There is a very important element of God that He is emphasizing right now for me.  It has to do with patience on His part, and along with that, it has to do with clarity of purpose.  I’ve said of late that I seem to be halted in my journey at this point.  It started with getting to know the Holy Spirit and journaling to Him.  However, there is so much more God is wanting me to know at this point.  What scripture tells me is that The Holy Spirit isn’t separate from me, He is within me and waiting for me to surrender totally to Him as I continue to awaken more fully to the fullness of His indwelling.

As I spoke to our congregation yesterday I found myself free to say what was needed.  Last night at church we had a men’s night.  I had a young man talk with me for 30+ minutes about his desire to join this work and to be trained.  He hates his past and God has granted him freedom from it.  He yearns to help others and God nudged him yesterday that this is how He is wanting him to help.  On the flip side of this, one of the young men in the step study I co-lead had relapsed this past week.  Our lesson title was Relapse.  He hates the sin but it is like a magnet to him if he gives the urge a glimmer of a chance.  I saw something last night that the Holy Spirit is making much more clear this morning–it is one thing to hate the consequences of sin, but it is another thing to hate the sin itself.  It isn’t until we ask for The Holy Spirit to help us hate the sin that we will quit coming back to it.  Too often we momentarily quit due to the consequences, but it is a whole different story when we finally begin to hate the sin itself.  This is when the full Light of Glory can shine within us.  It is then that The Holy Spirit is much freer to work within us.

II Corinthians 3:17 affirms that God wants us to have liberty and not legalism.  Liberty is sometimes defined as emancipation from bondage.  The bondage from a sin or from sinning itself doesn’t happen fully until we can hate the sin itself that has gripped us.  Join me in asking The Holy Spirit within us to teach us to hate this sin which so often wants us to return and keep us in the bondage of our old self.  We are learning to live as a new creation and this is exactly what The Holy Spirit within is waiting to do.