Editor's note: This is an excerpt from the Bible study Life in the Spirit by Robertson McQuilkin.
God has provided you the Holy Spirit as the full provision for you to spiral up into His likeness and into intimate companionship with Him. But maybe that isn't happening. Maybe you have plateaued in your Christian life. Perhaps you are even starting to spiral down away from God. What's wrong? Why doesn't the Spirit-filled life seem to work?
Most Christians fail to grow for these reasons:
Ignorance of God's provision or of your responsibility
Unbelief, lack of confidence in God
Disobedience-either conscious rejection of God's will or unconscious drift from a close relationship with Him
Whatever the reason you are not growing spiritually, the only way to begin spiraling up is a personal encounter with the Spirit of God.
A Turning Point
Jacob is a biblical example of someone who struggled to stay on track in a walk of obedience to God (see Gen. 32:22-32). Jacob wrestled all night with the angel, holding out for God's full spiritual blessing. Because he was so sincere, so determined in his quest for spiritual blessing, he finally won out. God gave Jacob the blessing he sought. Of course, Jacob took a heavy hit; the angel gave him a permanent limp to remind him that God is in charge after all, and He alone is the source of all good.
When we get so desperate in our wrestlings with God that we are prepared to obey no matter the cost, the promised power will flow. The turning point for a sinner is called repentance. In the life of a wayward saint it's called reconsecration or recommitment.
Christians through the ages have described this turning point in a number of ways. Like Jacob, some say they wrestled with God. Some say Jesus' love overwhelmed them. They realized rebellion against God was an affront to His love. Others realized their arrogance and were humbled by Jesus' example as the Suffering Servant.
Other words for repent include yield, surrender, commit, abandon self, change management, get off the throne of my life and let God take His rightful place, and acknowledge Christ's lordship. No matter how the Holy Spirit breaks through to us, we must finally come to the place where we give in unconditionally. We say, "I quit. You win!" That's the turning point. That's when we begin to trust God to keep the promises in His Word. Then we begin to grow, to understand more about God's ways, and to experience the Spirit in our lives.
Know, Trust, and Yield
Knowing, trusting, and yielding are interrelated components of a walk of faith. Faith is the doorway to birth in Christ and growth in His likeness. Faith implies knowledge. To have faith, we have to know the Holy Spirit. We must know how He acts, whether He is dependable, and how to connect with Him. Ignorance can keep us disconnected. Trust, the positive reliance on God to do what we can't do, must grow in a Christian's life. Yielding is the unconditional yes to God. Trusting comes before yielding. We won't surrender to God until we trust Him.
Faith is a combination of yielding and trusting. Thus, the three elements of knowing, trusting, and yielding go together. They build on one another. And if we have faith, the result will be a lifestyle of obedience.
Stated negatively, three roots can result in failure in the Christian life: ignorance, unbelief, and unyieldedness.
Proactive Faith
We tend to go to one of two unbiblical extremes regarding faith:
We disregard faith and seek to live on our own power.
We take a spectator role and wait for God to work.
The Bible does not teach either extreme. We need to participate with the Spirit's activity in our lives. After understanding that the Holy Spirit is God's provision for our Christian lives, we then need to obey. Failure to respond obediently to the Holy Spirit damages our relationship with Him because disobedience distorts our belief system. Our beliefs ought to determine our behavior, but unfortunately, the opposite is often the case. Unless we become people who live very purposefully, we will follow the pattern below.
We experience temptation.
Rather than examine our value system and choose right, we give in to temptation.
We feel guilty because we have violated our value system.
We twist our beliefs and values to relieve our guilt.
When we live in disobedience, we automatically twist our understanding to rationalize our behavior. Thus, we blind ourselves to an accurate understanding of the Spirit and of the Christian life. Obedience means deciding to trust and yield yourself to God and then carrying out that decision by committing each area of your life to Him.
Have you linked up with the Spirit by yielding to His will and trusting in His power?