Walking in the Spirit

Walking in the Spirit

by Kenneth Berding
Walking in the Spirit

Walking in the Spirit

by Kenneth Berding

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Overview

Walking in the Spirit is a journey into what the Bible teaches about life in the Holy Spirit. Author Kenneth Berding uses the apostle Paul and his words in Romans 8 to model what it looks like to live both empowered and set free by the Spirit.

Written at an accessible level, Berding speaks to a wide audience as he seeks to connect readers to the life of the Spirit. His practical guide covers a variety of topics, showing readers how to set their minds on the things of the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body, be led by the Spirit, know the fatherhood of God, and hope and pray in the Spirit.

Berding applies the Bible to life through many of his own personal experiences, helping readers make connections to their own spiritual journeys. Discussion questions for each chapter facilitate personal reflection and small-group study.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781433524233
Publisher: Crossway
Publication date: 08/02/2011
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 128
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Kenneth Berding (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, and the director of Bible Fluency. He is the author of numerous books and articles and was previously a church planter in the Middle East. He has written many worship songs and served as a worship pastor in local church ministry. He regularly blogs at The Good Book Blog. Ken is married to Trudi and has four daughters.


Kenneth Berding (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, and the director of Bible Fluency. He is the author of numerous books and articles and was previously a church planter in the Middle East. He has written many worship songs and served as a worship pastor in local church ministry. He regularly blogs at The Good Book Blog. Ken is married to Trudi and has four daughters.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

WALK IN THE SPIRIT

I walk a lot. Compared to most people in Southern California I walk a lot. My "commute" to work is a fifteen-minute walk. I teach at a medium-sized university where classes are scheduled in rooms all over campus — five to ten minutes to class, five to ten minutes from class — for every period I teach. I love to take walks with my wife and daughters in the evenings. And for prayer, I know of no better way to pray than by prayer walking. Others kneel, sit, raise their hands, or journal their prayers. I walk. Walking keeps me awake. It keeps me focused. And it reminds me of something that is profoundly biblical.

I have walked the streets of the great cities in which I have lived over the years: in my home town in California's Bay Area, in the Great Northwest where I went to college, and in Berlin just before the dismantling of the Berlin wall. I walked during the seven years my wife Trudi and I lived in two different Middle Eastern cities. I walked in Philadelphia and in a suburb of New York City while my family lived on the East Coast during my doctoral studies and early years of teaching. And I walk in the place that God has put me now — in the Los Angeles area of Southern California. Walking is one thing I do habitually in my physical life. And it is foundational for my spiritual life as well.

Life in the Spirit is a journey. It isn't sitting in a comfortable deck chair on the veranda of a cruise ship. Neither is it a sprint toward a finish line you can see just ahead. Granted, your journey in the Spirit will sometimes include periods of sitting, and sometimes you will have to sprint. And there are many other good analogies for Christian living. But for the apostle Paul, life in the Spirit is best compared to walking. He launches into his discussion of the ministry of the Holy Spirit with the words at the end of Romans 8:1–4:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Learning to Walk according to the Spirit

If you want to be someone who brings glory to God (and I pray that there is nothing you desire more!), you must learn what it means to walk according to the Spirit. There are no shortcuts on this journey; the only way from here to there is to walk.

In appendix 1 I discuss how Romans 8 is not just about you and me, though it is certainly about that. Paul's discussion about walking according to the Spirit in Romans 8 is part of a larger theme in which Paul contrasts life then with life now. The then was the period dominated by the Law, the period before Christ's death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. But even then, the prophets longed for a new age when the Spirit would not simply come upon certain individuals to empower them in special instances. They anticipated and predicted an age when the consummate cleansing for sin would take place and where walking in God's statutes would result from the presence of God's indwelling Spirit in all his people. Here is one example of what the Old Testament prophets hoped and longed for:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezek. 36:25–27)

Ezekiel and the other prophets looked ahead to the day when God would put his Spirit within us. Paul said that this day is now! Paul declared that the requirements of the Law are already fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. That is, the requirements of the Law have been fully taken care of by the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf so that we don't have to live in dependence upon the Law to move us forward in our spiritual lives. Instead, we depend on the Spirit; we walk in the Spirit.

Walking is the apostle Paul's favorite metaphor for the Christian life. That's probably because Paul walked a lot. He walked a lot even compared to me! I don't mean that he walked a mile each day for exercise or that he took the stairs instead of the elevator. It has been estimated that Paul traveled around twelve thousand miles during his known missionary journeys, much of it on foot! Perhaps that's why he was always comparing our Christian lives to walking. He uses the word we sometimes translate "walk" thirty-two times in his letters! Here are a few examples:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. (Eph. 4:1)

Walk in love, as Christ loved us. ... (Eph. 5:2)

We walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor. 5:7)

Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Gal. 5:16)

If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk. (Gal. 5:25, NASB)

I like the way the ESV translates this last verse: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit." This rendering makes me smile a bit as I think of evening walks with Trudi. There are few things I like to do better than to walk around the neighborhood with her in the cool of the evening to talk about what is going on in our lives and to dream about the future.

And as we walk I sometimes slip my arm around Trudi's waist. The only problem is that if we aren't in step with each other, our hips keep bumping against each other! There's nothing romantic about that. So in order to stop our hips from bumping, we have to get in step with each other. Only then can we enjoy the walk we set out to take.

There is no shortcut to learning how to keep in step with the Spirit — how to walk in the Spirit. The Spirit-ual walk is not just for ultraspiritual people. And it isn't the property of charismatic Christians. Walking in the Spirit is the central metaphor for describing what it means to live as a Christian. Life lived according to the Spirit is not simply trying to do the right thing. Nor is it simply trying to live according to God's Law. Life as a Christian is cooperating with the Holy Spirit in a daily walk. The person who walks according to the Spirit will in fact have the essence of the Law fulfilled in his life. God has once and for all "condemned sin in the flesh" through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, and we have received that gift by faith. The result is that the believer in Jesus Christ is now free to live according to the Spirit. He is no longer obligated to live according to the flesh. He will become increasingly dependent upon the Holy Spirit, and any space given to things that displease God will decrease with every passing day.

I know that learning the walking side of the Christian life has been enormously important for my own growth as a man who wants to please the Lord more than anything else in life. It won't surprise you that after God really got a hold of my heart as a young man, I was not always in tune with the idea of the Christian life as a Spirit-empowered journey. I was intensely interested in dealing with the immediate desire to reach friends with the good news and to waste no time challenging my Christian friends to live radically committed lives to Christ today. I longed to see my prayers answered soon, and felt keenly the pressing need to overcome sin in this moment. But I hadn't yet learned the Spirit-ual walk that addresses both the concerns of this moment and the long walk of months and years of a faithful and loving relationship with the Lord.

"Walking according to the Spirit" is Paul's shorthand description for all the other things he says about the Spirit in Romans 8. What are the kinds of things you do when you walk in the Spirit?

•You set your mind on the things of the Spirit (v. 5–7)

•You put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit (v. 13)

•You are led by the Spirit (v. 14)

•You know the Fatherhood of God by the Spirit (vv. 15–17)

•You hope in the Spirit (vv. 23–25)

•You pray in the Spirit (vv. 26–27)

Since walking in the Spirit seems to be an all-encompassing metaphor for Christian living, it also probably includes ideas that are found in other places in Paul's writings, such as being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), serving in the Spirit (Rom. 7:6; 15:16), and loving by the Spirit (Rom. 15:30; Gal. 5:22–23; Col. 1:8). The Spirit-ual walk should include all of these and more.

Pictures of a Spirit-ual Walk

But why does Paul have to use so many metaphors and analogies in Romans 8 to describe the Spirit's activities and our relationship to them? Why doesn't he just tell us directly what he wants us to know?

There are many things that are real about the Christian life that cannot be reduced to propositional language. This isn't the case for only spiritual realities — though the difficulty is often felt there more acutely than anywhere else; it is also true for many issues in life. For example, how would you describe in concrete words the love a husband feels for his wife or the trust a child has in her mother? I'm not asking how you can tell whether a husband loves his wife or a child trusts her mother. That's easy. You can see love or trust worked out in what they do; the husband does specific loving actions toward his wife, such as spending time talking with her over a cup of tea, and a child demonstrates trust by listening to the advice of her mother. The more difficult question is how to describe what the husband's love feels like, or what the child experiences when she trusts her mother. Nonmetaphorical language lets you down at that point.

This is why poets and songwriters (and lovers who are neither poets nor songwriters!) use metaphors to express their love. Although imagery cannot communicate all that is there, in certain situations it often communicates more fully than concrete words do. Some things are difficult to communicate with straightforward words. Metaphors suggest to our inner selves something that is true about a deeper reality. They also often touch us in our emotions, something direct language often doesn't accomplish as well. This is important, because the passages of Scripture that teach us how to walk Spirit-ually should impact our hearts and emotions as well as our actions.

That's why God sometimes chose to use metaphors to describe his own Spirit — wind, fire, rivers of living water — and also to use metaphors to describe things we need to know about our relationship to that Spirit — walking, putting to death, being led, getting adopted, and so forth. This also means, though, that some things we need to learn about walking in the Spirit will only become clear to us as we actually do the walking. You may not know how to describe what it feels like to be led by the Spirit, but if you have walked with the Lord for a while, you may actually know how to follow when you are led.

In light of this, perhaps one way of describing the walk in the Spirit is to imagine what a day would look like if you were walking according to the Spirit.

Your alarm goes off, and the first thing you pray is, "Lord, I want to walk with you during this day." You pull your tired body off of the mattress with the prayer, "I need your help even to get going today." Your first spiritual action of the day is to tangibly express love to each member of your family using a hug, a touch, or a word of genuine care. You spend some time meditating on a section of Scripture and take a walk (or sit or kneel) for prayer where you cry out to God for his grace in the day ahead. You get into your car with the awareness that one of your weaknesses is the way you respond to bad drivers, but before your mind gets carried away you breathe a prayer for God's grace to give you patience on the road. You forgive your boss (teacher, colleague, coworker, brother) with the help of the Spirit as that so-very-difficult person once again says you-know-what to you. You suppress a word of gossip that is trying to creep from your heart toward your mouth and turn your eyes away from something you shouldn't gaze upon. At some point during the day, you express a spontaneous moment of thanksgiving to God for the presence of his Spirit within you. During your drive home, you think about concrete ways you can serve your family, and you ask the Spirit to fill you with strength to live out your convictions even at the end of a long day. You end your day with thankfulness for the Spirit's sustaining grace throughout the day that has just passed.

I've heard it said that a person's character is the sum total of a lot of little choices. Similarly, the Spirit-ual walk is the sum total of a lot of little steps taken in submission to God's Holy Spirit.

In the next two chapters I will discuss how we deal with sin and overcome temptation (preview: by setting your mind on the things of the Spirit and by putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit). For now, let me just state that as you daily walk in the Holy Spirit, God will fill you with his Spirit in such a way that your desire to sin lessens. Galatians 5:16 — which is set in a chapter that parallels Romans 8 in many ways — says it so well: "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." The one who walks in the Spirit will not give in to the desires of the flesh. Walking in the Spirit and carrying out the desires of the flesh are mutually exclusive ideas; you cannot do one at the same time as you engage in the other.

A few years ago Trudi and I went to San Diego for a couple days to celebrate a special birthday. The day we arrived, we dropped off our bags at a hotel and went out to look in some shops. As we walked, we came across one of those ice cream shops ... you know, the kind that sells waffle cones filled above the brim with creamy, chunky, yummy ice cream. I turned to Trudi and said, "We're on vacation, honey, we can have one of these if we really want." We both agreed that we really did want one — each! — but would enjoy it even more the following day since we were heading to dinner soon.

The next day we walked by another one of those amazing ice cream shops selling the same kind of creamy, chunky, yummy ice cream in a waffle cone. I turned to Trudi to pose a question I already knew the answer to: "Now do you want an ice cream?" Her response: "Oh no! That sounds awful. I couldn't possibly eat one of those right now!"

Why not? What could possibly have changed? How could it be that she (and I) craved one of those waffle cone ice creams the previous day, but we didn't want it now? The answer is simple: we were full. Actually, we were stuffed. The hotel at which we were staying provided a brunch — a beautiful, extravagant brunch. We had eaten crepes and omelets and waffles and fruit and muffins — far too much of it all. An hour later, when we walked by that incredible ice cream shop, we simply weren't interested anymore. We weren't enticed by the ice cream because we were full of something else.

As you walk in the Spirit, depending upon the Spirit and being filled with the Spirit, your desire to sin will minimize. There is more to say about overcoming sin, but it isn't much more complicated than that. Walk in the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Be so full of the Spirit that your craving to sin lessens. You won't have the same desire to sin because your walk is along a different path, the way of the Spirit. You'll be moving in a different direction.

Have you learned to walk according to the Spirit?

Last year, perhaps because of all the physical walking I do, my Achilles tendon began to hurt. At first I didn't know that it was my Achilles tendon; all I knew was that the back of my ankle sometimes was sore and a bit swollen after walking. And like most men I know, I waited for five months before going to the doctor, thinking that my problem would go away. The doctor wasn't impressed by my tough-guy act. He warned me that I was on the verge of rupturing my tendon if I didn't take care of it immediately. He put me in a walking boot that immobilized my ankle and raised my heel four inches from the ground. I don't know why they call it a "walking" boot ... walking is the one thing that cannot be easily done in it. (I will never joke about high heeled shoes again!)

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Walking in the Spirit"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Kenneth Berding.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Preface, 9,
1. Walk in the Spirit, 15,
2. Set Your Mind on the Things of the Spirit, 29,
3. Put to Death the Deeds of the Body by the Spirit, 41,
4. Be Led by the Spirit, 55,
5. Know the Fatherhood of God by the Spirit, 69,
6. Hope in the Spirit, 83,
7. Pray in the Spirit, 97,
Appendix 1: Three Undercurrents in Romans 8, 113,
Appendix 2: How to Remember What You've Learned, 119,
Notes, 123,
Scripture Index, 125,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“At last, a book that I can recommend to the average Christian about holiness, intimacy with God, and the power of the Holy Spirit! In more than 20 years of pastoral ministry I have learned that there is almost universal discouragement—at least at times—in our battle with sin. So many resources offer strategies of accountability or behavior change, but aren’t grounded in the deep truth that God alone has the power to transform us. Others seem to take a simplistic, “Let go, let God” approach that may sound good, but leaves us disheartened when we struggle to live it out. Still others are written at a level that is not readily accessible to all readers. Berding has given us a great gift in Walking in the Spirit in that his book is engaging, eminently practical, and most of all, profoundly biblical. If you want to grow deep in your walk with God and experience real power to be like Jesus you need to read this book.”
Robert Bishop, Senior Pastor, Whittier Hills Baptist Church; Adjunct Faculty, Bible Department, Biola University

“There is so much confusion among Christians about the Holy Spirit, and I am thankful that Berding has written a much-needed book in layman’s language. It is at once biblical, irenic, and charitable. I recommend it to pastors with the hope that they will give copies to their congregations.”
Lyle W. Dorsett, Director Emeritus, Marion E. Wade Center; Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism Emeritus, Beeson Divinity School; author, And God Came In and Seeking the Secret Place

“Berding captures profound spiritual truths and shares them in a comfortable, down-home fashion that will make you smile, nod, and ponder. When you apply the principles of Walking in the Spirit, you will live life differently; you will experience more of the Spirit of God and be able to say with confidence as you approach the end of your life, “I know Him and am eager to meet Him!”
Dan LaGasse, Missionary, Operation Mobilization; Missions Pastor, Venture Christian Church, Los Gatos, California

“How do I move from a place of confessing belief in the Holy Spirit to experiencing the Holy Spirit’s transforming presence in a more profound way? Walking in the Spirit offers us an array of practical insights that will help new believers as well as those who have been Christians for many years.”
Clinton E. Arnold, Dean and Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University

“It’s easy to talk the spiritual talk. But how do we walk the Spirit-ual walk? In this book, Ken Berding offers a practical, biblical, wise guide to life in the Holy Spirit, as outlined in Romans 8. Filled with real-life examples and engaging personal stories, Walking in the Spirit is as much a spiritual autobiography as it is an instructional Bible study. Straightforward, humble, and easy-to-read, Berding’s book is nevertheless a strikingly deep, important study—the sort of solid spiritual food an increasingly anemic generation should hunger for. Walking in the Spirit recalibrates our understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, providing an invaluable corrective to many of us who have either ignored, forgotten, or misunderstood the role of the Spirit in the Christian life.”
Brett McCracken, Senior Editor, The Gospel Coalition; author, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World

“Ken Berding is a man who walks with God in the power of the Spirit. This walk is grounded in Scripture and through this book we are blessed by the insights of this godly man and first-rate scholar. Those wanting to know more of the Spirit’s work in their lives will be helped greatly by what this book offers.”
K. Erik Thoennes, Professor and Chair of Theology, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University; Elder of Congregational Life, Grace Evangelical Free Church, La Mirada, California

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