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So you've chosen new life, been born again. What's next, and why?
Renew Your Mind 1
Insight from God comes in all ways and at all times. You recognize it as an insight from God as you grow in ‘knowing’ Him through knowing His Word (Jesus).
In the beginning, the rote-ness of the Word, memorizing scriptures, writing in a journal, studying to show yourself a workman, able to discern good from evil, all are part of renewing your mind. This is the beginning, and this continues on and on as you grow more and more mature in God, in His Love, in His Will for your life, in His joy unspeakable and full of glory, in His peace that passes, always, and in all ways, all of our understanding; peace that guards our hearts and keeps our minds protected.
Yes, this is the beginning.
You learn to apply whatever scriptures you need for your life and for others. You learn and grow in prayer, from Daddy please, to help, to help others, to specific petitions and supplications for others, to intercession. I am sure one of the key scriptures for spiritual growth, for maturing in Christ is 2 Cor. 10:5b “…bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” Yes the battle we fight the most in within our own minds, and it is the subtlest of battles, one we don’t easily recognize, nor do we want to.
We would like to blame everything on ‘him’ the enemy of our soul, and while ‘he’ is involved, the real enemy is our own mind, our own habits, our own wounds, and our own pain. And in new life in Jesus Christ, the struggle is mighty, as we try to ‘live’ our new life in Christ. Daily we learn to live, move and have our being in Him, daily we struggle with what we see with our eyes, what we feel with our sense of touch or our emotions, what we understand or judge to be with our mind. You see we are the treasures in earthen vessels. We struggle with our unrenewed mind and unhealed soul.
It takes time to learn to rest in Him, and allow Him to show us the reality of sin in our members. We want so much to be ‘sinless’ and in Him, as a spirit child of God we are, however we are still in these earthen bodies, and we still have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. If you were to research what this salvation is you would find that it points to our souls (intellect/mind, emotions/feelings, will/choice) that needs to be saved.
For our struggle even in these bodies, is not really against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places. Things you cannot see, at least you don’t necessarily recognize what or who they are when you see them. In fact, based on your family traditions, and genetic inheritance, you may recognize these enemies in a particular fashion – usually superstitious. These superstitions are deceptions of our heart. We can blame ‘them’ unknowingly and in complete ignorance of who or what ‘them’ really are. Don’t be discouraged. Jesus has provided for all of our needs abundantly above what we could ask or pray for, especially dealing with the deceptions of our hearts. Keys here are asking and praying beyond what tradition has taught us or kept us in.
Scripture says, the heart is wicked above all things. Jeremiah 17:9 - The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Well we know who knows our heart and who has created new life for us, and a new heart – God our heavenly Father. The heart became wicked, not created that way, but in what sin worked through based on the original Adam/male-female’s choice to do what God said not to do.
You see a heart without the life of God in it, is wicked above all things. This heart is the basis for all wickedness, all self-absorption, self-delusion. Sin is not ‘performed’, sin IS:
Ø Alive, as in a body
o as in the body of sin;
Ø A law – the law of sin and death.
When you choose to do sin, death is birthed in you in some fashion, usually unperceived or mis-perceived by a person. Oh, we’ve seen the fruits down through the ages, and scripture again says you will ‘know a tree by its fruit.’ Hatreds, killings, wars, lusts, total repulsive actions and activities; over and over and over again, down through mankind’s history worldwide.
We somehow like to think of these things as ‘their’ problems – pointing to others and denying and ignoring the very presence of sin’s fruits within ourselves. I believe that is why God left the new life in the earthen vessels. An in-house training source that would be with us all until we go onto the next life or the Lord returns and the new heaven and new earth begin. By in-house training source, I am speaking to the very teacher we have within our flesh (earthen vessel), and that is sin. Sin a teacher? What? Well read on.
What the enemy meant for evil, meant to be the end of us – God knew and did, has and will continue to turn(ed) it to good, for our eternal beings. Sin is a tool we learn by, a given for every human being.
Something that no matter how ‘good’ you behave, you will be humbled by, as in the ‘thorn’ in your flesh, that very very vulnerableness to sin that expresses itself in some fashion, some form in our lives.
Years of denial of this simple truth have brought us on this earth, especially in ‘civilized’ countries to the point of incredible denial and addictive behavior. Behavior, that has as its basis, denial of the truth. Behavior, that try as we might, we cannot seem to stop or get rid of. This behavior has been repeated in all cultures, in all civilizations, in all peoples in all places on this earth – from the very beginning to now, denial has shown forth addictive, destructive to self and to others, behavior.
However, since God has never left us or forsaken us, indeed, since God created us in His image, and knew everything that would happen, I take great hope in knowing that He has a plan and purpose above and beyond the scenario described above of sin. This is real for me, in my new life, through Jesus Christ. I also recognize that He is not finished working in me to will and do the life He has ordained, which he calls His good Pleasure.
Some people think this phrase ‘. . . to will and do of His good pleasure’ deals solely with our behavior; like we are just ‘puppets’ of a controlling god. Or at least that ‘thought’ hides way in the back of the mind, trying and succeeding in some circumstances to ‘deceive’ our minds and emotions into believing ‘all is lost’ or ‘why bother’ or ‘I’ve failed’ or ‘I’m suffering for Jesus’. Nope! It is God who works in us, how? Good question.
Jesus paid, as in it is done, the whole price for our salvation, and while we go through trials and tribulations here, it is part of our training to choose life, and not the ‘beat down’ that the enemy tries to present it as. God works through our junk and yuckies turning what was meant to be binding, enslaving, bondage chains to slavery, God turns it all to good, Good, GOOD.
God created us in His image, and that means we are creators of sorts, and it also means we have ‘free choice’ – whatsoever we choose, that is what is – whether it is life or whether it is death. Choice is what this life and the new life promised us in Christ is all about. And God has made it as simple as 1,2,3. Choose life and step into the dynamic of eternity with Him. Or choose death, and step into the void of missing the mark, and living deadness, slowly decaying back into the earth.
After beginning our new life, next step is to renew the mind that was created for greatness in and of God Our Heavenly Father! Let the renewing begin.
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