Igniting Your Christian Life: Inner Strength

Now, as we look at these five things, we’re going to see how a Christian really gets to the place where he functions, how you get to going on all cylinders. We’ve been calling it the Christian’s turn-on. First of all, if we’re going to really actualise all of this great truth, if we’re going to take the treasure of the Word of God and the treasure of the indwelling Spirit of God, and if we’re going to make something out of this, then it begins with inner strength. We must be strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man.

That’s in verse 16. Paul begins by saying that he prays that we would be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. There’s got to be a changing in the inner man. We’ve got to allow the Spirit to have control. Now, your inner man will be strengthened when the Holy Spirit has control of it, when you yield to him, when you no longer rule by yourself, when you no longer do just what you want, but where you learn moment by moment, step by step, one day at a time, to yield control to the Holy Spirit.

Now, I frankly don’t believe that the world has any way in which it can help somebody in the inner man. I really don’t see it. They can gloss things over. They can give you sort of temporary relief from a problem. But when you’re dealing with the heart and the soul and the Spirit, and the inner man of a person, the world really doesn’t have any answers. This is reinforced in a book published by Random House. It’s a secular book written by Martin Gross. It’s entitled The Psychological Society. And in this book, he attempts to debunk the whole psychological, psychiatric and psychoanalytical method as just a whole lot of nothing.

In fact, his point in the book is that it’s just one way for a lot of people to make a lot of money. Very interesting. He says if you want to find out whether or not people are in it for the money, he uses the example of a certain psychiatric hospital full of psychologically or psychotically ill people, supposedly, who are real mental cases. This particular hospital has three people available to counsel them. Whereas in Beverly Hills, there’s over 300 psychiatrists and psychologists. There’s no money in a mental hospital. There’s plenty of it in Beverly Hills.

In fact, Billy Graham said, in that area, there’s so many people with psychological problems, that it’s called the mental block. But I think that I think that we’re all aware of the difficulty with this whole so-called science. Anyway, Gross points out the fact that it just doesn’t have any answers. His conclusion after all of this, and he goes into it from every conceivable angle, hundreds and hundreds of pages. His conclusion after all of this, and by the way, there are medical people who are saying it’s the most significant book on psychology written in years.

The conclusion of all of this is that people are neurotic. They’re always neurotic. They’ll always be neurotic. Let them alone. Just don’t charge the money for being neurotic. You can’t change them. There’s not one thing you can do about it. And in essence, we would say as Christians, well, we don’t believe that human wisdom can do anything at all about internal problems, but we do believe the Holy Spirit can. Right? And if there’s to be a change in the inner man, it’s going to be by the strengthening of the inner man through the Holy Spirit.

And that comes as you yield to the Spirit. Every time you yield to the Spirit, a decision in your life, every time, one time, you yield to the Holy Spirit, that decision each day, you strengthen the muscle of your inner man a little more. And as you continue to do that, your inner man gets stronger and stronger and stronger, and it’s easier than to say yes to the Spirit and no to sin. And I’ve always said spirituality is the process of decreasing frequency of sinfulness. Sin decreases as you yield to the Spirit because you strengthen the inner man, and it becomes easier to say yes to the Holy Spirit.

So that’s where it all begins, strengthening the inner man by the Spirit as you yield to him one day at a time. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of igniting your Christian life, inner strength. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].