we live to that of Galatians 5:22-26  That becomes a list of ingredients that no one can judge against. May you richly bless God through your life in Him.



THE UNWORTHY SERVANT