Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:6).
Nicodemus, the one to whom Jesus spoke these words, could not have been more confused. Jesus might as well have downloaded Nic’s brain into a computer program. His head was spinning and this Rabbi was confusing him. He recognized the words, but the meaning of the words seemed just out of reach.
This distinction between spirit and flesh still challenges each of us today. As we learn to “live by the Spirit” it can be like learning to speak a foreign language, or learning to communicate with a member of the opposite sex.
Engaging God’s Spirit can cause strong emotions, but sometimes strong emotions come from our flesh, and prevent us from tuning into God. Allowing God’s Spirit to speak through us can cause a great surge in confidence, but this very confidence can become dangerous pride. Encountering God’s Spirit can result in powerful experiences. These very experiences can later become a distraction from an ongoing experience of God’s presence. Some of the things produced in us by His Spirit can be imitated without His presence, as we fall again into self-reliance.
See the trap? Measuring outward experience may not necessarily tell us anything at all about whether or not we are being moved by the Spirit. In fact, measuring by outward experience can convince us wrongly that we are living by the Spirit.
When we are dependent on and guided by the Spirit of God, it is a strange partnership between our willingness to grow in dependence and familiarity and God’s willingness to be patient and train us. God makes a move, then it is our turn. He initiates an engagement and watches to see what we do. He wants to inform us, then empower us and then demonstrate Himself through us. His goal is to get us to learn to walk out the whole process empowered by His working.
So we Hear God. Now what. We heard because He spoke. But we focus on our hearing.
“I’m pretty good at hearing God,” we think (or worse, say).
Then we proceed to tell others what we heard, and how we heard, and how cool it was. At some point we diverge from God’s goal. We think His goal is that we go now, and do what He said, regardless of whose energy we engage. God is standing back at the starting line to see how far we will run before we realize He has not moved since He spoke. Will we run ahead without Him?
Step by step Living by the Spirit starts to make sense. Well, that’s not really the right way to say it. We begin to understand. Well, that’s not really the right way to say it either. We grow in familiarity and surrender. We become less willing to take another step without Him. We become more sensitive to His impulse and the shifting of our wayward motives. We grow familiar with the “groove” of being moved by Him.
It is a maturing process. Can it be measured? Sure it can; watch for these signs: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, meekness, mercy, and self-control. If these qualities are not in you, and are not produced around you consider the source. Spirit or Flesh.
