Renewed In The Spirit

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." (cf. Prov.23:7).
"Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life," (cf Prov. 4:23).  

We are not just spirits but souls, minds, wills, and emotive elements--we are complex creatures, not so easily analyzed!   We are musical, rational, contemplative, planning,  religious, and humorous creatures, unlike the animal kingdom.  We are complicated individuals that defy the principles of the animal kingdom because we are hard-wired to work, be creative, and worship--to have a purpose in life, fulfilled with meaning, and having a destiny in God.  Apart from God, we would have no meaning or dignity in life  Thus, our worth as humans is extrinsic and not intrinsic, not inherit but only because we are formed in God's image.

We are not animals who are merely seeking pleasure and avoiding pain while spending their purpose being in heat.  Have you ever observed an animal building a chapel? They are oblivious to the spiritual world and what really matters in life. We seek fulfillment that only God can make us complete in. We are incomplete apart from our destiny to know God.  But the downside of being in God's image is that we are capable of sin and moral behavior and accountability and have capitalized on that freedom by sinning and rebelling against God to show our autonomy and independent spirit. We don't naturally believe in God but are people of unbelief, skepticism, sarcasm, and doubt.  We don't want to even believe in God apart from an act of grace to soften and quicken our souls.

But note that we must come to a change of heart to be renewed in our spirits. This is by regeneration. If we could come to faith in God apart from it, it's not necessary and we don't need God--we just have a flesh wound in our nature, not a permanent defect from our Fall in Adam whereby we are in solidarity with Adam and cannot not sin; i.e, being incapable of not sinning.  Yes, that means all we can do naturally apart from grace is to sin!  Sin separates us from God and He will not even hear us apart from repentance and faith.  Not what must be pointed out is that we think with our hearts and with our minds--not to go by emotions alone apart from reasoning.  We alone are capable of spiritual thoughts and to think on the divine level, contemplating the Almighty and the eternal nature of God--God has put this eternity into our hearts, to wonder of the afterlife.

This means we can be renewed in our thinking or get our thinking straightened out both spiritually and intellectually.  We can become enlightened and informed; i.e.,, we can become illuminated with insight and educated.  Everything isn't a matter of proper facts and data, but of knowing God.  The goal is to know God and apply this knowledge.  To have this mind which was in Christ! What we fixate our thought life on makes all the difference and we have a volition that can decide this ourselves--we are all culpable to control our own thought life and not let it be controlled by our worst impulses or lower nature and instincts.

We must realize to focus our minds on Christ and dwell on spiritual things that are productive and positive influences for good. We must be responsible that the kind of input we give our brains influences our behavior and conduct.  Thoughts are the souls of the act!  And we must note that we reap what we sow,  we must guard our thoughts in Christ to get aligned with His will. We are all a lost opportunity away from throwing away our lives and wasting our brains, a terrible thing to exploit or misuse--no one has the right to live life without purpose or goals.  As they say in tech language, GIGO or garbage in equals garbage out. What we can expect is only as good as the exposure we get from the divine and the influences they have.

Ultimately, the end result depends upon cultivating the fruit of the Spirit, for we are incapable of cleaning up our act and self-reformation, of saving ourselves.  We are morally degenerate and this can be proved by experience.   We cannot deny our own reality. We all need an enabler to live a fruitful life in the Spirit and that Enabler is Christ, our Advocate, Comforter, and Counselor.  He is on our side and finds a way to come to our rescue as our Savior. We can only guard the spirit of our minds in Christ and say no to the flesh before we can say yes to Him.   We must not live in denial and stop thinking we alone can produce good works apart from God; our righteousness then is God's gift to us, not our gift to God.  It is a known fact that the nature we feed is the one that will predominate in our demeanor, behavior, and disposition. To sow to the flesh yields the fruits of the flesh!  That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Only walking in the Spirit is the way to defeat the powers and weaknesses of the flesh, to walk in the inclinations of the flesh is evil. Thus, we are responsible to feed our minds with that which is good and pure and of good report, anything virtuous that no one can deny being a positive influence or force for good.  But remember, our God is not just a force or influence, but a Person to know, not even a creed to believe--we must put this faith into practice and turn our creeds into deeds because the faith we have is the faith we show!  The reality of faith is not the profession of it and we all start by the shaping of our minds into Christ's image being converted to the Way of the Spirit or to be wholly devoted and focused on Christ, not self-absorbed.

We all can even become optimists and say that it's not all that bad, but the point is not that we are not bad as we can be but as bad off as can be and need supernatural intervention from God, a miracle to change our nature of degeneration.  Let us, therefore, have our thoughts fixated on Christ and renewed in His image, and this can only happen by an act of God, we have no power to just turn over a new leaf, make a New Year's resolution, or an AA pledge that is going to change our minds.  We must be changed from the inside out. This is the divine formula: worry about nothing, pray about anything, and thank about everything.  Nothing is too small nor too big for God's heart and attention--it's all small stuff to Him.

The key to spirituality is to feed our spiritual nature, to put off the flesh, the old man, with its natural desires that war against the Spirit, and get to know our God more clearly [which is the sign of the believer and the goal of our salvation], to be able to follow Him more closely and to love Him more dearly as Richard of Chichester put it. Yes, we all have an ethic worth living out and fulfilling--to follow Christ, its essence.  We must have faith not one we can live with, but one we will die for.  This is how we bring Christ to the world by our witness and life that is the salt and light for a troubled world.

As a result, we will become new people renewed after the image of Christ, but also with a new lease on life to share this new experience in Christ. Then we will be able to recite with Paul:  To live is Christ, to die is gain.  We know of the goodness of Christ because we have tasted of Him: "Taste and see that the LORD is good,"(cf. 1 Pet. 2:2; Psalm 34:8) and we can know the proof of the pudding is in the eating and no one can persuade us otherwise.  To love Christ, then is to be preoccupied with Him who has priority and ownership over our lives.  Soli Deo Gloria!

Beginning Afresh

I have been asked if I wanted to start my own church or even religion, because I have a way of making impressions on people with my so-called "knowledge." If you want to start a church, you must wonder if you are a control freak and refusing to submit to one another in the body of Christ. I have been known to leave a church or two out of disagreement that could've been settled, but I admit I wanted things my way. Sometimes you just have to ask yourself:  "Who do you think you are?" By whose authority are you founding a church?  Are all the gifts of the Spirit available? Consider 1 Cor. 14:26 as an example of a church meeting where all gifts contribute.  Having a preacher doesn't make a fellowship a church--the church is a family and an organism with all parts of the body active and using its various spiritual gifts.  Just what gift do you think you have?  You never win by quitting because God isn't a quitter. I have heard it said that it doesn't matter who's right, but whose left!  The goal is faithfulness: "He who endures to the end shall be saved." If you start the "perfect church" it isn't perfect because you are in it!  "Loyalty is better than sacrifice" according to 1 Sam. 15:22.

Sectarian or cult leaders usually manifest a few given traits:  They warp the truth with their own personal take on doctrine;  they are sheep-stealers or proselytizers who don't begin with converting the unsaved; they are on a side-issue or invested in a novelty that distorts the truth to fit their fancy; they never are members of a larger fellowship, but think they have cornered the market on truth; they usually are led by charismatic figures or ones with a great personality and are devoted to them; and they don't see themselves as belonging to Christ alone, who purchased them. You must ask:  Is this a sect, or a bona fide church?

The issue at hand is whether the average Christian has the authority to start his own church just because he is in disagreement and is not content for some reason--it is really the sin of rebellion against authority duly established by God.  Cult leaders like the Rev. Jim Jones of the People's Temple were in rebellion long before their church slid into apostasy without the anchors of God's authority through the Word--they thought they were getting God's Word right from the horse's mouth! Church splits, which are really sectarianism, are always wrong and God has only allowed them for the same reason He permits divorce--due to the hardness of men's hearts.  Paul always urged church leaders to get along and work things out, not to react and go overboard to start all over from square one by building a new church.  New churches are not to be built on someone's else's territory but from where Christ in not preached--it is the cults who proselytize and steal sheep.  Even members of your own family are not your sheep but the church's at large and to pull the rug from under them is to uproot what God has done and destroy His work and labor of love.

Just think if everyone who disagreed with church policy or the pastor's sermon decided to begin a new church.  We don't need more churches, we need the truth--so take a stand!--and more Christians. The church is an institution in loco Dei (in place of God) and rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft according to 1 Samuel 15:23.   In determining morality the end or purpose has to be considered as well as the motive or methodology--both the means and the ends have to be justified.  You should ask yourself:  What if everyone did it and wanted his own way?  What kind of precedent are you setting?

When we come to faith in Christ we are making a commitment and that is realized largely through interaction with the church community. There is a degree of loyalty to the church that we owe because we are fed and in their spiritual care.  Lack of church loyalty is a sign (though not the absolute standard) that a person is disloyal to Christ and unwilling to accept authority.  When you join a new church you are, in effect, starting all over and beginning afresh spiritually from the bottom of the ladder to success.  When you start a new church you must wonder whether you have authority to start at the top and whether you have God's blessing on what you are doing and it isn't just a whim.

There are times when we must begin all over, but this is after apostasy or backsliding.  The Bible doesn't admonish us to start in a new church but to face the music and do the responsible and adult thing like admit your failure and seek help.  We are not to run away from our problems, or worse yet, run away from God Himself!  Sometimes people have invested a lot in us and to write them off or to give them the shaft is not the loving thing to do and means we don't love our brother.  Soli Deo Gloria!

When It Seems Like A Raw Deal

"...I will wait till my renewal should come" (Job 14:14).

It is a normal initial human reaction to be angry at God after a traumatic event (to do do something foolish because of it though or to stay that way isn't), and I would doubt one's humanity if he had no reaction. We want to avoid internalized anger through which can lead to psychiatric problems or of exploding in a fit of anger.  But we all need to see the perspective of others who have been there and done that; for instance, my own father killed himself when I was a young man of 21.   I commend any public acknowledgment or confession to get any inner feelings out there to deal with and not have a show of piety or of a Pollyanna Christianity that pretends everything is okay--this cannot last--Jesus sees through the veneer; sooner or later we all have to face the music.

No trial comes into our life that isn't "Father-filtered" if you will--God knows we will overcome and learn from the experience.  It is said that God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.   We should never pray for an easy problem-free life because we will become weak people--Jesus didn't even exempt himself from suffering.  From my own experience, I am glad and grateful for what I have gone through and survived, though I had a tendency to get very bitter after my wife of 10 years divorced me and left me homeless.  I am a survivor!  We either become bitter or better it is well said (the same sun hardens the clay and melts butter), and I confess that I was not without bitterness or anger at first--God won however and I now praise God for His wisdom (indeed all things do work together for good).

I asked God why I had to go through all the problems I had in subsequent years which seemed far more than my brothers (from my point of view it seemed like their lives were smooth sailing, now I realize their trials were different), I kept saying to myself: "Why me, Lord?"  But God spoke to me in the Bible:  "My grace is sufficient for thee."  These problems were actually compliments, that in the end I would benefit and give glory to God.  God has made it up to me and blessed me more than I had dreamt of as He promises in Joel 2:25.  I didn't want to be another "victim of circumstance" as so many people are and don't rise above the occasion.  Horace Mann said that difficulties show what men are.  It is not what happens to us but in us, that counts; our experience is not as much as what happens to us but what we do with that experience, or how we respond (not react).

We eventually learn to cope and develop therapeutic skill and by this wisdom, we are able to pass it on to others (2 Cor. 1:4 says God is a God of comfort so that we can comfort others).  It's not abnormal to get angry or depressed, as long as we are in control and know that there is a time to put it to rest and go on with our marching orders.  Perhaps this even is our ministry and we are called to do something proactive to prevent it from repeating.  It is easy to say God was speaking to them, but He is also speaking to us and we should heed what He is saying.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Behold! All Things Are New!

The greatest work of grace and sign or the miracle of God in man is the conversion of the sinner to a new life in Christ.  It is not just a matter of turning over a new leaf, but a transformation of the soul.  Without a change in the person's life, his conversion is suspect. Life forms, sin deforms, education informs, prison reforms, but Christ transforms!

Without God life has no meaning and purpose:  "Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless"  (Bertrand Russell).  If we are considered without reference to God we become a "useless passion" according to Jean-Paul Sartre. Blaise Pascal said that there is a vacuum in the soul that only God can fill.  Enter God into the equation or put him into the Big Picture changes everything and gives us a whole new belief system or worldview.  Our past is forgiven, our present is given meaning, and our future is guaranteed and secured forever!

When we are saved we are renewed from the inside out--God puts a new man in the suit, not just a new suit on the man!   "Behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17).  What is new?  Here's what:

Regeneration means a new nature; repentance means a new direction; faith means a new relationship; justification means a new standing or status quo in Christ; sanctification is a new state of being considered holy unto the Lord or being set apart for God's usage; perseverance means a new trust; and finally, glorification means new values and rewards and purpose in living (Isa. 49:7--which says we are created for God's glory--The Westminster Confession Shorter Catechism says the "chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.")  We go "from glory to glory" according to 2 Cor. 3:18 and ultimate glorification will be achieved upon our final transformation into glorified bodies and ushering into the very presence of God.    Soli Deo Gloria!