Message from Pastor Leo

June 01, 2009

Do you ever feel like a walking controversy, battling with yourself over sin?  Or am I the only guy walking down the street talking to myself, saying, “Go ahead, it’s okay.  No one’s watching.”  “No, don’t, Jesus is watching.”  “But no one else will know.”  “No, don’t do it.”

The voice in your head that’s trying to keep you on the right track is the Holy Spirit.  He’s your conscience, and your conscience bugs you when you’re not walking in the Spirit.  It happens in my life constantly, and it should be happening in your life too. 

Your flesh wants you to live life for yourself, but when you became a believer, you committed to live your life for God.  Your flesh is telling you to do one thing, while the Spirit of God living inside you, your conscience, tells you the right thing to do.  The flesh and the Spirit are contrary to each other.

How do we combat the desires of the flesh that are contrary to the ways of God?  This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. Galatians 5:16 

Well, that sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?  Just “walk in the Spirit.”  Sure it sounds easy, but what does it really mean?  How do you “walk in the Spirit?”

Walking in the Spirit can be summed up in one word – Love.  For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Galatians 5:14  God wants the focus of your life to be loving each other.  Every word spoken should be because of love.  Every action taken should be motivated by love.  Why?  When you love with a pure love, the kind of love that only comes from the Spirit of God, then you are building up and caring for each other.  Only then are you not selfishly trying to work the circumstances to your own benefit.

If you spend your life looking out for your own interests, always trying to be first, struggling to get ahead of someone else, you’ll fail: If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. Galatians 5:15  Remember, God has a different economy than the world.  When you take care of others, when you see their needs as more important than your own, God will take care of you! 

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.  Philippians 2:3-4 

This is the mind, the attitude, of Christ – the same attitude you should have.  Jesus loves.  He serves.  He puts others above Himself.  He died for your sin so that you could live forever in heaven.  Then God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11

Develop the mind and attitude of Christ.  Read your Bible every day and draw closer to Jesus.  Read your Bible, fill yourself with His Spirit, and become more like Him.

May the Lord Jesus Christ Be Magnified!

Pastor Leo A. Giovinetti