You are who you really are when you are all by yourself.  The real you—with all of your bumps, bruises, warts and wounds—takes the stage and reigns and rules.  It is during your daily, committed, personal time spent with the Father and His Word that you allow Him to carve away anything in your life that doesn’t look like God’s Son.  The watching world will see your life and be able to say, “That person has spent time with Jesus.”

Read Acts 4:13 and you will see how the “untrained and uneducated” disciples proved their confidence was in Christ and not in themselves.  They demonstrated that The Holy Spirit was dwelling inside them.  Day after day, these apostles confronted the religious leaders who waged holy war against the infant church in the days following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

In the writings of Paul, your “walk” was much more than foot transportation.  Your walk was your life conduct.  Who you trusted.  Who you followed.  How you lived your life.  What you do and say.  Where you allow your feet to go.  Your walk was your communication of the gospel without words.  It still is exactly that today!

Deeds and actions and law keeping never take a person to Heaven.  God’s grace through our faith provides the free gift of salvation.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in us is the evidence that such an eternal transaction has taken place.  The Pharisees and Sadducees conducted an all out public war with the early church. 

There is an unseen war that rages daily inside the life of every believer.  The flesh wars against The Holy Spirit.  If we walk in The Spirit, the deeds of the flesh are squashed.  If we walk in the flesh, the deeds of The Spirit are squashed. The evidence that we are walking in The Spirit is that we display Fruit of the Spirit.  The evidence that we are NOT walking in The Spirit is the lack of fruit displayed.  Fruit or Consequences.  That is the answer we all need to hear.

The deeds of the flesh in Galatians 5 read like our daily newspaper:  adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, jealousy, rivalry, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revellings  and such like things as these. 

The complete contrast of the deeds of the flesh are called fruit of The Spirit in Galatians 5:22.  The fruit (singular) are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is a day by day decision to allow The Holy Spirit to fill you and mend your broken places.  As we have said in earlier lesson sessions, the filling of The Holy Spirit occurs as we empty ourselves in obedience to His Lordship.  The more empty we are, the better He can fill us.  We empty ourselves of the deeds of the flesh and our tendency to lean toward those and make places for The Holy Spirit to move and direct our steps.  Our walk/conduct looks a whole lot more like Jesus. 

In red letters recorded in the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus encourages us to let our light shine and not allow it to be dimmed or clouded by our sinful nature.  Daily, we choose to be light or be darkness.  Daily, we choose to walk in the flesh or walk in The Spirit.  Daily, we live out the lyrics of the song entitled “Day by Day.”  Our prayer should be to “see Thee more clearly, follow Thee more nearly, love Thee more dearly day by day by day.” 

A very old hymn carries the same title.  Verse one starts with these lyrics:  “Day by day and with each passing moment strength I find to meet my trials here.”  The beautiful thing about being led by The Spirit is that He is living inside us, taking every step with us, leaning closer as we make every choice.  He is there to help us, to comfort us, to convict us, to call things to our remembrance, to guide us, to teach us…to grab us by the heart and focus our eyes on The Savior Who loved us enough to die for us.