34. Walking in the Spirit

FLASHBACK

What did you experience with God this week?
In the last few days, did you have the opportunity to share an experience with God with someone close to you that doesn’t know Jesus yet? Or could you pray for them or help them practically?
Do you need God‘s help in an area of your life?

■ Pray together: Give thanks for your experiences, ask God for help where you need it.

■ Pray together to learn new things about God and that your relationship with God deepens and gets stronger.

BIBLE STUDY

Read the passage silently. What words or phrases stick out?
One person reads the passage out loud.
One person retells the passage in his/her own words (Bibles closed).
If necessary, the others complement what was said (Bibles closed).

1 Corinthians 2:9-3:4

⁹ However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—

¹⁰these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.¹¹For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.¹²What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.¹³This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.¹⁴The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.¹⁵The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,¹⁶for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

^3:1Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. ² I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. ³ You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? ⁴ For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?

Everyone by themselves:
- What words or phrases stick out now? Are there any differences to what you noticed before?
- Why do you feel drawn to those words or phrases?
- What can you learn about people?
- What could God be telling you?
Share in the group.

SPECIFIC QUESTIONS & ACTION STEPS

What are characteristics of a “man of the spirit”? (read also 2 Corinthians 5:14-15)
What are characteristics of a “man of the flesh”? (1 Corinthians 3:1-3)
Where do you still live in the flesh? That is, where do you NOT live in unity with and through the power of the Holy Spirit?

We Christians may have received the Holy Spirit, but our lives are not automatically Spirit-filled (see also the unit “Filled”). But how can we live continually in the Holy Spirit?

“Do not quench the Spirit” (1. Thessalonians 5:19)

Can the Holy Spirit flow freely through you? What could hinder Him?
Are you ready to confess to God where you were living in opposition to God’s will and to repent from these attitudes, thoughts and deeds? Are you ready to submit fully to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and to be empowered by him?
If you can agree to these points, ask God to fill you with His Holy Spirit now. The following two steps can help you. We call them “spiritual breathing”:

■ If yes, ask God now to fill you with His Spirit. The practical steps called “spiritual breathing” you find in the unit “Filled” could be of help.

■ Pray in groups of two or three that your lives are filled with the power, love and wisdom of God and that it shines outward to your student friends who don’t know Jesus yet.

■ Gather ideas as to how you can support your student friends so that they can see/feel/experience Jesus’s love for them in and through you.

OTHER LANGUAGES