No Looking Back

How do we know if a person is truly Spirit filled?  Is there some marker which can be used for them and even for us?  The answer is simple.  There is no visible marker.  Oh, certainly our lifestyle might show signs of the Spirit's influence in our lives.  The preacher might preach with more power and unction.  Those in the marketplace might conduct business and deal with people differently than most of their peers.  Still, if seeing and knowing is our goal, it is not something that is going to be as visible as we might like for it to be. 

The truth is the real measure of the Spirit filled life is what happens when no one is looking.  The real evidence of such a life choice and commitment happens in the places unseen by human eyes, but seen by the empowering and ever present Holy Spirit.  How we live and act and think when no one is looking to see us is the real measure.  And, the fact that we live according to the dictates of the Holy Spirit with only the purpose of pleasing God is still another.  As soon as we want someone else to know what we do and how we live, the real test has been failed.  In such a moment we are in the game of pleasing ego instead of pleasing God. 

 

One of my favorite writers, Oswald Chambers, uses the word "abandonment" often.  In fact if there is any theme which flows through the things I read of his, it is this word.  In a recent biography which I read, this spirit and attitude kept surfacing in a way that spoke of an inner decision to live his live abandoned to God and His will in a way that stirs me and others to strive for the ground higher than the one being walked.  To be abandoned to God seems to be a way of describing the ones who truly live as the Spirit filled among us.  To be abandoned to God means that His plans are not only sought but become the mandate for going forward in a "no looking back" lifestyle.