Text: Ephesians 5:15-21

Topic: How to live a purposeful and Spirit-filled life.

Introduction:

Illustration: A young bank president gains experience by making wrong decisions.

We all need wisdom without making wrong decisions.

To walk in wisdom is to live purposefully (vv.15-17).

To live with a purpose is to walk circumspectly.

Proverbs 14:16, Proverbs 12:15, Proverbs 28:26

We are to walk "not as fools but as wise."

- Illustration: People get caught up in the attractions and bump into other people at theme parks.

Living carefully is to pay attention to where your life is going.

- Illustration: Pilgrim, in Pilgrim's Progress, must watch the path, not the lions chained nearby.

To live with a purpose is to redeem the time.

A wise person uses time; a foolish person wastes it.

- Illustration: It costs a lot to waste a minute or an hour of work time over many years.

- Illustration: At 35, a person has just five hundred discretionary days left.

- Illustration: A brief poem tells of eternity in "a tiny little minute."

Satan wants to steal our time.

To live with a purpose is to understand the will of the Lord.

So much of what we do doesn't really matter.

- Illustration: The 80-20 rule tells us to prioritize the twenty percent for God.

- Illustration: General Eisenhower said, "The urgent is seldom important, and the important is seldom urgent.

We must study the Word of God to know the will of God.

To walk in wisdom is to be filled with the Spirit (vv. 18-21).

Being drunk with wine is foolish.

To be drunk or high is to be controlled by an outside substance.

Proverbs 23:19-21, 29-33

Jesus removes any reason for drinking.

Being filled with the Spirit is wise.

When we were saved, we were indwelt with and sealed by the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians12:13

To be "filled with the Spirit" is to relinquish more to him in prayer.

Paul gives three marks of someone who is "filled with the Spirit."

The Spirit-filled believer loves worship and cannot help but sing.

- Christians sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to one another.

- Any time there is great revival, there is an outpouring of great songwriting.

The Spirit-filled believer gives thanks.

- The Spirit-filled believer is not a grumbler.

- Philippians 4:10-13, 19

The Spirit-filled believer submits to others.

- Submitting to one another means that we put the needs of others first.

- Jesus is our model.

Conclusion:

Wisdom is not found only in wrong decisions and experience.

I want to redeem the time to do the will of the Lord by being filled with the Holy Spirit.