Day 2

2 - JESUS DEPENDS ON THE HOLY SPIRT

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry.” Luke 4:1-2

Jesus did things normal people don’t, maybe even can’t, do. Jesus turned water into wine. Jesus returned sight to the blind. Jesus made the leper whole. Jesus made the crippled to walk. Jesus calmed storms, walked on water, filled boats with fish. Jesus took a meal made for one, and turned it into a meal more than sufficient for 5000. Jesus raised the dead. There has never been anyone like Jesus. Albert Einstein said, “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” Jesus is amazing!

How could we ever be like Jesus?

It’s simple really. Jesus was fully God and fully man, but He willingly humbled Himself and chose to live His life as a man completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit. He refused to play the “God-card” and use His own God-power to do what He did. If Jesus played the “God-card” and used His innate God-power to do what He did, how could you or I ever hope to be like Jesus. We don’t have a “God-card” up our sleeves. But we do have the Holy Spirit, living inside of us, to lead us and give us God’s power.

Read Luke 4:1-2.

• What does Luke tell us about how Jesus related to the Holy Spirit?

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Re-read the first paragraph above again. We need to understand something here. Jesus was able to do everything you’ve just read, not because He was fully God, but instead because the Father asked Him to do it and the Holy Spirit gave Him the power to do it.

“Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.” Luke 4:14-15

We are to walk as Jesus walked. According to Luke’s words here, just how did Jesus walk?

Jesus lived and ministered ‘in the power of the Holy Spirit,’ completely depending on the Spirit to give Him the strength to obey the Father and carry out His will. Another phrase for living and ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit is ‘the Spirit is upon me’ or ‘the Spirit has anointed me.” Jesus, reading from the prophet Isaiah, described the kind of a ministry He would have.

When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

Luke 4:16-19

• What would the Holy Spirit give Jesus the power to do?

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If it was possible for Jesus, it is possible for you and me. The same Holy Spirit that would give Jesus the power to do all of this is the very same Holy Spirit that Jesus promised He would give to you and to me. Here are a few the Bible’s promises about the Holy Spirit.

• The Holy Spirit lives within us. John 14:16-17
• The Holy Spirit will lead us to do what is right. John 16:13
• The Holy Spirit marks us as belonging to God. Ephesians 1:13-14
• The Holy Spirit produces the character of Christ. Galatians 5:22-23
• The Holy Spirit fills us as we yield control to Him. Ephesians 5:18
• The Holy Spirit is grieved/quenched by sin. Ephesians 4:30 / 1 Thessalonians 5:19

• Which of these promises is most meaningful to you right now?

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Apart From Him…

• Thank the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ask the Father to fill you with His Spirit and lead you by His Spirit each day, making it possible for you to “walk as Jesus walked".

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Walking As Jesus…

• Place a rubber band or bracelet on your wrist and let it serve as a reminder today and every day of your 40 Day journey that God’s Spirit is with you and lives in you. Ask yourself throughout the day, “Am I depending on God’s Spirit right now, or on myself?

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• My Personal Disciple-Making Plan: