If you have Windows XP, you know about the critical updates and patches that Microsoft sends out to try to fix the holes that left the software vulnerable to every attacker in the world. In fact, there was a patch that was released this week. Microsoft is the expert on things Microsoft, so we should be able to have confidence that the updates will be what we need to make us safer. Right?

Well, in technical circles, it has become known that there is often a problem with the updates. Often, when they send the updates, they do so with the same carelessness that they used originally when they released the Windows operating system for sale. Often, the very update that is offered to clear up one problem actually creates at least one more problem.

What does this have to do with the things of the Spirit?

Something that is happening in the church today is there are many sending out information that they say is "critical" to your spiritual growth.  What you will often find is that it is like Paul said, "that they might again bring us into bondage".

The Lord often uses every day things to talk to us about supernatural things. If this doesn’t speak to you, He will find a way. For many others, we are blessed as we go about our day in day out activities because we are constantly having conversations with the Lord. The more we open ourselves to His voice, the more He blesses us in these unusual comparisons that come out of what we do during the course of the day. I guess it's like modern parables?.

I downloaded that critical update this week and almost immediately, my computer slowed so much that it seemed like it was the 1990 model rather than the 2005 model that I just put together!

Does it feel like your spiritual life has slowed way down?

Check what you have been downloading into your spirit. Is it words from those who embrace the doctrines of men rather than the words from the Spirit of God? If so, you can ask the Spirit to cleanse you. God can “Add/Remove” programs from your spirit that may have sincerely have been meant to do you good but instead turn out to bring you into bondage again because of the carelessness of the deliverer of the message.

In 2 Corinthians 3:17 Paul tells us this:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (emancipation from bondage, freedom).

You as a child of the ONE TRUE God ARE able to walk in it.

In Acts 2:39, Luke the Apostle says it like this:

For the promise [of the Holy Spirit] is to {and} for you and your children, and to {and} for all that are far away, [even] to {and} for as many as the Lord our God invites {and} bids to come to Himself.

Microsoft is a big name. Don’t let their prominence and their position before men be the measure of whether you should allow everything that they send to reside on your computer.

The same also holds truth regarding those who hold the places of honor in the Body of Christ. Ask the Lord to help you discern that which He wants to plant in your spirit. His Spirit will then come and water it and you can walk in the freedom that comes from the Spirit of Truth rather than hindered by the bondage that comes from the spirit of man.

walkininthespirit

5-5-06