The Church has been wrestling with the concept of grace for ages. In fact, ever since the reformation of the 1500s when Luther, Calvin and Zwingli helped usher in the start the reformation from the corruption of the Catholic church, theologians and pastors have wrestled with the simply awkward definition of Grace as “Unmerited Favor.” To be honest, many doctrines the church has embraced and taught today came out of an over-correction of errors that the Catholic church was steeped in. When there is an over-correction of concepts often the new “Version” is flawed as well. The word and concept of “Grace vs Works” is one of them.

We live in a strange time in history because we live with so many images of people who are “Inauthentic” and just pretending to be genuine.  For example, news commentators and politicians continually craft an image or narrative instead of being authentic about who and what they believe about God and life in general. It seems that modern culture has increasingly traded good character for a good image.  The really sad thing is that can be expected from the world but many pastors have gotten in lock step with the world when it comes to working on their image more than their character.

I think many Christian’s struggle when reading the Old Testament because so much of it is about fighting God and the consequences of such behavior. Adam and Eve fought God and his will and chose to do life on their terms, or at least they thought that’s what they were doing, rebelling against a loving provider. Moses fought God about his will and his calling and Israel was constantly either fighting God, their own countrymen or their neighbors.  I think all this fighting in mankind’s history in the Old Testament persuaded many believers today to only read the New Testament, because Jesus seems to be all about peace and love, or at least it seems that way. 

When I look at the average believer today I am saddened by the lack of the ability to understand what’s going on in the spirit in any given conversation, let alone what’s going on in one’s own personal life. Too many believers walk in life as if they were never born again but only have the knowledge that God loves them and Jesus died to forgive them.

We live in a day and age when this life is hard pressed on so many fronts. Turn on the nightly news and one quickly sees people are so stressed out they end up doing extreme things that are out of control, like pulling out a gun and shooting someone for little to no reason other than they were mad. It seems people have little to no ability to control their emotions these days.

I have spent four articles thus far building the case that the average Christian believer walks out their Christian experience periodically fueled by their knowledge of the Scriptures and yet very little by the counsel and power of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by the carnality within the church or individual believers. If one would just study the nature of the church today you would quickly discover that most churches and denominations came out of church splits, and not expansion from evangelism since the 1500s when the reformation happened. To be truthful, this had to happen because carnality had been settling into the church since Constantine in 320 AD and the breakaway factions wanting to get back to what the bible said about living as Christ intended believers to live. 

When people often talk about being Spirit filled they often refer to a point in time when they experienced a move of God on their soul either during their conversion or some time after. They may have felt empowered by the Holy Spirit for some purpose, like understanding the Bible when the scripture used to seem confusing or equipping their prayer life to become personal and rich with the presence of God and experiencing break through with God.  Deep down inside people know when the Holy Spirit has touched their lives and if they need a fresh filling again.

The first article I wrote on this subject asked the question of whether we are fueling our Christian life by the Holy Spirit or just by our human will power.  I used the Jesus Movement as an example of what I and others of this time period noticed, namely the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the lives of many believers. It was a powerful time to grow in Christ and I believe it could happen again today if believers become informed and hunger for God like never before.

The subject of what a “Spirit Filled Life” looks like isn’t taught much these days, however when I got saved in the early 1970s it was a big focus. Why? Because there was a thing called the “JESUS MOVEMENT” going on and the Holy Spirit was pouring out his power in extraordinary ways that brought many young people to a saving knowledge of Christ. Miracles were taking place often and tons of young people were getting born again. The whole idea of revival in the church should be where born again believers come to discover an awakening in their souls for a closer walk with God. Mind you, in many churches today, revival ends up being no more than becoming excited about going to church meetings instead of an awakening of their spiritual lives with the power of the Holy Spirit. The strategy of the enemy is to get believers occupied with having more meetings and church attendance rather than becoming passionate about our personal relationship with our Heavenly Father.

I am amazed at how many established houses of worship are so afraid of the supernatural they will do anything to discredit reports of the supernatural being manifested in other congregations. I know for some congregations it’s the pastors who are afraid of losing control, but for many it’s bad teaching the pastors received in seminary. When I first got saved I discovered very quickly that few churches actually welcome the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.