This sermon emphasizes the importance of bearing the fruit of the Spirit, particularly focusing on love as the defining characteristic of a disciple. It highlights the need for Christ to be magnified in our lives, reflecting His image through our actions and devotion. The speaker challenges listeners to live a life controlled by the Spirit, presenting themselves as living sacrifices for God's glory, and being mindful of the persecution faced by believers around the world.

It's the Spirit of God dwelling in him. The fruit of the Spirit. As I've said, if Jesus had ever said, if he'd said one word differently, it would have killed a ten million arguments since Pentecost. If he'd said, by their gifts ye shall know them, it would have killed a million arguments. But he didn't say by their gifts, he said by their fruits. And the fruit of the Spirit is, number one, what? Love. The Spirit of Christ is love. God so loved the world. Love again is the badge of discipleship. Love was unquestionably, to me, a motivating power in the life of the Apostle Paul. But he says, my supreme driving power is this, that wherever I go, I go to the bond of the free, to the barbarian, I go to the Greeks, I go to the intellectuals on Mars Hill, I go in prison, wherever I go, I want Christ to be magnified. I don't want somebody to say, if that's Christianity, I don't want it. I don't want somebody to say, you know, the way you live, you blur the image of Christ. I want those people to look through my life and say, I see Jesus Christ. Well, that's what he dared to say. He says, Christ, he doesn't say I'm saved. He doesn't say I've had the baptism. He says, Christ lives in me. It's much easier to say I'm saved. It's much easier to say I've had the baptism. We're accepted on par with the rest of the people in the church. Supposing you stand up in the next test, if anybody wants to testify, you stand up and say, Christ lives in me. Some of them say, I never knew that. I never even thought about it. Go back to Jonathan Edwards, sure he groaned, sure he prayed, but his daughter said, people think my daddy's a severe man, a man that pours out judgment. But she said, in the home, he lives just like Jesus. And every day my mummy comes out of the closet, she said, her face shines like the face of Moses, because she spends at least two hours in prayer with God every morning. And oh, when she comes through the house, there's something so different, so fragrant. Well, that's what God wants, isn't it? He wants sin to have no dominion over us, but we have dominion. You know what the Greeks used to say, man know thyself. The Lord says, control yourself in the Spirit. What does he say, Paul says, I keep my body under. I control it, I control my passions, I control my appetites. He was never an excessive eater, I'm sure of that. I don't think he was an excessive sleeper. You know, it looks a bit crony when you put it this way, we live what, 24 hours a day. Supposedly we work 8 hours, we have 8 hours free, and we sleep 8 hours. Put that into 60 years, what do you do? You sleep 20 years, you work 20 years. And you're free 20 years. Doesn't look too much when you take it in the day, does it? 8 hours free, 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours, OK. But when you put it in 20 years sleeping, 20 years of idleness maybe, 20 years of work, it's a very, very different thing. Now this man is the man who eats up the time. He buys up the opportunity, as the translation says. When he says redeeming the time, which literally from the Greek is redeeming the time, is buying up the opportunity, this opportunity will not come tomorrow, it comes today. So I buy it up, I eat it up. I don't want to waste time, waste money, waste opportunities. You know, it's not difficult, it's not a case of living in a kind of a steel shell. It's a case of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and the Holy Spirit governing my life, that he constrains me when I'm too slow, and he restrains me when I'm too quick. And it's joy to be in submission to him. Paul says he's the bond slave of Jesus Christ, a happy slave of it. A joyful to serve a master like that. That Christ may be magnified by my body, he says, whether by life or by death. Doesn't matter which way. Well, there's no other way to live, surely. Having the body under control by the power of the Spirit, presenting my body a living sacrifice, number one, holy, number two, acceptable, number three. All packed up in that first verse of Romans 12. Which is really only the normal Christian life. There's only one kind of Christian life, really, that's a life of holiness. We have a challenge before us tonight in prayer, we have a few. Brother David Wilkinson is preaching in a college tonight, preaching in a college tomorrow night, preaching somewhere, I think, in Pennsylvania on Sunday. A brother that comes here sometimes, Brother Bob Roberts, he's going out on a mission this coming week, and then next Friday he and a group of men, I think ten of them, are going down to Belize again to hold some evangelistic services there. Chip Arnold was here last week. Chip called in today, his mother's quite sick, she has to have surgery on Monday, and he has a strep throat, and the doctor says, well, you can't go see your mother because she may add to her problem. So he requested prayer tonight for himself and for his mother. The news this week, of course, has been about India, which our precious friends love so much. If the Sikhs are being murdered, murdering the others, I have an idea that Christians aren't getting away with much freedom. Do those men that work with you, are they still in prison in Nepal? Young men in prison in Nepal, north of India, only for preaching, not for rioting, just for preaching. You see, if you serve the devil, you go to jail. If you go to Christ, you go to jail. So there they are, those wonderful young men up in Nepal that have it rough anytime, anywhere, in prison for Christ's sake. Some liberated, periodically they go in and come out. There's no safety. What are the Christians suffering right now in India tonight? It must be appalling. I'm amazed that rioting hasn't broken out in Poland yet. I think it will. It's a very serious situation. Yet I don't know anybody too anxious about it, do you? Check up for a minute. Have you shed any tears over it today? Have you missed a meal so you'd have more time to pray and intercede?