Just a Thought "87"

2 Corinthians 4:1 - The goal of most believer’s life has been to become disgusted enough with ourselves to try hard enough, so that we can finally win God’s approval. The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do for ourselves.

Yet many believers spend their entire existence unsuccessfully trying to be someone other than who they really are, paying lip service to the idea that we are accepted because of God’s grace, the struggle for acceptance on the basis of works is epidemic, but the greatest travesty of all, is the lack of understanding about our new identity in Christ.

It would be disastrous enough if the reason people did not understand who they are was simply for a lack of information, and the truth is that there is an absence of teaching concerning our new identity and what it means to be new creations in Christ. For all the performance-based people around us, we are simply bad for public relations.

2 Corinthians 5:18 - This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No. We have to have an individual change of status and that takes place when we accept what God’s son accomplished for us.

Paul wants us to agree with God, to reckon our identity with our flesh as dead and gone, but the sin nature has not died. Do we need to change our minds about the seriousness of sin and God’s answer to that serious dilemma we find ourselves in? Yes, we do. God has been long-suffering in holding back his wrath, because he hopes that we will consider his goodness through his son, his goodness on our behalf and flee to his grace.

God wants us to change our mind about who we are from fleshly perspective apart from Christ. God is not patiently waiting for us to change our mind about what we do; many have done that, thinking it gains salvation. We are justified through our sanctified position in Christ; we have a new identity.

It is impossible for a believer to lose his salvation, but a believer can die physically. If that believer decided every morning before eating cereal, that they are going to coat their cereal not with milk, but with a fifth of whiskey, what is the believer going to do to their body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.

2 Corinthians 6:1 - The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.

If the enemy can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free.

It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease.

Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then.

Just a Thought "86"

2 Corinthians 10:3 - When we choose to walk according to the old identity, in which we were trained before becoming born anew, such behavior violates our ambassadorship. When this happens, we feel convicted because our behavior is not in keeping with who we really are. We commit sin when we willfully allow ourselves to act independent of our ambassadorship, as our old identity did as a matter of course.

So why do we still react as if our old identity is still in control of our behavior? Because, while we served under it, our old identity trained and conditioned our actions, reactions, emotional responses, thought patterns, memories and habits in our brain. Our worldly experiences thoroughly programmed our brain with thought patterns, memory traces, responses and habits.

Our brain still generates humanistic thoughts and ideas, and our old identity is that part of us which was trained and determined to succeed and survive by our own abilities. When we became born anew, God did not press the clear button in our brain, our old identity persists in suggesting ways to live independent of our ambassadorship of God’s reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 6:4 - God’s basic goal for our life, is character development. The tribulations we face are actually a means of achieving our supreme goal of maturity, because persevering tribulations is the doorway to proven character, which is his goal for us. Perhaps the greatest service performed by trails and tribulations in our lives is to reveal wrong goals.

It is during these times of pressure that our emotions raise their warning flags signaling blocked goals, uncertain goals and impossible goals which are based on our desires, instead of God’s goal for our ambassadorship. His plan is for us to hang in there and grow up, and tribulation just happens to be one of the primary stepping stones on the pathway.

By preparing our minds for action, we must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, by filling it with God’s truth. We need to practice threshold, first-frame thinking, evaluate every thought by the truth. People may not always live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe. If our behavior is off, we need to correct what we believe, because our misbehavior is the result of our disbelief.

2 Corinthians 5:1 - Far too many believers are feeling dirty, worthless and ashamed of themselves; shame is a silent, but deadly disease that pollutes the lifeblood of many believers ambassadorship. As a result, we feel unclean and therefore unworthy to approach God and have the living and intimate relationship that he wants to have with us.

Shame prevents us from intimacy with God, because it makes us feel unworthy and distant from him. God’s standard is nothing less than perfection and none of us measure up, if we did or we ever could measure up sufficiently righteous for heaven through our performance, we would not have needed a savior at all.

For it is God’s grace, not our striving, that makes us accepted and acceptable. It is God’s performance through Jesus Christ, not our trying hard to perform, that eradicates our shame. Some of us spend most of our life giving up. We are tired, burned out, disillusioned, depressed, addicted to something. People around us feel frustrated by the huge disparity between our capabilities and our performance.

They either pep talk us concerning our value, or shame us for not performing. No one can have a close relationship with us; we push people away physically and emotionally, and push God away. We are the ones in families, churches, and society that people take care of-for a while, until we are given up on because of our lack of response. 

Just a Thought "85"

Philippians 3:20 - Satan and his forces are playing a cover up game with Paul’s good news message, because they have a desire to keep people lost. For example, Satan and his forces have deceived a great many people into believing a negative view of the body in contrast to the soul, and a concept of salvation as interior experience rather than total transformation.

A great many people have been deceived into believing that their nature is dualistic, that is, consisting of a material, mortal body and a spiritual, immortal soul. Dualism has done such a serious harm in weakening our blessed hope of Christ ‘s appearing and in distorting our understanding of our citizenship in heaven.

The Bible never sees the flesh and the soul as two different forms of existence. Rather, they are manifestations of the same person, the ancient Hebrews could not conceive of one without the other. The two are indissolubly connected because the body is the outward form of the soul and the soul the inward life of the body. The body and soul are an indivisible unity; people are seen from two different perspectives.

The body is the physical reality of human existence; the soul is the vitality and personality of human existence. The fact that a person consists of various parts which are integrated, interrelated and functionally united, leaves no room for the notion of the soul being distinct from the body and thus removing the basis for the belief in the survival of the soul at the death of the body.

2 Corinthians 9:8 - Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability.

The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.

We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure.

Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. 

Philippians 4:6-7 - We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal.

That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. When our activity results in feelings of anger, it is usually because someone or something has blocked our goal.

Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.

When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them.

When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. 

Just a Thought "84"

2 Corinthians 5:18-19 - People continue to operate today in their thinking, nothings really changed, under the assumption that their sin is separating them from God. Many believe that they have to commit to abstain or commit to perform in order to be acceptable to God. If they sin in their thinking, they think God’s not going to accept them, that is how they reason it.

Many think they have sinned too many times to be acceptable to God. Or still others who may have made that “I will not sin” commitment over and over again and then broken those commitments, suppose it is to late for them anyway. Then you have the religious crowd who think their religious practices keep them in God’s favor. There are those who suppose church attendance merit’s some degree of favor with God. Others have I am doing the very best I can. So God will surely take note of my heart.

If an ounce of new reconciliation in this Age of Grace could be restored for anyone when it comes to the issue of their sins, then the degree of forgiveness that must be obtained in order to restore the reconciliation, is the very degree to which that individual refuses to believe that Christ accomplished it all. Paul’s good news message is hid from those people. They do not understand what reconciliation is all about.

They think that new sin needs a new measure of reconciliation, so they seek forgiveness on the installment plan. Is that not the golden thread woven through every denomination out there? The truth is, you could not obtain an ounce of forgiveness if you tried, because God has already forgiven you all. That is why Christ’s ambassadors have the responsibility and privilege of making the reality of the reconciliation Christ has already accomplished known to those who know nothing of it.

1 Corinthians 3:14-15 - Dying to self, is never portrayed as something optional, it is the reality of being born anew; unless we are willing to see our old lives crucified with Christ and begin to live anew in obedience to him. Dying to self is something you can take very literal; you will die in every way possible in order to be someone you are not.

The entire concept seems a bit strange to our natural eyes. Rather, dying to self means that the things of the old life are put to death, most especially the sinful ways and lifestyles we once engaged in. We see that we need to die to self, although our salvation is not dependent upon how well we accomplish this.

Yet, as ambassadors of the ministry of reconciliation, our witness is dependent upon how well we accomplish this. Dying to self is never portrayed as something optional, it is the reality of being born anew. Dying to self is something you can take very literal, you will die in every way possible in order to be someone you are not. Dying to self is a change in our principle action from what is by nature the exact opposite.

Dying to self is not fun or easy, but what is particularly difficult about fighting this tendency is that it is not exactly a behavior or action. It can certainly manifest itself in those forms, but underneath them is an attitude. Dying to self is a real change of mind and attitude towards sin itself and the cause of it.

1 Thessalonians 4:14 - Paul did not think the question of the status of the person between death and resurrection was a question that needed to be considered. The reason is that for Paul, those who die in Christ, their relationship with Christ is one of immediacy, because they have no awareness of the passing of time between their death and resurrection.

Death as we know it, would indeed be the end of our existence were it not for the fact of the resurrection. The second death differs from the first death, not in nature, but in results. The second death is permeant and irreversible extinction, because there is no awakening.

The second death is the death resulting from the final judgment which prevents evildoers from living in the new earth to come, a punishment that ultimately results in eternal, irreversible death. The stern punishment awaiting the enemies of righteousness, whose temporary resurrection results only in a return to death and its punishment, their full and final defeat. The wicked will be resurrected mortal in order to receive their punishment which will result in their ultimate annihilation. 

Just a Thought "83"

Ephesians 6:17 (B) In addition to believing it and thinking it, the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor.  Satan and his forces are created beings, and they do not perfectly know what you are thinking. By observing you they can pretty well tell what you are thinking, but they do not know what you are going to do before you do it.

Satan and his forces can try to influence you by planting thoughts in your head, and they will now whether you buy their lie by how you behave. If you are going to resist Satan and his forces, you must do so outwardly so they can understand you and be put to flight. We are defend ourselves against Satan and his forces by speaking aloud God’s truth.

You can not expect God to protect you from Satan and his forces influences if you do not take an active part in his prepared strategy. The armor that we must take up to protect ourselves from Satan and his forces attack: the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The first three are established because of our identity in Christ, the last three help us continue to win the battle.

Philippians 4:8 - No body loses control to Satan and his forces overnight, it is a gradual process of deception and yielding to their subtle influence. Many of the body of Christ, instead of recognizing that their minds are being peppered by the fiery darts of the enemy, they think the problem is their own fault. “If those foul thoughts are mine, what kind of person am I?” they wonder. So they end up condemning themselves while the enemy continues their attack unchecked. They will watch us to learn where we are most vulnerable and will tempt us in any area that we leave unguarded.

They tempt us through the channel of the lust of the flesh, they will invite us to fulfill our physical needs in ways that are outside the boundary of God’s will for us. Whenever we feel enticed to meet a legitimate physical need by acting independently of God, we are being tempted though the lust of the flesh.

The lust of the eyes subtly draws us away from God and eats away at our confidence in God. We see what the world has to offer and we begin to place more credence in our own perspective of life. Fueled by the lust for what we see, we grab for all we can get, believing that we need it and deceived that God wants us to have it. Wrongly assuming that God will withhold nothing good from us, we lustfully claim prosperity.

The temptation of the pride of life is intended to destroy our obedience to our ministry of reconciliation by urging us to take charge of our own lives. Whenever we feel that, we do not need God’s help or direction, that we can handle our life, that is the pride of life. Every temptation that Satan and his forces throw at us will challenge one or more of these values.

Every temptation is first a thought introduced to our mind by our own carnality or the tempters themselves. If we ruminate on that thought and consider it an option, we will eventually act on it. Instead, Paul instructs us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Escaping temptation is to apprehend every thought as soon as it steps through the doorway of our mind. Once we have halted a penetration thought, we need to evaluate it on the basis of Paul’s criterion for what we should think about.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 - The first thing we need to know about the battle for our mind, is that the main targets which must be destroyed are the fortresses in our mind, or called strongholds. Strongholds are negative patters of thought which are burned into our minds, either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences. The worldly stimulation we were exposed to was both brief and prevailing.

We must capture the tempting thought in the first frame or it will probably capture us. Once our consideration of a temptation has triggered an emotional response, we will act upon that choice and own that behavior. We may resent our actions or claim that we are not responsible for what we do, but we are responsible for our actions at this stage, because we failed to take a tempting thought captive when it first appeared at the threshold of our mind.

If we continue to repeat an act for more than six weeks, we will form a habit, and if we exercise that habit long enough, a stronghold will be established. Once a stronghold of thought and response is entrenched in our mind, our ability to choose and to act contrary to that pattern is virtually nonexistent, and negative thoughts and actions we cannot control, spring from a stronghold. Simply putting on the armor of God at this stage will not solve our dilemma, these strongholds are already entrenched and fortified.

If the strongholds in our mind are the result of conditioning, then we can be reconditioned by the renewing of our mind. Anything that has been learned, can be unlearned, but we are also up against Satan and his devil spirits who are scheming to fill our mind with thoughts which are opposed to our ambassadorship. 

Just a Thought "82"

Ephesians 6:15 - The shoes of peace become protection against the divisive schemes of Satan and his forces when we act as a peacemaker among believers, but we should not try to rationalize or explain the believer’s behavior, forgiveness deals with our pain, not another’s behavior.

We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria. If we fail to speak the truth in love and manage our emotions, anger which turns to bitterness and unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan and his forces.

Instead of insisting on the unity of the mind, we need to preserve the unity by taking the initiative to be the peacemaker in our relationships. Bitterness and unforgiveness toward other believers is the most widespread stronghold that Satan and his forces enjoy, and if we do not let offenders off our hook, we are hooked to them.

Relationally, forgiveness is crucial to our maturity, it is the glue that holds the body of Christ together. Satan and his forces use unforgiveness more than any other human deficiency to stop our growth and our ministry of reconciliation, because the unforgiving believer is yoked to the past or to a person and is not free.

Ephesians 6:16 - When our faith in God’s omnipotence and care is strong, it is impossible for Satan and his forces to break through our shield of faith and land an attack. Satan and his forces are actively involved in trying to distract us by peppering our mind with their thoughts and ideas. The main targets which must be destroyed, are the strongholds. Strongholds are negative patterns of thought, which are burned into our minds either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences.

That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Strongholds in our mind are the result of conditioning. Satan and his forces have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies. If Satan and his forces can get us to believe a lie, they can control our life.

Since Satan and his forces primary weapon is the lie, our defense against them is the truth. Dealing with Satan and his forces is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter. Satan and his forces know just what buttons to push to tempt us. They have observed our behavior over the years and they know where we are vulnerable, and that is where they will attack.

The important process of renewing our mind includes managing our emotions by managing our thoughts and perceptions. Satan and his forces are always hurling their fiery darts of fear, doubt and worry in our direction, but the only time they can hit us is when we let our shield of faith down.

A shield deflects; it keeps the darts of the enemy away from our mind, the shield moves with the attack. When we allow doubt to creep in, an actively raised shield of faith prevents this otherwise inhibiting fatigue, so the shield is the first line of defense, the enemy has to get past the shield first.

Ephesians 6:17 (A) The fact that the helmet is related to salvation indicates that their blows are directed at the believer’s security and assurance of being placed into Christ. This helmet covers our mind, intellect or reasoning. The two dangerous edges of Satan and his forces broadsword are discouragement and doubt.

We can become vulnerable to Satan and his forces deception in this area if we fail to daily put on this helmet of salvation. They are committed to fouling up our life through their deception that nothing really happened when we were born anew. They may disrupt our daily victory, but they can do nothing to disrupt our new identity in Christ.

The only ones who can take up any piece of God’s armor, and the only ones who are involved in this struggle against Satan and his forces, are those who have been placed into Christ. Putting this helmet on daily is important, because God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation, to tell the world God is not imputing their trespasses unto them; so we see the world still thinks he is.

Just a Thought "81"

Romans 8:14 - “as many as are led” is the Greek present tense, it is a tense of continual action. It is not something that takes place occasionally. It is not something that takes place at various times in our lives, or something that may have taken place at a time or two in the past.

God through his energizing power from on high is leading believers whether or not the ones being led choose to follow that leading. You see, the tendency of most believers is to wait for a major crisis to rear its ugly head and then they begin to seek out God leading through his energizing power from on high.

God leading through his energizing power from on high is comprehensive. It is there for all believers. It is not contingent upon our following. When things are running smoothly, we can pretty much handle things on our own, make our own decisions. We wait till crisis time, until we are frustrated or at the end of our proverbial rope and then we look for God leading through his energizing power from on high to fix things for us.

That is how Christianity so-called looks at it. That is how most of us look at it. We think about God leading through his energizing power from on high as if that leading was made available for us to access only at crisis time, but the fact is God leading through his energizing power from on high is constant. It is ever present and continually accessible. It is available to us every minute of every day of our lives. It is even available to us when there are no decisions to make.

Ephesians 6:10-14 (A) When we put on the armor of God we are really putting on Christ, and when we put on Christ, we take ourselves out of the realm of the flesh, where we are vulnerable to attack, it is not wise for us to live on Satan and his forces level. Since their primary weapon is the lie, our belt of truth is continually being attacked.

We are more vulnerable to Satan and his forces deception than to any of their other schemes, because when they tempt us or accuse us, we can recognize it, but when they deceive us, we do not always know it, that is their strategy, to keep us in the dark. If they can disable us in the area of truth, we become an easy target for their other attacks.

We cannot expose their deception by human reasoning; we can only do it by the light of the truth, it is the only valid piece of the armor against the darkness of deception. It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth. If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. God’s protection is that our role is not passive, God requires us to be active participants in the defense that he has provided for us.

Ephesians 6:10-14 (B) It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. The insidious reality of Satan and his forces relentless assault of deception on our mind can keep us from experiencing maturity and freedom, because our past has shaped our present belief system and will determine our future unless it is dealt with.

Our understanding of the identity that Adam had before the fall, that identity has been restored to us, that restored identity is the critical foundation for our belief structure and our behavior patterns. Many people that are of the body of Christ have obsessive-compulsive behaviors because of this relentless battle for their minds, and the battle for our mind can only be won as we personally choose truth.

Those who put on the breastplate of righteousness know that we have peace with God, for a person to have to make their own peace with God would be nothing more than an exercise in futility, it could never be done. We could not make peace with God, to say that anyone could make peace with God, would be to limit God to his mercy, because grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.