Hello and welcome to the third part of The Person of the Leader – Order of Christian Living.

Roman 8: 5-6 say, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace”.

God’s presence and guidance are not earned; they are ours through the blood of Christ. It is when we choose to walk with them each and every moment that we “walk according to the Spirit” (Romans 8: 4).

We have victory to the degree we completely depend on the Lord, contrasted with our own strengths:

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.  For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7: 18-25).

The apostle Paul knew what he ought to do but failed to do it; and what he knew was wrong, he did. As long as we remain on earth, our tendencies to sin will continue to frustrate us.

Sin is like gravity. We cannot resist it with our own strength and willpower – we cannot fly by flapping our arms. We do not counter gravity to fly. Instead, we use another law which is known as aerodynamics. An airplane flies not by violating the law of gravity but by using an engine and wings to provide a lift stronger than the pull of gravity.

Similarly, we cannot overcome habitual sin by our own strength. Instead, we need a different law entirely – the law of the Spirit. Romans 8: 1-2 say, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death”.

Overcoming sin is not an action we perform but a position we take when we allow the Spirit in us to enable and empower us to overcome. It is in brokenness that we consciously choose to follow the Lord, and let Him mould our character. As the Lord lives in us and places His Word in our hearts, we overcome the evil one, the world and our self-life.

How does this happen?

Fundamentally, we are spirit beings who have a soul, displayed as our personality and held together by our physical body. There are five senses in our physical body. They are touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Our physical body represents our Outer-Man.

The Inner-Man consisted of Soul and Spirit. Our soul is composed of three main parts which are mind, emotion and will.

When we surrender our minds, emotions and wills to God, He tempers them with His Spirit. Our minds become renewed as He gives us revelation and prevents us from being conformed to the world and to know His good, acceptable and perfect will (Romans 12: 1-2).

He also works on our emotions. We get angry, moody and jealous of each other. These natural emotions keep us bound to our natural will. If we allow these emotions to work in our lives, we are unable to live or rejoice the way God wants us to be. Jealousy and envy are part of the world’s economy - someone else’s gain is our loss. But God’s economy is always win-win!

Our natural emotions also prevent us from obeying God and rejoicing in seeing Him glorified in others. But if we allow the Spirit to work in our lives, He will direct us to the appropriate emotional response. This is why the apostle Paul calls the right emotional postures the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5: 22-24 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires”.

This is how we know our will is aligned with that of God when our emotions and decision-making lead us to exhibit these virtues. The more we place our lives under the leading of God, the Holy Spirit sharpens our decision-making, thoughts and emotions. We manifest the Spirit’s guidance in the way we live and express ourselves, and thus He shapes our character.

GOD’S ORDER FOR CHRISTIAN LIVING

How does God guide and relate to us through the body, soul and spirit? Do take note that the order is important!

We must first be led by the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit guides our spirit and in turn governs our soul. Then the soul, which defines our character, controls the actions of our physical body, that manifests in all our responses and actions.

So, we must make a conscious decision not to be directed totally by what we can see “for we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5: 7). Instead, we put our focus on the unseen, supernatural leading of the Spirit in our daily living because “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4: 18).

For this to happen, we must strengthen our relationship with God. Then, we will yield to the Spirit’s leading to guide our personalities which results in choices and responses that are pleasing to God.

Testimony: Rachel, a bank executive, was attacked by her colleague to her boss behind her back. Although she thought of revenge, she held back realising that the thought was from her sinful nature. She calmed down before the Lord and remembered the words of Jesus in Matthew 5: 44-45, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Rachel listened to the still, small voice and prayed for her colleague and blessed him. She felt released in spirit and experienced peace and the conviction that God would act on her behalf. In doing so, she died to her flesh and disarmed the evil spiritual forces around her.

Several months later, Rachel was promoted because her boss acknowledged her diligence and results. By not responding to the flesh but blessing her colleague, Rachel had stirred her own desire to pray for office environment, her boss and other colleagues.

BE GUIDED BY THE SPIRIT

In summary, the leader’s first priority is to position himself as a person the Lord can use. He takes up his own cross and subjects himself to the ways of God, not the ways of the flesh. He keeps his eyes on Jesus, dealing with both the sinful nature and the baggage that hinders.

The Lord Jesus, in the Beatitudes, tells us that if we deal with the lust in our hearts, we will not commit adultery. If we deal with our anger, we will not commit murder. If we deal with our greed, we will not steal (Matthew 5).

But even as we try to do all these, there remains a tension between our spiritual and natural life that will not go away while we live on this side of eternity. Pastor Daniel Foo refers this part of the soul – mind, emotions and will – which has been yielded to the life of the Spirit the transforming soul. The part which is still in opposition to God is the natural soul.

Spiritual transformation, which Apostle Paul calls the renewing of our mind in Romans 12: 1-2, is thus the process of bringing more and more of ourselves under His rule.

Our conversion and the act of receiving Jesus as Lord and Saviour put into motion a process that we must actively continue throughout our lives. This is to grow our spiritual life. As an analogy, the day we receive Jesus, perhaps we have 5% of the spiritual life but 95% of our life is still lived in the natural. But as leaders, we must grow spiritually so that we cross the 50% mark, and the majority of our life is spiritual. As the amount of our lives that is Spirit-directed increases, it becomes easier to control the carnal remainder as the Lord empowers and energises us. We also become more sensitive to His encouragement or restraint.

None of this can happen through our willpower but through the Holy Spirit. That is what it means to live under grace, not under the Law!

What do we allow to lead us – the Spirit or the flesh? Perhaps we put it this way: we are like dog owners taking our pets (the carnal self) for a walk. A confident owner leads the dog around by its leash, while an inexperienced owner allows the dog to lead him around.

Following Jesus and leading others to Him becomes more, not less, manageable as we grow in Him. None of us can be said to have ‘arrived’. But the important thing is to have the Lord Jesus leading us and working to perfect our characters.

Let us highlight to you what we have covered so far. The first of the seven keys of outstanding leadership is known as The Person of the Leader. Under this topic, we have discussed in part 1, dealing with sin and baggage and denying the self-life. Then last week, part 2, we talked about the journey of brokenness and today, the third and last part is the order of Christian living.

We shall look into the second key, The Perspective of the Leader, the following four weeks. We pray that you will find the topics are easy to understand and able to apply to life without much difficulty later. Please stay with us for more beneficial sharing. Do join us again next Wednesday. Good bye!