Spirit Led Living

1 Cor 6:13-20 "The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."    17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." Sin is sin. Any sin no matter how minor in our eyes is enough to keep us from fellowship with God...

1 Cor 6:12-13 "Everything is permissible for me"-but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"-but I will not be mastered by anything.” It is for freedom that I have been set free. I allow no one to put a yoke on me other than the one put there by the Lord. I can remember in my younger days watching my friends take all their rock albums and breaking them or throw them away after giving their lives to Christ. I knew the tremendous significance that this had for them, but I also knew that at some point later on they would wish they hadn’t done it. I had the grace to be able to enjoy the music without buying into the message I also enjoy having a glass of wine every now and again or a beer on a hot day. Having said all of this I am very careful not to exercise my freedom indiscriminately. For years I served as an addictions counselor. I knew that my freedom could easily become someone else’s stumbling block. Therefore, I chose not to drink ...

1 Cor 6:9-11 “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God ? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God . 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.’ This is where we start hitting up against situational ethics and the moral codes of this era. Jesus came to establish the kingdom of God . His approach wais to love people into His kingdom and for His followers to do the same. He meets people exactly where they are and shows them the Father’s love. Sadly, for many this means that we tolerate the sin, or worse, that we find a way not to call it sin at all. The first argument is the cultural argument. Paul and Peter write against braided hair, short hair ...

1 Cor 5:6-8 “Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast — as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.” This passage needs to be understood in its context because apart from that it makes little sense to the modern reader. Most of us are used to going to the store, be it a supermarket or a bakery and having a wide selection of breads to choose from. Most of our modern breads contain yeast so that they rise and have a soft and pleasing texture. The Jew of Paul’s time did not have this luxury. More to the point, the bread of the Passover feast or what we know as the Seder is made without yeast and eaten with bitter herbs to commemorate their deliverance out of Egypt when...

1 Cor 5:1-5 "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord." In reading over various commentaries in order to shed light on verse 5, I am dismayed at the self-imposed limitations of the commentators who actually believe that miracles were only for the early church and ceased to exist with the passing of the Apostles. There can be no Scriptural argument mad...

1 Cor 4:9-13 It seems to me that God has put us who bear his Message on stage in a theater in which no one wants to buy a ticket. We're something everyone stands around and stares at, like an accident in the street. 10 We're the Messiah's misfits. You might be sure of yourselves, but we live in the midst of frailties and uncertainties. You might be well-thought-of by others, but we're mostly kicked around. 11 Much of the time we don't have enough to eat, we wear patched and threadbare clothes, we get doors slammed in our faces, 12 and we pick up odd jobs anywhere we can to eke out a living. When they call us names, we say, "God bless you." 13 When they spread rumors about us, we put in a good word for them. We're treated like garbage, potato peelings from the culture's kitchen. And it's not getting any better. (from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.) I chose to use The Message ins...

1 Cor 3:16-17 "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?   If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple." This verse is very timely, especially on this Good Friday. The accounts of Jesus' death in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke) have vivid descriptions of what took place in the instant the He gave up His spirit. Matt 27:50-52 "And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life." Mark 15:38 "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." Luke 23:44-45 "It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped s...