Pentecost: An Invitation to a Spirit-filled Life Sermon Outline Theme Development

David W. Augsburger in Communicating Good has set forth in practical perspective what it means to live the Spirit-filled life: “Incarnation means enfleshing. To put Gods Word into human form, to express it in human terms, to live it out in a hu-man body. To flesh out the truth of God in the grubby interchange of the workbench or the marketplace. ” Paul calls it “living in the Spirit.” The Spirit-filled life, therefore, reaches beyond an experience in point of time to affect the moment-by-moment realities of life-into the kitchen, on the job, into the classroom, or wherever life is lived. Too long the baptism in the Holy Spirit has been shut up in the prayer closet, while it was intended to be the dynamic that would be manifest in the busy inter-changes of life. At times the church has been more concerned about an initial evidence than permanent, life-changing evidences. The purpose of this message is to set forth the challenge of living out the Spirit-controlled life. Text and Setting The text is taken from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (5:16–24). The setting is Paul’s teaching on the contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. Paul’s readers, the Galatian Christians, were torn between the old ways of Judaism and the gospel of freedom as preached by Paul. It seemed untenable to them that God’s demands could be met by faith in Christ alone without adher