There Is No Condemnation // The Holy Spirit and Me, Part 4

The biggest thing that keeps us from drawing close to God is the fear of condemnation.  He’s perfect and I’m not - so I’m in trouble.  Makes sense.  But fortunately, God’s grace isn’t logical.

The biggest fear I ever had of getting close to God was the fear of judgement and condemnation. I didn't understand what Holy meant but I understood that if God was God then He was holy and He was good and He was perfect and I wasn't.

And so the only logical thing for God to do if I let Him get close to me was to judge me. I could just hear Him, "Well now let’s have a look at your ledger, hmm, no you're not worthy. No you're not good enough, no go over there and sit in the corner." That would be logical, it would be fair too, but fortunately, fortunately God’s grace isn't logical and His mercy isn't fair, maybe that's why they call it the Good News.

It's a bit of a dilemma isn't it? Because when we look in the mirror we know that there are things that we're doing wrong and when we talk about the Holy Spirit and Holy God, holiness means that God is perfect that's why this week we're having a look at the Holy Spirit and me. Who or what is the Holy Spirit? And if I'm meant to get close to God, which I am and you are, how do we do that? When God and His Spirit is holy, perfect and I'm not and you're not.

The Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood of the three persons who are God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit and I guess that's because we can understand Dad, we can understand Jesus the Son but we don't have a picture in our heads about this Holy Spirit.

Earlier on this week we saw that it was an amazing part of Gods plan for us to have a really close intimacy with God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and Gods desire to take our life, which is sometimes a desert and to bring it to life, to put rivers of living water through it. To fill it with peace and joy and life, that's what Gods plan, is and it comes to life in us and through us, through His spirit, His holy spirit but me, I look at God and I'm just not up to it.

Now some people these days would laugh at that, "Come on Berni. We're all good enough, if it feels good – do it. We eat and drink for tomorrow we die so let’s just get on with it." But get those people in a quiet honest moment and that sense of deep inadequacy, of failure, of emptiness, of uncertainty, it's out there in plague proportions. And that very need is so often the thing that keeps us from drawing close to God, from seeking Him out and having an intimate real relationship with Him through the Holy Spirit who, over the last couple of days on the program we've seen that God promises us, if we believe in Jesus, if we give our lives over to Him, if we love Him and obey Him, He wants to fill us with the Holy Spirit. He wants to come and make His home in us through the Holy Spirit.

This problem of us being imperfect and God being perfect, is something the Apostle Paul writes about. If you have a Bible you can check it out later in Romans, chapters 7 and 8. He writes something along these lines, he says:

"You know what my problem is, I know what’s good and I know what’s bad and I want to do what’s good but the problem is that I can want to do what’s good but I just cant do it, in fact this is how it works for me, whenever I want to do good, evil is right here with me. There’s nothing good in me," says Paul, "Nothing, I'm so wretched and pitiful. Who'll save me?" Thank God Jesus will.

In fact," he writes, "there's no condemnation for those who believe in Jesus. None because in Jesus God did something that rules and regulations can't do. He did away with sin because Jesus paid the price with His own body on the cross and now that struggle between good and evil isn't my problem anymore because Jesus set me free from that.

So here's the choice that I have, if I set my heart and my mind on things that are wrong, that's where I'll end up, an enemy of God but if I set my heart and mind on the things of God, on the things of His spirit, that's where I'll end up, with abundant life. It's not a self-help program anymore, if I draw close to the Holy Spirit, He's the one that changes me, He's the one that brings life to my otherwise dead body, He's the one that makes the freedom that Jesus bought for me on the cross a reality here and now in my life today."

Isn't that great, Paul’s coming to a realisation. I mean, here's a man, God gets him to write almost half the books in the New Testament, he has the same problem that you and I do. He knows what’s good, he'd love to do it, he just can't and that's our problem. The self-help program doesn't work. We can pedal and struggle and try but ultimately we can't change ourselves.

Paul is saying here, "You know something; I've finally figured it out. Even though I've made mistakes, even though I continue to make mistakes, I believe in Jesus and Jesus is my salvation and Jesus is the one through whom God forgives me and because of Jesus dying on the cross and rising again, you know something, I go to God and there's no condemnation because Jesus paid the price for me.

Now I have a choice to live; now I can do one of two things. I can either set my mind and my heart on things that are wrong or set my mind and my heart on the Holy Spirit and when I set my mind and my heart on the Holy Spirit, He changes me from the inside out, He changes me." And that’s been my experience.

I get so much joy from God. So much peace, so much life, so much enthusiasm, so much strength, so much power that I can't conjure up on my own. Power to be humble, power to be honest, power to be decent. Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect and I never will be until that day when I stand before God but God is busy changing me from the inside out and that’s the way it works.

And you know the days when I really, really make a mess of it, they're the days when I haven't set my heart on Him. They're the days when I haven't stopped and rested and just prayed and spent some time with His word in the morning and set my heart and my focus for the day on Him.

Come on, God wants to change us, God wants to give us power and life through His spirit and the message of the Bible is that it is not a self-help program. It's about setting our hearts and our minds on the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, spending that time with Him in the mornings, walking with Him during the days, worshipping God, making melodies in our hearts to Him. Thanking Him, turning to Him in every circumstance, every step, every situation, every struggle, every victory He changes us.

He heals us from the inside out instead of us trying to change ourselves from the outside in but not only does He change us, He imparts Gods forgiveness into our spirit so that we know, that we know, that we know that we're forgiven.

This is what Paul writes in the same chapter that we just read over, Romans. "We that are led by the Spirit of God are God's kids and God didn't give us a spirit of slavery so that we'd fall back into fear but He gave us a spirit of adoption so that we can cry out 'my God, my Dad', that's the very spirit of God bearing witness in our spirits, that we're His kids."

Father it is hard sometimes for us to accept your forgiveness and to know it. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that you would pour your Spirit into us right now, that you would witness your love to us through your Spirit, Lord that you would open our hearts and blow us away with your awesome wonder and joy and power through your Holy Spirit. Father I ask it in Jesus name.