What It Really Means to Walk in the Spirit

The Scriptures teach that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). It gives us a beautiful picture of life in Christ and sounds like a simple command: Walk in the Spirit. However, many Christians do not know what it means to walk in the Spirit.

A simple definition of what it means to walk in the Spirit is to allow the Holy Spirit to do the work in us that God sent Him to do. Just before our Lord left this Earth, He said this to His disciples: “I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, that He may be with you forever: the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, for it does not see Him, neither does it know Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you, and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).

The time must come that we get serious about who the Holy Spirit is and learn why He came to Earth. Then we must choose to cooperate with Him and allow Him to do all that God has sent Him to do. We need to ask Him, “Why did You come?” and “Why did My Father send You to me?” Then as He answers us and reveals to us His divine purposes, we must yield to His work in our lives and churches.

As we begin to discuss what it means to walk in the Spirit, we need to understand the specific purposes for which God comes to dwell in us.

A Place of Spiritual Discernment

One of the first things He does is make our hearts a place of spiritual discernment. Though all may not operate in the gift of discerning of spirits, when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, He brings His divine ability to discern and makes our “temples” a place of spiritual discernment. The Holy Spirit will put a caution in our minds when we hear something that is not quite right. Those checks become safeguards that keep us from error. We need to learn to listen to those impressions and then learn to test them, trying the spirits (1 John 4:1).

A Place of Refreshing Rain

The Holy Spirit makes our hearts ready to receive the refreshing rain that God promises. He knows that, without rain, we can’t produce fruit. He knows that, unless we have showers, our hearts will get hard. Have you ever seen rain fall when the ground was so hard the water didn’t soak it? That is a picture of people who come to church when the Spirit is moving, and the rain of His presence rolls off like water off a duck’s back because their hearts are too hard to receive it. The rain of the Spirit brings repentance. Repentance will break the soil and the fallow ground. He comes in conviction to our temples and prepares them as places where the showers of the latter rain of refreshing can fall.

A Place of Healing and Deliverance

The Holy Spirit has come to make our temples places of healing. Jesus came to bring divine help to the mind, to the will, to the emotions, to any part of us that has been injured or bruised. In whatever way we are lame or crippled—physically, mentally or emotionally—He has come to bring divine enablement. We do not need to wallow in self-pity over our emotional hurts or use the past as an excuse for present failure. Though we are powerless to heal ourselves, the Holy Spirit brings our healing by His divine power.

A Place Where Strongholds of Satan Are Conquered

I know some say the church is not to be militant, and we are to be lovers of the Lamb, cultivating relationship with our heavenly Bridegroom. I agree we are to be in love with Jesus, but I disagree with the extreme of saying we are never to be involved in spiritual warfare. God gave the church the power over Satan. He deputized us, equipped us and sent us out with authority over devils and diseases. The church is learning both to worship the Lamb and to do warfare—not by our power, but by the power of the Spirit. It is God pulling down strongholds, but He has to do it through the church. If we can stand against the enemy with vessels that are clean and release the Holy Ghost in us, He will pull down the strongholds of the enemy. The Holy Spirit gives us authority to take back what the devil stole.

A Place of Soul-Winning and Missionary Zeal

The Holy Spirit comes to set up a zeal in our hearts for winning the lost to Christ. Jesus promised the disciples, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you shall be My witnesses” (Acts 1:8). Where do we begin to be witnesses? Your world is where you personally touch lives. Jesus commissioned His disciples to go to all the world. A Spirit-led life will have that mandate.

Fuchsia Pickett, who died in 2004, was miraculously healed of a genetic, life-threatening disease in 1959. She wrote The Next Move of God and other classic works.

To learn more, read this …

Discover the incomparable power of abiding in the Holy Ghost in Fuchsia Pickett’s Walking in the Spirit: The Power of the Holy Spirit Can Be Yours (Charisma House). Find this resource on amazon.com, christianbook.com or anywhere Christian books are sold.