Victorious Living, Part 2

We know that believers have the Spirit living in them and,¹ with that, all the power of almighty God. We also know that there are forces, internal and external, that are fighting against us living in accordance with the first point. The Christian life is all about following where the Spirit leads. It has nothing to do with following rules or outward appearances. In fact, if we try to be Godly by following rules, we are substituting legalism for life in the Spirit. So, the Christian walk is actually quite simple: listen to the Spirit and walk in harmony with Him where ever He leads. Simple, but not easy.

Useful disciplines
In practical terms, what can we do about the forces arrayed against us so that we can walk in the Spirit? First is to believe that He speaks to us. But we have to be listening. That is, we have to expect Him to guide us and walk in faith that He will keep us from going the wrong way. Jesus promised us that we would hear the Spirit. "My sheep hear My voice... and follow Me."² I spent many years agonizing over whether or not I was "in God's will" and looking for signs of what He wanted me to do. All the time, the answer was right there in the Bible. We simply have to take Him at His word. If He says that we will hear His voice, then we need merely to believe that and listen. It won't come as an audible voice (most likely), but as an inner confidence of what we should do and where we should go.

What if we have trouble hearing Him? There are some helpful things we can do. I consider these practices to be things that provide "space" for the Spirit to work in our lives. I would go so far as to say that neglecting any of these spiritual disciplines makes it nearly impossible to live a consistently victorious Christian life. If we truly want to walk in the Spirit, we will practice the following things.

Study the Bible. This addresses the issue of ignorance. The more we have a heavenly perspective, the easier it will be to discern the right from the wrong. The Spirit will never lead us anywhere that contradicts the clear teaching of scripture. So, being well grounded in the Bible will help prevent us from going our own way while thinking that it is the Spirit leading us. The most important thing to realize is that the Spirit will not lead us to the fulfillment of our selfish desires, although our flesh will always try to pervert anything good that the Spirit leads us to do. Thus, it is important to consider if the initial impetus was with the flesh, or if that came afterwards.

The Bible reminds us of God's power and reliability, which gives us something solid to pin our faith on. The more we read the Bible, the more faith we will have. But we have to take it seriously. If we read it merely as a series of lessons in positive thinking, or a collection morality plays, or as helpful rules of thumb to live by, we will not live a victorious life. Victory comes from taking God seriously, and choosing to believe what He says through the Bible. Only if you really believe it, will it change your life.

For instance, one example of a common problem I've seen with believers is that they are either ignorant of what the Bible says about who they are, or else they don't believe it. When we are baptized by the Spirit, we are made into new creations.³ The old has passed away. The Bible tells us that this is a reality, regardless of how we feel. Yet so many people remain stuck in the past, wallowing in guilt and regret and self-recrimination. We cannot effectively move forward if we are constantly looking to our past. The believer is forgiven - utterly! He is made into a new person! We are to forget the past and press forward toward a higher calling!⁴ These are things the Bible teaches. But if we are ignorant of them, how can we take hold of these truths and live them out?

One need not be a Doctor of Divinity to benefit from the Bible. Some people have said that "God doesn't need your education!" True. But He also doesn't need your ignorance! We only harm ourselves by being ignorant of the Holy Scriptures. The more familiar we are with the Bible, the more room we make for the Spirit to work in our life and the better we will become at following Him. Like most things, the more you put into it, the more you get out. Just regularly reading and thinking about the Bible is essential. But if you really dig into it, you will get so much more. I will address this more in a future article.

There is a phenomena that I have observed that makes no sense to me: many people choose to read books or listen to podcasts about the Bible in place of the Bible. Perhaps a spiritual newborn needs to have things fed to them pre-chewed by others, but even toddlers are capable of feeding themselves. The Bible provides spiritual nutrition and to avoid reading it is equivalent to starving yourself. You cannot have a vital spiritual life while you are starving! Likewise, you cannot grow to maturity if all you eat is milk toast. We need the meaty scripture to grow up! I'm not saying that one shouldn't listen to podcasts or sermons, or read books about the Bible. These can all be very helpful. But they must be adjuncts to our own Bible reading - never replacements for it.

Even worse than replacing Bible reading with the foregoing is replacing it with non-Biblical teaching. Be careful of those who twist the meaning of the Bible to make it more palatable or to promote their own sociopolitical or philosophical agenda. The best defense against this is to be familiar with the Bible yourself - that way, you can detect when someone is misusing it. Many popular preachers quote scripture out of context. Those who are not well-grounded in the Bible are easily led astray by such teaching.

Meditate. Considering what we've read in the Bible is called "meditation". This should not be confused with eastern meditation, whose goal is to empty yourself to "become one with the cosmos", or some such. That usually starts out with some repeated word or phrase (a "mantra") to bore your mind into emptiness. That is not the way of the Spirit led life. The believer's meditation is being mentally engaged and considering something specific, such as mulling over the power of God, or wondering at His forgiveness, or dwelling on the work of the Spirit. It may mean trying to figure out something in the Bible that you don't understand. It may mean trying to reach a perspective or understanding that reconciles an apparent contradiction. Whatever it is, it involves employing the brains that God gave us to really take hold of what the Bible says.

Another way to meditate on the scripture is to memorize it. Memorizing verses or passages of the Bible may seem excessive, but having important verses at ready recall will help you when you are in need of the encouragement or perspective. At a minimum, as you are reading, note those verses which seem to "pop out" at you. These probably indicate the Spirit pointing something out to you. Memorize just one of them each week and, after a year, you will have 52 verses memorized. That is 52 encouragements that you can use each time you face a challenge. Once you've done this on a regular basis, you will realize that it is easy to do. In fact, you may find that memorizing entire passages of the Bible isn't particularly difficult - and provides ongoing benefits.

Pray. Prayer is talking to God. It isn't something reserved for saying grace before dinner, or for Sunday morning services, or Wednesday night Bible study. Imagine what the relationship between spouses would be if the only time they talked was a couple of brief times a week, or once or twice a day. Would that be a healthy marriage? Why then, do so many people think they can have a vital relationship with God when that is how often they talk to Him? Prayer should be constant,⁵ but there is a place for setting aside some time to specifically do nothing but pray. In this time, you bring your humble requests before Him, confess your current failures, and thank Him for everything He does. And by doing so, you help clear the lines of communication between you and His Spirit.

Praise. The flesh and the world do their best to take our focus off of Jesus. That is why it shouldn't seem strange that sometimes we have to be intentional about praising God. It should be automatic and constant⁶ in a believer's life, but we are too easily distracted by the things that assail us through the news, traffic, family concerns, work, etc. But when we recognize all that God has given us - even beyond salvation - the Spirit-given response is thankfulness and worship.

Praise is offering heartfelt thanks to God for what He has done for you or for others, and acknowledging His awesomeness. He is always at work in our lives and in the world, so there is always something to be thankful for. In fact, being in a state of constant thanksgiving is a sure way to escape worry and depressing thoughts. Praise can be expressed by offering prayers, by telling others about God's goodness, by being grateful, or through music. Make up your own songs just to be shared between you and God (or also share them with others). Or sing songs written by others. The Psalms consist of 150 songs - it is the Bible's Hymn book. You can read them as is, or you can find numerous songs that simply put a Psalm to music. Incidentally, this is an easy way to memorize Bible verses. There are a lot of songs that are simply Bible verses or passages set to music. Learn the song and you will have memorized some of the Bible. Integrity Music has specifically produced many scripture memorization songs that you can use.

There are also plenty of songs in the Contemporary Christian music genre. But here you need to exercise discernment. As said before, just because something is called "Christian" doesn't make it so. And, frankly, a lot of this stuff is tasteless pap. Nutritionally, it is like eating holy cardboard. But apart from the bad and the bland, you can find some gems. If you are new to it, I can specifically recommend music by Keith Green, Michael Card, Don Francisco, David Meece, Randy Stonehill, and Keith & Krystn Getty. They all have different styles and perhaps you can find something you enjoy. There are others too, but those are my picks for top tier Christian music, in terms of spiritual content. Listening to them instead of worldly music will make a difference when you are stumbling in your Christian walk.

But even better are the great hymns of the faith - most of them written between 100 and 200 years ago. A single verse of one of these hymns typically has more spiritual content than entire playlists of some modern Christian music. There are probably about 150 of these hymns whose ongoing popularity speaks to their deep meaning (and probably another 50 hymns that are considered "Christmas music"). I won't list them all here, but ones like "To God Be The Glory", "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", "Praise to the Lord", "Amazing Grace", "And Can It Be", and "Be Thou My Vision" are well known for good reason. You need not listen to versions with wheezy organs and operatic sopranos. There are many of them that are available in modern styles with good sing-alongability. A warning though: sometimes the modern ones will only do one or two verses, then toss in a bunch of throw-away word or phrase repeats. Few people have heard all six verses of "We Three Kings", for instance. Most people only know the first verse, but the other verses contain good theology. But even hymnbooks have some hymns that lack any spiritual nutrition, such as "The Little Brown Church in the Vale". The tune is enjoyable but the words are worthless. Try to stick with those that have meaning, because as you listen to them, and find yourself humming them as you go about your business - their words will instruct and encourage you in your walk. For a Youtube playlist of several hundred praise songs (including both contemporary and hymns), carefully chosen, check out this playlist.

It may be difficult to praise God when you are going through emotional, mental, or physical trauma. Yet we are called to give thanksgiving in all things.⁷ What? Even if I have cancer? Yes, even then. If you know that God is sovereign then you know that He is the one that allows things into our lives. Even if you didn't do something to cause the cancer (like smoking), we all live in a fallen world with sickness and sin and we are all subject to sickness and physical death. God could prevent any of His children from going through such things, and I think sometimes He does. But if He allows it - He allows it for a reason. We rarely get so see why He allows such things to happen to us, but we know that He will accomplish His good purposes through it. Perhaps it is so we can minister better to unbelievers who have cancer. Perhaps it is to build faith and patience in us. Perhaps it is to break us down to rebuild us in the image of Christ (and being stubborn may mean more adversity than for those who are less stubborn). It could be any number of things, but we must decide to exercise faith in God. Sometimes the greatest outcomes come from the greatest trials. Jesus' death led to our salvation, for instance. So, knowing that God is working through the trials and that the Spirit lives in us all the same, we always have reason to rejoice. How much more reason when things are going well!

Grumbling, complaining, or being otherwise ungrateful is a bigger problem than many people realize. God is on record as being angry when people are grumblers. Time after time, the Israelites are punished when they complained in the wilderness, as recorded in Exodus. As Paul points out lessons from the Old Testament, complaining is one of the lessons he draws attention to. In fact, more people died as a consequence of complaining than for sexual immorality⁸ - and yet most people would view complaining as less serious. The problem with complaining is that it is diametrically opposed to thanksgiving. You can't do them both at the same time. It demonstrates a lack of gratitude for all that God has done. It is an insult to His generosity, patience, and goodness toward us. We must focus on Him, not ourselves or our circumstances. When we truly see Him, we cannot help but be humbly grateful to Him.

Fellowship. As my pastor once said, "Which animals fall victim to the predators? The ones who are separated from the herd."⁹ We are made for relationship - both with God and with fellow believers. Those who avoid it find the Christian walk exceedingly difficult. When we isolate ourselves from fellow believers, we have separated ourselves from the herd and are overwhelmed by our enemies. There are no "lone ranger" Christians! We are called to fellowship. In fact, the Spirit gifts us so that we can build up the church. Self-isolation means that not only are we not building up other believers, but they are not building us up either. Thus, we avoid one of the tools God gives us to empower us to live a victorious Christian life.

Going to church Sunday mornings is a good start, but hardly qualifies as the kind of fellowship that we need. We are all a family, and a part of the body of Christ here on Earth. We cannot say that we have no need of other believers. Every part of the body is interconnected - directly or indirectly - to every other part. Imagine if your eyes only worked for a couple of hours on Sunday morning, and the rest of the week you were blind. Or let's say your hands only worked a couple of times a week. How well would you function? Perhaps we cannot be in constant fellowship with other believers due to our circumstances, but we can certainly make an effort to connect with other believers as often as possible. This is why the Bible tells us not to neglect gathering together with other believers.¹⁰

We cannot use the excuse to not fellowship because we find our fellow believers in some way repugnant. Do we find the church worship music annoying? We have to get over our self-centeredness and be an active part of the church. Do we feel uncomfortable among strangers? Make those strangers into friends! Does no one greet you after church services? Be the person that greets others. Stop expecting others to meet your needs and make an effort to meet the needs of others. Does that person behind us sing off-key and torture our ears? Remember that Jesus died for that person, and they are beloved by Him. There are any number of justifications we can give for avoiding fellowship, but such a thing is contrary to scripture and our spiritual health (those two often go together). Find a home church and attend there regularly, and avail yourself of extra activities outside of Sunday morning. Perhaps it is a Bible study, or a prayer meeting, or a community outreach, or a fellowship group. Just connect with your spiritual family. This doesn't mean that you need to attend the first church you go to. Try several and find one that you feel at home in, and where the Bible is taught. Get involved in some form of ministry there, whether a food bank, or teaching Sunday School, or working with the youth, or helping with worship, or whatever else is needed. Most congregations have plenty of people who could fill every need, but not enough people who actually get involved. Get to know people who can encourage you and be encouraged by you. This doesn't mean that you have to be engaged in every possible thing that goes on at your church. But, perhaps, if you find yourself wasting time with spiritually-empty activities, you could stand to be more involved. Integrate with the family of God. In the herd we find security and discover part of what God has us here on Earth for.

Some final points
Sometimes, we get the idea that the spiritual side of life and the physical can be partitioned from each other. But we have been created with those two aspects integrated with each other. Therefore we should not be surprised if problems with our physical bodies can impact our spiritual life. I'm not talking about the accidents, disease, or conditions that can happen to us. Rather, I'm referring to our lifestyle. We all know the proper way to live healthily: Eat right, exercise, and get sufficient sleep. If we neglect our physical body, it won't work optimally. This can even negatively effect our intellect. God made our bodies to need nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Neglecting those will affect our spiritual life as well. One need not be an athlete - or even in athletic condition. But we do need to provide what our bodies need. More than that, when we become believers, we turn everything over to God, including our bodies. They are His now, and we are only their caretakers. So we must take care of His property.

The foregoing suggestions are provided to help people live a vital, victorious, Christian life. They do not make us more Godly, or more acceptable to God. Neither do they help God - He doesn't need it. But we do. Regularly exercising these disciplines in our lives provides room in our hearts and minds for the Spirit to operate in our lives. Exercising even one of them will help. Exercising all of them provides a night-and-day difference. To think that one can live the Christian life while neglecting them is foolish. Perhaps a believer who is locked in solitary confinement without a Bible or the fellowship of other believers is provided with extra favor from God that compensates for those lacks. But if we have the resources available to us and we refuse to make use of them, we are shooting ourselves in our spiritual feet - any walking we do will be slow and painful. Make use of the resources that God has provided! He provided them for a reason! And yet, so many people who call themselves believers do not regularly exercise any of these disciplines. It is no wonder that they do not walk in the Spirit, but live defeated lives that do not commend God to themselves, much less to others.

Not only are these disciplines Biblical, I have witnessed what happens when they are neglected in the life of believers. It isn't a pretty sight. Not only that, I have also experienced the consequences myself. When I neglect one or more of these disciplines, I inevitably find myself no longer living victoriously.

In summary, walking in the Spirit means being sensitive to Him, believing that He speaks in a way that we will not mistake, making it easier on ourselves to hear that voice (making room for Him to work), and then walking away from the things He warns us about and towards that which gives us a deep satisfaction from being in right relationship with Him and others. Finally, we cannot follow these disciplines on a haphazard basis - we must build a habit of exercising them so that they become second nature. This requires a decision, humble reliance on the power of God within us, and consistency. Benjamin Franklin said that if he could do something every day for seven days in a row, he would have built a new habit. I've heard others say that it takes 21 days to build a new habit (although I suspect it takes 21 days before most people succeed in doing it seven days in a row). So, don't give up if it takes a while to develop these consistent spiritual habits. In any case, it takes less than a month to build a habit that will provide room for the Spirit to work in our lives so that we can live victoriously. It is an investment that pays massive dividends!

1 1 Corinthians 3:16
2 John 10:27
3 2 Corinthians 5:17
4 Philippians 3:13-14
5 1 Thessalonians 5:17
6 1 Thessalonians 5:16,18
7 1 Thessalonians 5:18
8 1 Corinthians 10:8-10
9 Bud Diener, 2024
10 Hebrews 10:2