An Unnatural Choice

You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions.
Psalm 45:7

Recommended Reading Matthew 3:16-17

People who live exclusively in one culture live much of their life subconsciously. That is, they are so used to the ways and traditions of their homeland that they don't have to think before acting. But when they go to another culture to visit or to live, every choice is a conscious one because everything is new. They have left their natural state and are living in an unnatural one.

Jesus' "culture" was one of intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit. From eternity past, He had lived with the Father and the Spirit in heaven; and when He came to earth, that relationship continued. He was human and had to submit to the Spirit, but He had no sin nature that battled against the Spirit. Not so with us. Our sinful, fleshly nature is not naturally at home with the Spirit. So, moment by moment, we have to choose to obey Paul's command to "be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). Jesus is our example, but the choice is ours.

Choose today to be filled with the Spirit. It is a humanly unnatural choice, but one that your new, Christlike nature will gladly agree with.

God commands us to be filled with the Spirit; and if we are not filled, it is because we are living beneath our privileges.
D. L. Moody