I’ve had a few things influence me to speak to you over the past couple weeks, and I realize no matter how it goes in, it comes out: I want to help you connect with the Spirit of God that’s inside you.

You can turn to God who is in your heart and let him influence you. I say, ‘let’. You might think, how do I let God influence me? It’s as simple as coming to the light. Jesus said, “He that does truth comes to the light that his deeds might be manifest that they are wrought in God.” Jesus is that light. Coming to the light is coming to Jesus for salvation from sin. We all start in darkness, and need saving. The good news is that we are not expected to be perfect before we come. We are only expected to come. Jesus does the saving.

If we are told to come to the light, that means we don’t start out in the light. We are not in the business of being perfect. We are in the business of being saved from our sin.

Living by his influence is coming to the light of Jesus that already lives in our hearts. Once you believe that Jesus is Lord he lives in your heart. Jesus, in the form of the Holy Spirit, lives in your heart when you believe. And he never leaves, no matter what you do, no matter even if you stop believing. But you wouldn’t stop believing, would you? Not after that wonderful moment when you knew he was there.

You remember. It can be that way again. What do you have to do? Once again, come to the light. Only this time you don’t have to look up to Heaven as if he has to come down to you again. You can look to him right there in your heart where he already lives. Come to the light, and let him flow to you. Open your heart to him and bare yourself to him, and “out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water.” That living water is him. He flows the moment you believe, each and every time you believe.

Believe in him and let him flow, and when he flows, believe what he tells you, shows you. Believe what you feel. Believe what his flow is telling you. That’s what living by his influence means. What is he influencing you to do? What is he influencing you to think? Soften your heart to his influence, and he can guide you. Listen to him in your heart.

Speak to him and let him answer. Ask him a question, and give him a chance to speak to your heart. That’s how you learn to let him flow. Just don’t look up when you do. Look to the God who is already with you, in you. That’s how to get real, tangible results. Because nothing can separate you from God once he lives in you. He’s as close as your own heart.

Look to him there, in your heart.

Something happened at work that influenced me to speak to you. A woman who used to work at our store came through the other day singing one of my songs. I sang this song to her over five years ago, and it had been a while since I’d seen her, but as she came down the aisle before I even saw her, I heard her sing in a low voice, imitating me, “I am that I am that I am.”

I looked around at Ms. Doris, “Ms. Doris, you still remember that?”

“Yeah, I think about it all the time.”

She thinks about it all the time.

After we caught up for a bit and she walked away, I thought how did I have that kind of impact on her? I found one of my coworkers, someone I talk to about the things of God, and told her the story.

“You make a mark on people,” she told me.

That’s very clever, I thought. I make a mark on people, and my name is Mark.

“Well I guess I better not do anything wrong, then.”

She thought about it for a moment and said, “I can’t see you doing anything really wrong, Mark. You’ve got too much love in you.”

The short answer is, yes, that’s true. But how did that love get there? It was God’s influence in my heart that put his love in me. And I began to feel it, know it, live for it, believe in it, by opening my heart to his influence. His influence is love. My friend’s words encouraged me to speak to you because I knew I had something to say, and I could make an impression.

Then the Lord began to lead me through some scripture.

The TV was on at work, and during my break I heard a woman on a talk show talking about a secular artist who recently became a Christian. “You can’t play with the Lord,” she said. “You can’t turn back once you start serving him. You can’t play with him like that!” I thought it sounded harsh. I felt like it wasn’t the truth. I thought there was some truth in it, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

So I started thinking about, when did Jesus talk about being holy as his Father in Heaven was holy? I found it in Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, a three chapter discourse where Jesus outlines his message. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets,” he says. “I have not come to destroy them, but to fulfill.”

Now, I’ve heard preachers say that Jesus fulfilled the law when he died on the Cross for us and satisfied the requirements of the law, trading his life for ours, dying for our sin in our stead. And as true as that may be, I realized that’s not what Jesus was talking about right here. It was so clear, so simple, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. Keep in mind it was leading up to where he said, ‘be perfect as my Father in Heaven is perfect.’

“I came to fulfill,” he said. Then he follows up with some examples.

“You’ve heard it said, do not kill, but I say do not even be angry with your brother.”

That sounds like fulfilling the commandment, ‘Do not kill,’ doesn’t it? Don’t even be angry with your brother. You won’t even think about killing him.

“You’ve heard it said, do not commit adultery, but I tell you if you look on a woman to lust after her, you’ve committed adultery with her in your heart.”

If you could keep from looking and lusting after women, you certainly wouldn’t sleep with them. That’s cutting off the sin at the heart level. Don’t even think it, he says.

Be perfect.

I know if you’re like me you’re probably thinking, ‘there’s no hope. I could never live like that.’ That’s true, you can’t live like that, not on your own. The Good News is that Jesus is the way out. Jesus is there to save you from that. Jesus is there to deliver you from the anger and lust in your heart.

What God has done in Jesus has made you pure. His blood was enough to cleanse you. But to bring that cleansing into your thoughts and your life, into your every day feelings is to walk with him in your heart allowing his influence to sway you at all times. “The entrance of the Word brings light.” Reading your Bible will help, will even be indispensable, for how will you know the advice of the Lord without it? But it is his Spirit inside you that will address the issues of your heart and make the Bible speak to you in a practical way that helps you now.

This is the goodness that preserves you, in the mix of God having done the work and the daily walk which saves you in your right now life, you experience your salvation. As great as a wonderful experience in church when the praises go up and God resides in the room tangibly is, it’s only as good as the abiding presence in your life can potentially be. The righteousness that exceeds the Scribes and Pharisees lets your heart be free all the time. That righteousness, again, is not you being perfect, not on your own. It’s letting God deal with the issues of your heart.

This is the ultimate experience with God that he desires you to have with him. This is the one he meant when he said be perfect, for I am perfect. It’s to be one with him in your heart, and to let him be the power of your love. Let the sun shine on the just and the unjust in your life, and be like God. This is done through the action of God in your heart.

This is what it means to be the Christian he has called you to be.

It’s also the way that you are free from carnal desires, free from the influence of sin. Not on your own are you free, but through the action of God in your heart. What do I mean? I mean that God in your heart is like a friend to your heart. He gives your heart the benefit of his strength just by standing up in it as you look to him and receive his influence. He becomes tangible to you in your heart as you believe. As he said in John 7, when you believe, “out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water.” That is the pressure, the flow of God’s Spirit, which fills you with the power to truly be his son and daughter.

“They that are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Rom 8