What about Yielding?

So, I started this little series because the recent power outages caused me to remember how at the beginning of my Christian life I'd wanted to know how to yield. I knew yielding was basically giving my life over to God and letting Him run it. The question was how did I do that? A lot of people think that if they just want it to happen and "will" it to happen then it happens. One person told me he believes that if he wants the Spirit to control him, then the Spirit will.

The Bible says something else, and concentrated study can break it down into two simple means of application. We have to be filled with the Spirit and we have to learn and apply the word of God.

To walk (live our lives) by means of the Spirit (or filled/controlled by Him) is a command and it starts the ball rolling. When a person believes in Jesus as Savior, he is immediately filled with the Spirit (as well as indwelt). But soon after he loses the filling (by sinning) so, since the Spirit is required for understanding anything about the Word of God, it's important to learn how to reacquire the filling. Confession of sin, as per I Jn 1:9 or judging ourselves as in I Cor 11:31, is the way to do that.

Once filled with the Spirit, we learn the word of God to have our thinking transformed, and in that way we not only learn what sin is so we can know what to name, we also learn who God is and what His will for our lives is. Knowing that, we can begin to avoid more and more often both grieving and quenching the Spirit. That's yielding. And we don't have to burn any papers to do it.

In His Grace,
Karen