We finished our series on the Holy Spirit last night by focusing on how the Holy Spirit guides us. Without the leading of the Holy Spirit, we would be completely lost. But praise God He has given His children the Holy Spirit who leads and guides us each step of the way.
We first considered a few examples from Scripture of where we see the Holy Spirit's leading:
- Matthew 4:1 (we can be led into a time of testing)
- Acts 16:6-10 (directs us and prevents us from certain things)
- Mark 13:9-11 (the right words to say - Stephen, Peter, Paul)
Then we dug into Galatians 5:16-25, and learned 3 ways the Holy Spirit leads us:
- Prevents us from sin. (by warring against our fleshly desires) v. 16-17, 24
- Produces fruit in our life. - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. v. 22-23
- Succeeds where rules cannot. v. 18
High School: James 2:14-26
We continue our journey through the book of James, and this week we looked at the relationship between faith and works.
Our big idea: Genuine faith is accompanied by works.
We explored this with 2 main points, the first negative and the second positive.
- Faith without works is counterfeit. a. It can't save. b. It's dead. c. It's all in the head. d. It's useless.
- Faith with works is genuine. (Here we looked at 4 key words from the passage): a. Evidence - Works are the only evidence of faith that there is. b. Synergy - Works and Faith work together. c. Maturity - Works are the completion of faith, the sign of a genuine mature faith. d. Relationship - Abraham was called a "friend of God". So it is with everyone who has genuine faith in Jesus Christ.
We ended by considering the illustration of a Locomotive, and this quote:
"It is faith alone that saves. But the faith that saves is never alone."
Just like the locomotive (faith) is the active agent, it always is accompanied by train cars (works). There is no power in the train cars, but they follow the locomotive.
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