Welcome to the InTouch podcast [music] with Charles Stanley for Thursday, February 12th. True believers [music] experience real liberty and lasting joy only when we live in a daily dependence on [music] the Holy Spirit. Learn more about the third person of the Trinity, his power, his presence, and [music] his work in your life in part two of the Holy Spirit, an absolute essential.

Well, you know, one of the amazing things when I think about how many people sit in church week after week and they listen to sermons and they sing songs and pray prayers and go through all the things that people usually do in different types of churches and somehow they’re still not growing because the natural normal thing would be for us to grow in our relationship to him and our love for him, our devotion to him, our gifts to him.

We should be more excited, for example, today about sharing our faith than ever before. But often times that’s not the case. Well, the reason is because often times people will go through their whole life and never understand the absolute essential ministry of the Holy Spirit in their life. I believe one of the most freeing moments of my life is when I I realized that God did not ever intend for me to live the Christian life.

Now, I know that sounds like a real contradiction. What do you mean he didn’t intend you to live a Christian life? What kind of life are you living? Well, because what I want you to see is this. Those disciples couldn’t live it. They walked with him. Look at Peter, for example. Jesus always having to say, “Peter, relax.

Ju just take it easy.” I mean, Peter’s saying, “That’s not going to happen to you.” Here’s God the Son speaking about what’s going to happen to him. And Peter says, “It’s not going to happen that way.” As if he knew better than Jesus. And finally, Jesus had to say to him, “You’re acting like the devil.” And then, of course, you remember he wants to fight in the garden.

Of course, any of us who’d been loyal to Jesus should have had the same attitude. But he just I think he enjoyed whacking off ears probably. But Peter, that’s his personality. Let’s get out there and make it happen. We’re going to make it happen. And so he wasn’t ready to live the Christian life. He wasn’t ready to do the work that God had called him to do until something dramatic happened to him.