Live Dead Joy: 30 Days of Living and Dying with JesusSample

“Spirit-Led Death”

As people of the Spirit, we love new initiatives. We love it when the Spirit breathes new life. We love it when the Spirit gives fresh insight. We love it when the Spirit begins something refreshingly different and unique. We are comfortable and desirous of the Spirit-led life, quick to embrace the power, guidance, deliverance, and liberty the Spirit gives—but we are slow to accept that the Spirit also leads us to death.

Spirit-Led Restrictions (Acts 20:22). Paul announced that he was headed to Jerusalem, “bound in the spirit.” It was not security police, oppressive government, terrorist kidnappers, or poor leadership that made Paul’s world small. The life-giving Spirit of God provided the limitations. God prevented Paul from any other option. The Spirit’s leading was so clear and so restricted that Paul felt bound to obey it.

Spirit-Led Uncertainty (Acts 20:22).  Paul obeyed this narrow guidance of the Spirit, “not knowing the things that [would] happen to [him] there.” The same Spirit who reveals and illumines also keeps us in the dark. The Spirit of God is under no obligation to explain all He has in mind. Our partnership with the Holy Spirit is not egalitarian. We often forget that the Spirit is part of the Godhead, so we treat Him more like a buddy than deity. We must surrender our demand to know what and why and submit to the restrictions of the Spirit without insisting on details.

Spirit-Led Suffering (Acts 20:23). One thing Paul knew for certain was that “chains and tribulations” awaited him. Like Jesus, who knew that He was compelled to go to Jerusalem where betrayal, condemnation, mocking, scourging, and crucifixion awaited (Matt. 20:17–19), Paul had one assurance: The Spirit was unerringly leading him to face a future of suffering. 

Remarkably, Paul proclaimed that none of these things (restrictions, uncertainty, and suffering) moved him (Acts 20:24). Instead, these deaths gave him joy as he finished his race and testified to the gospel. All who follow Jesus must come to terms with the Spirit leading them to death: the death of self-will, which leads to the deliverance of others. We do not live to be served but to serve and to give our lives for the ransom of others (Matt. 20:28). If we will do this joyfully, we will indeed be baptized with the baptism of Jesus.

Pray for the Unreached:

Yemeni of Djibouti

68,000

0.0% Evangelical

Pray that the hearts of the Yemeni would be like good soil, ready to hear the gospel and to respond (Matthew 7:1-8, 18-23).