"So I say, live by the Spirit... Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Galatians 5:16, 25 NIV).

The Christian life is about walking with God in the rough and tumble of life. It is a daily adventure in which we offer ourselves to God with a fresh willingness to cooperate with what He wants to do. The New Testament describes our ongoing experience of God as 'walking by faith', 'walking in the Spirit', 'walking in love', 'walking in the newness of life', 'walking honestly', 'walking in the light', 'walking in agreement', and in a manner that is 'worthy of the Lord'.

Early followers of Jesus were called followers of 'the Way' (Acts 9:2). Theirs was a spirituality of the road. Their lives were identified with the Lord Jesus Christ as 'the way of salvation'. Through faith in Him and the full compensation offered through His substitutionary death payment on their behalf, they were able to experience the breaking of the GUILT BARRIER that separates the convicted sinner from a holy God. Through faith in the fact that God has raised Him from the dead, they were now justified (pronounced righteous), constituted as a new creation and were identified with the ascended Christ, breaking through THE SHAME BARRIER. (The 'guilt barrier' was the result of what we do as a result of the fall; the 'shame barrier' was the result of what we were, as a result of the fall.) The way of salvation involves more that being reconciled to God through the death of Christ, it is about being saved through His life! (Romans 5:10). Many Christians fail to break THE DECEPTION BARRIER and realize that the same Jesus that died for them also rose again to live in them.

When life deals us unexpected blows, we are not left without recourse. He gives us a spirituality for the road. He never leaves us helpless and stranded. God's wisdom, power, strength, and comfort is at hand. We may not always FEEL that it is. We do not always THINK that it is. But through the Spirit bearing witness to our spirit we can KNOW that it is.

Through faulty programming we give more credence to our emotions and our private rationalization (that is, our tendency to believe 'rational lies') than to the truth of God's Word. Let's call our emotions our FEELER, our thought processor, our THINKER, and our spiritual intuition that lines up in agreement with God's Word as our KNOWER.

The Word of God declares that I am dead to the power of sin. The Holy Spirit can empower me to reckon myself dead to the thoughts that are projected to my mind by the power of sin that suggests choices that will engage my old programming in Adam rather than my new life in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not only an Empowerer but He is a Teacher, Comforter and a Remembrancer, who brings to our mind the realities of what is mine in Christ: I am chosen, loved, accepted, pronounced righteous, holy, and, according to the New Testament, called a saint. (Believers are referred to as 'saints' 53 times). I am a new creation. I am more than a conqueror through Him who loved me. I am complete in Christ. I am not under condemnation. I am not a slave any longer to sin. I am accepted forever in the belovedness of Christ. I am forgiven. I am a child of God, a partaker of a divine nature and am invited to be an heir of God and joint heir with Christ.

Something tells that if I act this way, I am a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone pretending to be what he or she is not. I don't FEEL holy. I don't THINK I am accepted and loved. The devil has defined a hypocrisy as acting contrary to how you FEEL. It is all based on emotion. If we act in any way contrary to how we feel, the devil accuses us of being a hypocrite. (See Revelation 12:10). Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites because they pretended that they were holy but did not have the Holy Spirit manifesting the life of God in them. But if we have been born from above and given a new life through faith in Christ, we ARE what God says we are, even if we may not feel like it. Faith acts on the basis of our KNOWER rather than our FEELER or misprogrammed THINKER.

Practical application: You have had a hard day at work. You are programmed as a self-indulgent pleasure seeker. You come home from work and are greeted by your wife and children, each who have their unique needs and demands. Your KNOWER indicates that your wife and children want to spend time with you. Your THINKER rationalizes that you deserve time alone, a private diversion, or that the catch-up office work you brought home is more worthy. Your FEELER tells you that your family are being too demanding. Your KNOWER reminds you that Christ is your life (Colossians 3:4) and that you are to love your wife and nurture your children. You then take your first step as a response to the Spirit, rather than the flesh (old programming), and choose to let Christ live His life through you. As you yield to the Spirit, you participate in God's affections and creativity in demonstrating His love through practical ways of serving your family.

The result: You experience God. And those around you might do the same.