CARNAL NATURE

No shortcut exists for a deeper spiritual life.  
The man who would know God must give time to Him. 
A.W. Tozer

Dying to self is not the death of who you are, it is the death of who you were never meant or created to be.  It is the shedding of every false identity, every mask, every counterfeit version that life, sin and pain has tried to graft onto our souls.  In Christ, you are not erased, you are revealed and set free,  John 3:8.  And to get it done takes our 100% effort and God’s Grace.

Once this truth saturates your mind and soul it will be much easier to resist the enemy and drive him out of your life.   He is only good at sales, he is a scammer and he never delivers as promised.  The web is full of his people today as you well know.  In fact, even among so called Christians it is difficult to find humility, obedience, love, holiness, power and a relationship with Jesus as LORD.

Our Creator God is seeking to establish a spiritual level of relationship with us, one on one.  But we must accept God’s vision of us becoming like Jesus, 1 John 4:16-17.  God’s Word tells us that he that endures to the end, shall be saved, John 12:24-26.  We tend to quote, “Once saved, always saved.” and then go on down the road being religious but spiritually dead .  Jesus came to have a spiritual connection and living relationship with us, one on one in the Holy Spirit and in truth.

We have but a single life time to learn to grow up and become like Jesus.  We need to really make Jesus LORD (MASTER,) put on the mind of Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  You can not be filled with the Holy Spirit if you are full of the world and/or the religious junk traditions of men.  You have to dump the junk in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  You are not a one room log cabin, you are a mansion full of rooms and each room needs to be opened, junk storage dumped, cleaned and then filled and occupied by the Holy Spirit.  And He will be glad to help you do it.

Seems there is not much time left.  We are quickly coming to the end of this age of the gentiles.  Jesus warned us that if we were not packed up and full of the Holy Spirit in Matt. 25 that we could miss the only flight. Paul tells us in 2 Thess. 2:1-12 that if we miss that flight we will also miss heaven.  If the snatching away of 1 Thess. 4:13-18 happens today, would you be ready to go?  What does Jesus say about being ready to go?  He is the Lord, the master, the boss.  It is not up to us as how we feel about the event of being born into the Kingdom of God.  It is up to our Lord as when and who is ready.  He told us enough to help us be ready.  If we have been too busy to find, and in humility submit to His truth, then we will be left behind.  And THAT will not be good, 2 Thess.2:1-12.

1.    We are in a life time school to learn to be perfected in love and to become like Jesus, 1 John 4:16-17.  We are taught to even love our enemies and to be good to them, Matt.5:42-44.  Basically Jesus told us, “ You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. …Luke 10:35-37, and went on to tell us that all are our neighbors.  Are you doing this?

2.    Jesus taught us to find unity with each other in His Truth, John17:20-26.  As also did Paul in Eph. 4:11-16 in being fitly joined and compacted together.  There is no place for division as it causes confusion and God is not the author of confusion, 1 Cor.14:33.  Differences must be addressed in Love and with the context of the Word of God.  Unity in not an option, it is a command.  We can not say, “My way, or the highway.”  It is not a matter of what you like or want to believe.  God’s Truth is either found by the Word of God or there is little or no power.  God will not empower what is not HIS.  2 Tim.3:5. A divided house can’t stand.

3.    We are in school to learn to Judge in righteousness & truth, 1 Cor.6:2-4, “ Do you not know that the saints (the believers) will [one day] judge and govern the world? And if the world [itself] is to be judged and ruled by you, are you unworthy and incompetent to try [such petty matters] of the smallest courts of justice? Do you not know also that we [Christians] are to judge the [very] angels and pronounce opinion between right and wrong [for them]? How much more then [as to] matters pertaining to this world and of this life only!”

As I look into the Word of God and try to gather an overview of why we have an eternal soul living here in a temporary time zone on a temporary planet in a temporary body,  I get the picture that we are in a hot house school to learn how to help Jesus rule the whole universe.  But if we ditch His schooling we will end up without a body, with total recall, alone, in utter darkness because we rejected our Creators gifts of love, truth, holiness, power, light and eternity.  He can’t use us filled with crud.  But, I really enjoy being taught God’s truth and in learning to be free in His great love.