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Oct 18 8:04 AM

Living With An Attitude

Oct 18 8:04 AM
Oct 18 8:04 AM

 

Monday, October 18, 2021

Galatians, 5:16-17, 22-23

 

 

I want to talk to you about living with an attitude. Whenever I say, "Boy, that person has an attitude," it almost always has a negative connotation. "Boy, he's got a bad attitude. He's got a down attitude. He's got a sour attitude. He's got an uncharitable, unloving attitude." But I want to talk to you about living with a biblical attitude. So, maybe we should call it living with a biblical attitude. I'm going to give you kind of an overview, and over the next nine Life Lifters, I'm doing my flavors, I'm going to talk about nine attitudes to live with.

I want to start by reading Galatians 5:16-17 to kind of paint the picture about the importance of living with an attitude, or a biblical attitude. Paul says, "What I say is this, let the Holy Spirit direct your lives and do not satisfy the desires of the human nature. For what our human nature wants is opposed to what the Spirit wants. And what the Spirit wants is opposed to what the human nature wants. The two are enemies." So see, Paul is setting up a contrast: live in the desires of the Holy Spirit, don't live in desires of your sinful nature. If you are a Christian, the sinful nature is the person you were before you came a Christian. Every day of life, your attitude is your choice. And every day of life, whether you're aware of it or not, whether you think of it in this context or not, here's the truth: You have a choice. You can live by the attitude of the Holy Spirit, or live by the attitude of your old nature. Some days we do a lot more of one than the other. Hopefully our goal is to live 100% with an attitude of the Spirit, and 0% with the attitude of our old nature. Attitude is important because attitude will help us choose - are we going to live for the Holy Spirit or for our old nature?

How do we live for the Holy Spirit? Watch this, you live for the Holy Spirit by living the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 talk about the fruit of the Spirit. It says, "When the Holy Spirit controls our lives," in other words, when we choose the Holy Spirit's attitude over our human nature attitude, "he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." Then, he later says, "against such there is no law." Let me just briefly help you understand how to live in the Spirit, how to live by the fruit of the Spirit, because the fruit of the Spirit are not the same as the gifts of the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit are the spiritual gifts we get when we believe. The fruit of the Spirit are not the gifts of the Spirit. Second, the fruit of the Spirit are not the gift of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is that the moment you believe you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit to help you choose the attitude to live for Him, not for our old self. These attitudes come from dependence on God. How do you live these nine fruit of the Spirit that we're going to be talking about? It's real simple. You have to depend on God, depend on the Holy Spirit. The secret to living the fruit of the Spirit, the secret to living the Christian life, the secret to living a life that chooses the Holy Spirit over your old nature and your old, pre-Christian, sinful lifestyle is this. Stop trying and start yielding. Stop trying to be better, and start yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit. He is the person of the Trinity who is most talked about in the New Testament as helping us change and live the Christian life.

Do you want to live with an attitude? You want to stop living for the old you and start living for the Holy Spirit, the new you? You want to live with an attitude that surrenders to God and lets him work through these nine fruit of the spirit? Let me just pray with you, Father, help all of us listening live by your spirit and not by our old ways. Let us embrace what you have to say to us in the fruit of the Spirit and embrace all nine fruit. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

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