Three Evidences of Holy Spirit Transformation

Today as I continue my journey and invite you to come along, I want to talk about the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. 

How leaning into the indwelling of the Holy Spirit changes me from the inside out. 

As I reflect on Galatians 5, I used different resources to study and then read a trusted commentary to verify my conclusions. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you, these reflections are influenced by John Stott’s commentary on Galatians.  

I noted three evidences of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.  

The First Evidence is Freedom 

The first evidence that I am being transformed is Freedom.  

It is by His Spirit that Christ set me free. I am completely liberated to live the life He called me to. That kind of true freedom is only found in Christ. So why do I keep going back to sins that will hold me in bondage instead of enjoying the freedom of conscience Christ brought with His forgiveness?  

If I am being honest, I think it’s because I want to live for myself more than I want to live for Christ. I say I long to lean into His Spirit and hear His voice that leads me on a path of right living. I know in my head that this is the satisfying relationship that gives me real hope for the future.  

But the continued struggle with my flesh says -me first, then Jesus, then others. Sometimes the urgency of helping others comes before Jesus. I don’t say that out loud. It doesn’t sound very spiritual. Then I wonder how I got it backwards. 
This self-first attitude never works. I am not even fully aware that I am looking out for myself first. It just seems natural to do so.  But If I am being transformed by the Holy Spirit, He won’t leave me alone to be satisfied with this kind of selfishness. He keeps bothering me, poking at me, telling me what to do. It can be annoying.  

Right up until I yield.  

Why does yielding feel like bondage when it is actually the opposite? We do things for our children that we believe are best and sometimes they fight us. If they just yield, they will realize we had their best interest at heart. And that the yielding will actually give them more freedom.  

I do the same thing with the Holy Spirit. I fight back on what He nudges me to do. When I yield, I realize He was right. He always is. And then my world is put back in order to enjoy the kind of Freedom He called me to. And I have to stop and be thankful He doesn’t leave me alone. 

The Second Evidence is Standing Firm. 

This Freedom in Christ requires me to stand firm. That’s the second evidence of the Spirit’s transforming work.  

Standing firm is a command to stay grounded so I can keep running the race well. Standing firm in what the Holy Spirit has told me is true and right, solidifying that in my heart so that I can keep on keepin on in the race we call life. 

To illustrate this, I want to share how I met my husband. 

Eric and I met in a college calculus class. He’s a smarty pants and didn’t have to take the first quarter because his advance placement (AP) exam allowed him to test out of it. The only person he knew when he came in the second quarter was a guy I was sitting next to and had dated a few times. This guy introduced us, and we started becoming friends. I needed to actually pay attention, but he felt like it was his job to try to make me laugh and disrupt the class. He was successful most of the time and that just encouraged him to keep on.  

One day before calculus, he brought in a package he had just picked up at the post office. Back in the day, if there was a slip of paper in your box that signaled you had a package, it felt like Christmas.  

He opened his package and his eyes gleamed with excitement as he pulled out a pair of skinny running shoes that he purchased for Nationals. I played basketball in high school and didn’t know much about the running world. To me, there was not much to them, but he called them racing flats, with emphasis, like there could not be a greater gift at that moment. Even with academic and athletic scholarships, the private school we attended was expensive. So, I knew he had carefully and miserly considered the cost of these flimsy things. 
Eric was a gifted long-distance runner, an All-American in Cross Country and Track. Everyone on campus knew him from these accolades. He never boasted in himself but gave God the Glory as he often quoted Eric Liddle, “God made me fast, and I feel His pleasure when I run.”   

The very first race I attended after we started dating did not disappoint. He was riding on the van with the team and told me to catch a ride with his parents. I was to meet them at a fast-food restaurant near the interstate. He told me what car they would be driving. I had never even met them but hopped in and off we went.  

When we arrived, some of his friends from the women’s team showed me the ropes. It was all so very exciting, and they wanted me to have the best vantage point. This was a district race, so I understood the stakes were high. Eric was in the lead pack and ran very strategically. I had already run about 2-3 miles just trying to catch him at different points so I could cheer as he flew by.  

Coming down the stretch, it looked as though an opponent was going to win. Then with about 100 yards to go, I caught his eye for the briefest of moments. I started cheering for all I was worth. He went into another gear and passed the leader right in front of me and then cruised on to victory. Come to find out he was one of the favorites to win anyway, but I felt like he had won for me!!! Even though it would take several more months to figure it out, that’s when I fell in love. 

 Eric made it look so easy, but I soon learned long distance running requires a lot of training, sacrifice, and endurance. It’s something you build up to. At his peak, he ran 120 – 140 miles a week in training in the summer just to run 5 miles in a race, not to mention speed work and strength training. 

Distance runners identify better than the rest of us with comparing lives of faith to running a race. It is their training that helps them stand firm. 

Distractions Pull Me in Different Directions

 
In contrast to those who trust their training, I allow so many distractions to keep me from standing firm. My pastor recently compared distractions to a tractor pull – being pulled in different directions. 

Many times, it’s people with good intentions that I allow to pull me in a different direction. I answer a call to do a good thing, but it’s just a distraction from God’s best for me.  

And it can be hard to distinguish what is true versus false until it plays out. Just one lie mixed in with a bunch of truths can be so deceiving. This is satan’s way of trying to get me to take a detour.  

But this kind of intentional persuasion is not insignificant. The permeating power of sin can mislead a whole church. Thankfully, we can have confidence in the Lord to keep us from gross heresy, but how much damage is done first? 
Another distraction is the tendency to think that if our good outweighs our bad, we will be okay in God’s eyes. If we are better than the person next to us, surely God will accept us.  

Only, the person next to us is not the standard. Christ is. And we all fall short. 
Even mature Christians who know a lot of bible verses continue to struggle with this. They may not say that, but it’s in their heart and comes out in their attitudes. 

The Holy Spirit is the One who transforms our wrong way of thinking. Leaning into Him every day keeps me standing firm and running well because He leads me to discern the right way.  

The Third Evidence is Spirit Power 

The third evidence of the transforming work of the Spirit is that I am living by His power.  

To illustrate this, He first shows me what Freedom in Christ is not.  

• It is not indulging myself. 
• It is not exploiting my neighbor. 
• And it is not disregarding my moral requirements. 

Have you heard it said, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”?   

Freedom is not to be used as an opportunity for selfishness but instead to serve one another in love. There’s no place for malicious and destructive talk amongst believers who are supposed to be brothers and sisters. What happens to our precious freedom if we devour one another with our words like wild animals?  
In Christ, life is liberty that can be easily lost if I am not making the decision to live habitually by the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. Responding to and being controlled and guided by Him keeps me from gratifying my own desires. By myself, I cannot do what I want to do. I may have all the willpower in the world, but I will give in if I am not actively yielding to His Power.

Paul said it like this in his letter to the Romans: 

 I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.   

Holy Spirit Power Will Keep Me From Sin 

I sin when I give in to my flesh instead of staying plugged in to Spirit Power. I can either be plugged in to the Spirit, or I can be plugged in to my flesh. Galatians 5 covers a pretty robust list of what being plugged into the power of the flesh looks like.  
 
In general, the lists of sins we read about in the Bible always make me chuckle a bit. Not because sin is funny, but because of what’s in the list and specifically the types of sins that are listed right next to one another.  

We tend to classify sins. These are the really bad ones. Then there are these here that are just kinda bad. You know you shouldn’t do them, but everyone does so how bad is it really? And then there’s some that we think really are not bad at all. We might as well just go ahead and not call them sin. 

Except, we are not the ones who decide what is and is not sin. A Holy God has already decided that.  And He puts sorcery, gross sexual misconduct, and drunken orgies in the same list as jealousy and fits of anger. Habitually giving in to our own selfish desires shows we are not plugged into the power of the Spirit. And if we continue to make a practice of doing such things we are saying with our actions that we really do not want to be a Christian.  

What Spirit Power Accomplishes.  

Coming to the end of chapter 5 in Galatians, there are nine qualities that characterize someone who lives in true freedom where no deterrent is needed to restrain behavior.  

As we stay plugged into Spirit Power, He grows fruit. I tended to think that I needed to do something or try harder to get more of it. After studying Galatians, I now am being persuaded it is an action the Holy Spirit does to me as I yield to Him. The only thing I am doing is yielding.  

I know I keep coming back to yielding. t’s hard to wrap my brain around it because yielding seems so passive, like I am not doing enough. In reality, it is very active, but the Spirit is affecting the work done to me when I release control to Him. This requires faith. I have to trust that the Spirit will do what He says as I lean into Him and wait. 

Planting, watering and feeding all sound nurturing. However, the best way to grow more fruit is to be pruned, the more pruning the more fruit when harvest time comes. Because pruning hurts, it can feel like the Spirit has left me hacked and barren. But if I don’t give up too soon, a great harvest of spiritual fruit is the result.  

The cycles of the harvest that continue become my walk. 

The fruit the Spirit bears
 
as I maintain disciplines 

in my walk with Him 

are worth the pain 

caused by pruning. 

It’s not as though the fruit is completely mature in one before the Spirit starts to plant the seed of another. The growth occurs at different rates as the cycles of harvest continue. 

I used Zodhiates Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament to define these characteristics of the Fruit of the Spirit.  

Love – affection, devotion, goodwill while sacrificially doing what is best for the recipient more than what they desire. 

Joy – gladness of heart, exultation and exuberance of spirit regardless of circumstance because it’s based on eternal promises. 


Peace – a state of tranquility and harmony arising from reconciliation with God and a sense of divine favor and every kind of good. 

Patience – the ability to suffer long and forbear before proceeding to action; able to avenge oneself but refrains from doing so, choosing to endure the circumstance instead. 

Kindness – a disposition of usefulness which pervades the whole nature, mellowing all that would be harsh. 

Goodness – energized zeal for excellence manifested in active benevolence. 

Faithfulness – persuasion based on being convicted of what is real resulting in a pledge of sincere character. 

Meekness – an inwrought grace of the soul that accepts God’s dealings with us as good and therefore does not dispute or resist; a balance born in strength of character that demonstrates gentleness, not in weakness, but in power. |

Self-control – contentedness resulting in temperate restraint of one’s desires. 

There is no need for an external law to curb our behavior when we produce attitudes that please God. All of the fruit we bear here for God’s glory have impact in the Kingdom to come. Nothing is wasted. May that give us real courage and spur us on as we look forward to Christ’s return. 

In closing 

 
If I belong to Christ, I will put to death all of my self-seeking passions and desires, even the secret ones no one but He knows about. I will deliberately and with forethought put them to death by nailing them to the cross. At the cross is where they face certain death. Albeit sometimes slow and agonizing, the cross is certain death. So, when the desire to indulge in my flesh arises, I know I do not have to give in. Only then am I free to live by the power of the Spirit, keeping in step with Him as the leader Who helps me work this out in every detail of my life.