When I think about this topic, I sense the Holy-Spirit telling me it’s about Being in a close relationship with the Holy-Spirit. It’s truly about submitting to Him. In this Partnership the Senior partner is the Holy-Spirit, while you are the junior partner and your role is to submit to Him.
In the secular world e.g., Law firms obey this principle. In a law firm, junior partners are expected to obey senior partners because senior partners have more experience and knowledge in the field. Junior partners are usually less experienced and have less knowledge than senior partners.
Senior partners are responsible for guiding and mentoring junior partners to help them develop their skills and knowledge. Therefore, a reasonable junior partner in a law firm knows that if they follow the sound and experienced advice of the senior partner, they will make great progress in their career.
In the same manner to make outstanding progress in God’s kingdom without a doubt you must submit to the Holy-Spirit.
What are some of the ways you submit yourself before the Holy-Spirit?
1. Humble yourself. (James 4:6, 4:10; Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up)
Submission starts with Humility (a state of becoming simple and lowly in mind to exalt God within). You cannot be in partnership with the Holy-Spirit if within you, God is not exalted or other things within you are exalted over above God.
No wonder scripture in John 3:30 says I must decrease and He must increase.
Anything within me that is exalted above God must decrease but He must increase within me, that is how you submit to the Holy-Spirit
2. Be Obedient (1 Peter 1:2)
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace [that special sense of spiritual well-being] be yours in increasing abundance [as you walk closely with God]. AMP
Notice that Apostle Peter teaches us that the sanctifying work of the Spirit is linked to obedience, to Jesus Christ. Therefore if you want to be in partnership with the Holy-Spirit you have to be obedient to His Spirit that is another hallmark of submission to His Spirit
The Prophet Isaiah spoke about Willingness and Obedient in Isaiah 1:19 KJV “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:”
Eating the good of the land refers to the benefits of obeying the Spirit which include forgiving all your iniquities, healing all your diseases, redeeming your life from destruction & crowning you with loving kindness and tender mercies (Psalm 103 :2-3)
3. Doing His will.
Matthew 7:21 ESV “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Jesus according to John 4:34 & John 5:30 came to do the will of the Father (The Father of spirits; Hebrew 12:29c). Everything He did on earth represented what was in God’s heart.
Therefore, because Jesus did God’s will even to the very end, God gave Him a name above every other name that at the mention of the name of Jesus every knee, every power whether in heaven or earth must bow to Him and declare HIM LORD to the glory of the FATHER (Philippians 2:10-11)
– “When we do His will”, it also means we are walking in His Spirit on a day-to-day basis. (Galatians 5:25; If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.)
Paul describes our journey with The Holy Spirit figuratively as a walk but it is a walk in the Spirit that we must do every day not just on Sunday’s.
To walk in the Spirit which is to submit to HIM means that we yield to His control ever day in our daily life, we follow His lead every day, and we allow Him to exert His influence over us every day. Not when it suits us or when we feel like it or only when we hear a good sermon!
To walk in the spirit has absolutely nothing to do with your emotions, the way you feel or don’t feel. It has nothing to with our physical senses, but it is a will that is totally submitted to Him
4. You choose not to yield to flesh & sin.
Romans 6:13; And do not present your members as [d]instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God
Galatians 5:16, I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
-When we choose to be submitted or be in partnership with the Spirt, even our bodies become instruments of righteousness before Him.
So, we will not want to use our mouth to hurt people. We will not use our mouth to curse and abuse people or use our mouth to glorify wickedness and perversion
We will not want to use our hands to beat up our spouse or be physically violent with people. We will not use our hand to smash things on the floor when we are displaying temper tantrums like a child!
We will not want to use our minds to look at men or women lustfully or think evil but we choose to intentionally transform our minds with His word daily.
A man truly submitted to the Spirit will not pamper his flesh but discipline it like Paul teaches (1 Corinthians 9:27), and as such he or she will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
5. If you are submitted to The Holy Spirit, you will not want to grieve Him.
Ephesians 4:30; And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
-A man that wants an unbroken partnership with the Holy Spirit will make up their mind no to do anything or say anything that will grieve The Spirit of God in you. Samson grieved the Holy-Spirit in Him and his partnership with The Spirt of God was broken
6. If you are submitted to the Spirit, you will not want to quench Him. 1 Thessalonians 5:19; Do not quench the Spirit.
This is referring to the Spirit as an unquenching Fire. Which is to say you can quench the Fire of God in you, whereas God wants us to be on fire for Him day and night. Leviticus 6:13, A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall never go out.
Our heart is an altar before God, and it should be burning for God day and night. It is the fire of Holy-Ghost that sets the altar of our hearts on fire for Him. So when we grieve Him, that fire is quenched. Fire for prayer, Fire for study of God’s word, Fire for holiness is quenched when we grieve Him
7. If you are submitted to the Holy-Spirit then you will not resist Him.
Acts 7:51; “You stiff-necked[a] and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you
-Those believers that resist the Holy Spirit will keep doing that which offends Him,
-They dampen His influence in their hearts (Holy-Spirit says to them in their heart keep quiet at what your spouse says but they ignore His still voice and lash out verbally, when we do this over and over again we dampen the influence of the Holy-Spirit in our hearts till a point comes He just stops speaking to your heart because He knows you will never listen and that is a dangerous place spiritually for a believer to be in.
You resist the Holy-Spirit also when you oppose His will. Nothing good can come out of it when you resist the will of the Holy-Spirit in your life. Consider Samson (a Judge in Israel), who rejected God’s will for him as a Nazirite (an Israelite who was consecrated to the service of God, under vows to abstain from alcohol, let the hair grow, and avoid defilement by contact with dead bodies in Numbers 6 1-21).
Samson for example insisted that he will marry Delilah, a woman from the enemy nation. He told Delilah about the secret of his divine power., that he must not cut his hair. But Samson in the end became a complete failure (he became a prisoner. His eyes were plucked out. Every day, he had to work for his enemies in prison. He was forced to make made flour from grain). He should have brought honour to God. Instead, his failure to follow God’s will brought dishonour to God Almighty.
8) When you partner with the Holy-Spirit, He cultivates and develops the fruit of the Spirit in you. Galatians 5:22-23; But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [a]gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
A life walking with God and depending on Him for everything, above anything else, will naturally develop the Fruit of the Spirit. It’s because the Fruit of the Spirit can only be developed, nurtured, and cultivated by God. God is referred to as a gardener in the Bible. John 15:8 says, (Jesus Speaking) “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
These Fruit cannot be bought or mass produced. They are grown specifically by and through a deep relationship with God The Holy Spirit. In addition as John 15:8 teaches us when we bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, they become evidence to the world that we are indeed disciples of Jesus. The fruit of the Spirit in our lives show-cases to the world that we belong to God’s heavenly kingdom.
Furthermore from a relational perspective the fruit of the spirit is what we need to have successful, loving and thriving relationships with our spouse and people in our sphere of influence.
9) If you truly love God, you will submit to Him. In fact your submission is an indication that you love the Holy-Spirit.
James 4:7-8a; 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
Notice the process; Submit to God first. Then you will be able to resist the devil. So, our complete submission to God gives us the ability to resist the devil confidently and victoriously. But note verse 8a, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. You cannot draw near (which also means to show love) to God if you are not submitted to Him. We know through scripture that God commands the believing wife to show love to their husband by submitting to the husband (Ephesians 5:22).
Hence, if submission is how a godly wife by God’s standard shows love to her husband, similarly submitting to God as believers is one of the strongest ways, we express our love to Him.
10) When you are submitted to His spirit which is to conform to His will, He promises you peace, prosperity and great good will surely come your way.
Job 22:21“Now yield and submit yourself to Him [agree with God and be conformed to His will] and be at peace; In this way [you will prosper and great] good will come to you. AMP
When you are 100% in partnership with the Holy-Spirit, that is you are yielded and submitted to Him. You receive peace. You will prosper physically, you will prosper spiritually, you will prosper mentally. You will prosper in all dimensions of life.
In addition great good from God will come your way.
So, clearly there are tremendous benefits that will come into your life if you are yielded to the Holy-Spirit.
God bless you in Jesus Name.
Prayer: I receive grace to be completely submitted to the Holy-Spirit in Jesus Name. Holy-Spirit, My God, please lead and direct every area of my life in Jesus Name
Feast of Life Global Ministry
