Walking the Jesus Walk : Moved by Compassion - Mark Ellis

Because everything we've been building up towards is understanding that the literal blueprint of the Christian life is found in the life and ministry of Jesus.

In other words, we have an example in Jesus to follow, which is why Jesus told his own disciples to follow him.

Remember, Jesus went and he said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." And as Jesus went about, the first thing he does, and I think it's in Mark 3 or Mark 4, Jesus appoints the apostles and then the first thing he gives them is the right to be with him.

The first thing is so that they may be with him, and he gave them authority to preach the gospel and to cast out demons and to heal the sick.

So the, the disciples were given a delegated level of authority because they were operating under Jesus.

We have been given an inherited authority because we've been born from above, from the very same spirit that is God's Spirit.

It says so in John 1 that all those who called upon His name and believed in Him, He gave them the power to become the sons and daughters of God, who were born not of the flesh or blood or of the will of man, but of the Spirit of God.

So that means that God's Spirit itself has become one with your spirit, and now you are a new creation in Christ.

The old man is dead and a new creature has emerged.

Not it's going to emerge, it has emerged.

And now this new creature needs to find dominance over the flesh so that the flesh will submit to the ways of the Spirit.

Now, do you guys remember in Genesis, God formed man out of the dust, right? Would we say He made man out of the earth? Would that be the body? Now the body that is made out of the earth, right, He puts a spirit in that body.

He breathes into Adam, and Adam becomes a living being.

Now that spirit is to have dominion over the earth that it is abiding in.

And so we learn that until we are able to exercise our dominion over this earth, we will struggle to exercise dominion over this earth.

Because we build an inconsistency in the spirit realm when we're not able to exercise dominion over this earth, the earth that you are abiding in.

And this is part of what Jesus demonstrated, as I illustrated the last couple of weeks, Jesus demonstrated that His spirit ruled over His flesh, and because of that, there was no impediment to the Spirit flowing through His soul into other people.

But when the flesh is...

In other words, when your mind is in agreement with the flesh, it creates a environment of hostility where the will of God is unable to flow through the soul.

Does it make sense? Okay.

Because the Bible says that the mind that is fixed on the flesh is carnal and it is at enmity with God and it cannot obey God's laws.

So the mind has to be renewed in order for the spirit man to gain dominance so the flesh is put in its proper place as a servant of the Spirit.

There's some deep stuff there, so hope you all got that.

Now, the beautiful thing about putting the Spirit in charge is that the Spirit itself is after the image and likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, which means that we have been given this spirit that literally is the character and nature of God, which is love, which we covered, um, last week.

Largely showed you guys in 1 Corinthians 13 how it describes what love is.