Are You in Step with the Spirit?

On one side of my bedroom, on the far right side of my work-from-home-writing space, there's a letterboard with two phrases taken from 2 Corinthians 6:7:

By the word of truth
By the power of God

That verse stuck out to me a few months ago while I was reading through Paul’s characteristics for ministry in 2 Corinthians 6:3–13. Those elements—the word of truth and the power of God—were what caused Paul’s ministry to advance. 

You don’t have to be in full-time ministry to read about Paul’s missionary efforts and long for a similar movement of God to happen in your own world. As you hear reports of God at work all over the globe, transforming lives and leading more women toward freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ, do you long to see His power unleashed in your own home, church, and nation? Do you want the Holy Spirit to do a deeper, more transforming work in your own heart? 

I do. That’s why I’m grateful that the Revive Our Hearts staff recently finished walking through Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Tim Grissom’s classic study, Seeking Him. My copy is now filled with scribbled notes and stars beside various Bible verses and nuggets of biblical wisdom that I want to remember as we move forward. But of all the lessons and chapel messages throughout the twelve-week study, the themes of one chapter, “The Spirit-Filled Life: God’s Power in You,” have infiltrated my prayer journal in the last month more than any other topic. 

When Dan Jarvis spoke to the ROH team about this chapter as part of the chapel series “Seeking Him Together,” he encouraged us to ask ourselves three questions:

1. Am I dependent?
2. Am I expectant?
3. Am I in step?

In the last few weeks, I’ve come back to those questions and incorporated my answers in some form in nearly every prayer I’ve written out: Lord, I am depending on you in ______. I expect that You are able to work in this situation in ways that I could never do on my own. Help me to walk in step with Your Spirit. What do You have for me today? 

Dan’s chapel message made such an impact on so many of us that we wanted to give you a chance to hear it. In the last few minutes of the message, Dan and our staff spent time in prayer. That prayer at the end will prepare your heart for the beginning of the message, so read through it first, praying along with Dan, and then press play. 

Lord, we want to be in step with You: where You’re moving and how You’re moving. Inside of us, we want the fruit of the Spirit to be more and more evident. We want the freedom and fullness of the Spirit to define us so that we’re ready to give that out and inspire others toward that life.

Thinking beyond just our work and our ministry, Lord, our culture needs You so much. So much needs a movement of the message to go out and transform everything. Lord, here on a human level, we’re committed to doing the best that we know how to do. But it’s just like the loaves and the fishes that we have in our hands—it’s not nearly enough. We need You to do Your kind of miraculous work.

So, in this moment, we pray for revival—starting in us, especially in the heart transformation that it requires, as we fully surrender to You and yield to Your work and Your will. We pray that you’d send us out as agents of that revival and that different kind of life, that in-step-with-the-Holy-Spirit life. That’s the life we want to live. It’s the life you’ve called us and empowered us to live. I suspect it’s the kind of life we’ll get to live in eternity.

Here on earth, Lord, we want to experience all we can of Your power and Your presence. So it’s with our whole hearts that we seek You in this way today. In Jesus’ name, amen.