Search results for 'truth' (4)
“It's impossible--it just can’t be done. That’s not the way things are--it surely doesn’t mean what it says!” That’s the reaction I have heard time and time again when I have talked about a certain statement Jesus Christ made. “If you ask anything in my Name, I will do it.”--John 14:14. That’s not the only place Jesus said this either. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer believe that you receive it, and you will.”--Mark 11:24 These statements are facts; and if I am to believe God, I must believe the things He says. If these words stagger me-- it surely is because I do not believe. Now let’s look into this. The Bible teaches some plain, basic, simple facts: Fact #1 There is within me a carnal nature, one that is opposed to God. Fact #2 If I am a Christian, I am “born again” and have within me a Spiritual nature. This nature accepts the things of God. Fact #3 I can of my own free will obey either one of these natures. Fact #4 Jesus said, “The words I speak to you--they are Spirit and they are Life.” Fact #5 They that are of the flesh mind the things of the flesh, and they that are of the Spirit mind the things of the Spirit. So there you have it. If I’m staggered by the promises of God it is because I am trying to accept them with the natural mind of man. I am trying to rationalize. I am seeking a logical way. If I mind the Spirit that is in me, I will not be staggered at God’s promise because the Spirit knows that God cannot lie and He will do what He has promised. Knowing this I can confidently confess POSSESSION of God’s promises even before I see the evidence. And that brings us up to one rule of faith that we have in the Bible. “This is the word of faith that we preach, that if you confess with your lips the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”--Rom. 10:8-9 There it is: Confess it, believe it, and you will have it. And salvation, my friend, includes all that God is and can do.
Jesus is the Truth. Jesus is the Father unveiled to us. Jesus is the Word. He is also the expressed will of God toward us. He is the Spiritual will of our Father. Jesus is God’s way of expressing Himself to us and all mankind. Jesus said, “Ye shall know the Truth…” He was saying just as well, “You shall know the will God for you and the knowledge of this will shall set you free.” The knowledge of the will of God must be made known to our Spirits, for we are Spiritual creatures. This new will must be exercised through us. The word “know” used here is to be used in connection with the heart--heart knowledge, Spirit knowledge, knowledge that is independent of the senses. Because of the fact that I am a Spiritual creation, I must be educated with Spiritual knowledge. I was not created to be ruled by carnal knowledge. The Spirit says, “Put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created Him.”--Col.3:10. God is a Spirit. He has made me Spirit. I am to be renewed in knowledge after the image of God. From the day I was born into this world by natural means, I began to mature and receive knowledge. I received this knowledge through the five senses. The education I attained made up my attitude, my disposition, and my outlook toward life. It more or less shaped my personality. I was a natural man, born by natural means, shaped by natural knowledge. I have been born again. Now I am a Spiritual creature. I am no longer natural. I have been born from above. God has given birth to me with his own Life. I have a new nature. God’s nature is Spirit (John 3:6). I was educated and taught by natural knowledge while I was a natural person. This was in harmony with my nature. This was to be expected; it was my nature to follow after natural things. I obeyed my nature unconsciously. Now that I am a Spiritual creation, I must be educated with Spiritual knowledge. At first I was educated by natural knowledge through the senses, but now I am to be educated with Spiritual knowledge through the Spirit. I must consider myself to be Spirit and expect to be re-educated with knowledge that is found in that realm. The Bible says that I was born in sin and shaped by iniquity. I was born in opposition to God and taught by things contrary to His way of Life. I must not only be put in harmony with God by nature, but by knowledge also. It would be impossible for me to receive Spiritual knowledge from God without being recreated and made in His likeness. As long as my mind continued to operate on a physical plane only, and its way of thinking not changed, God couldn’t make Himself known to me. I must now become Spiritually-minded. I must expect to learn things of the Spirit. I am now a completely new creation. I have eyes that are Spiritual; I have ears that are Spiritual. I have Spiritual senses now. My conversation is in Heaven (Phil. 3:20), the realm of the Spirit. I am no longer to be led by senseknowledge, but Spirit-knowledge. I am to depend upon Spirit- knowledge rather than sense-knowledge. I am to be led by the Spirit and not by reason. I am to walk in the Spirit. I am to look for things in the Spirit rather than through my five senses. I walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor.:7). My whole life and mode of living has been changed from physical to Spiritual. I am now living inwardly first, then outwardly. I depend upon the Spirit. I trust in the Spirit; I obey the Spirit. I listen to the Spirit’s voice. The Spirit is my source of life. In ministering the Word, I go to a person’s heart before I deal with their body. I plant the seed within the heart before I reach out to reap the harvest. Everything is done first in the Spirit. Teaching is done in the Spirit; believing is done in the Spirit; knowing is done in the Spirit; healing is done in the Spirit. The seed is planted first in the Spirit and then the fruit is borne. The Spirit is the method by which God does everything. “It is the Spirit that giveth life, the flesh profiteth nothing.”-- John 6:63. “Are ye so foolish, having begun in the Spirit are ye now made perfect in the flesh.”--Gal. 3:3 If we have been made a Spiritual creation, then we should live accordingly. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”--Gal.5:25. “We look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.”--2 Cor.4:18 We are eternally united with God in Christ. We look at the things that are not seen--Spiritual things, the Eternal things. We look and learn of things that are in our realm. It is only natural according to our new nature that we should look at Spiritual things. When we were natural, we looked to and cared for natural things. We talked, thought, and depended on them. Now our life has been made anew with the Spiritual life of God. We set our affection on things above not on things beneath (Col.3 2). We are new creations with a new purpose and a new desire. We have a complete new life. “Old things have passed away, behold, all things are become new.” What a privilege we have! We shall be taught by God. The source of our knowledge is Eternal, unchangeable. We shall learn true knowledge that has been established by God. We shall learn God’s ways instead of man’s ways. We shall learn of principals that when cooperated with will bring forth demonstration and power of the Spirit. Oh God, cause us to be Spiritually sensitive to Your leading. Cause our Spiritual ears to hear and our eyes to see. Make us to know that it is by Your Spirit and not by my might. Have us to remember that we are now Spirit and live a new Life together. Help us to know even as we are known. Teach us to speak and plant Your seeds of Divine Life when the season is come, when the ground is ready and fertile, and the time right. Teach us that others might see Your love in and through us.
I am a new creation in Christ. I have been born again by the power of the Word of God. “Of His own will he begat me by the Word of truth.”--James 1:18 Satan has no jurisdiction over me. According to Col.1:13, I have been translated from the authority of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Satan has no authority over me because Christ has become my Life. He is not part of my Life, but all of it! For me to live is Christ! I am more than a conqueror through Him who loves me. I have been given complete authority over the devil and his demons through Christ’s name and His victory. The devil cannot defeat me because I no longer exist. Christ is my existence. I can do all things through Christ who is my Life. Any thought contrary to this is a lie from the devil because it contradicts the Word of God. I have given my body to Christ; therefore, my body is not mine anymore. It is His. I am the body of Christ here on earth. Paul said, “We are the body of Christ.” He can take care of His own body. Yes, we are the body of Christ. In a certain sense of the word, we are actually the second coming of Christ. Christ first dwelt in the man Jesus, but Christ (the Life of God) now dwells in us. We are the incarnation of the Christ Life. Christ walks the earth once again. Christ has come to be admired and glorified in all of those who believe (2 Thes.1:10). If you are a believer, Christ lives in you. Christ in you is your hope of glory. The Christ who lives within you is victor over all things! He has overcome the whole world. You are victorious in Him. HE IS YOUR VICTORY. The Bible says, “Who is he that has overcome the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Christ!” Do you believe? If you are a believer, then you are more than a conqueror through Him who loves you. Napoleon was a conqueror; Alexander the Great was a conqueror; but you are MORE!
If you don’t want to do something or be something, then don’t even think about it. You have often heard someone say when something has been suggested to him that he might consider foolish, “Why I wouldn’t even think of it.” That’s what Jesus was really saying to Peter when Satan suggested through him, “Let the cross be far from thee, Lord.” Jesus replied, “Get thee behind me Satan. Thou savorest not the things of God.” Don’t even consider the things that your new nature hates. You see, if you are in Christ, you are a new creature. The seed of God within you has given you a new life. This life is God Himself. “That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.”--John 3:6. This new nature hates evil (Satan) and loves righteousness (God). That is why it is necessary that our minds be renewed with God’s knowledge. The Spirit and the mind must agree. I am talking about the new mind God has given us--a new consciousness. The Bible calls it the mind of Christ. The old mind will never agree with God, but we are told to deny it and put on Christ who is the Truth. The Bible says to be renewed in the Spirit of our mind (Eph.4:23). This is a Spiritual mind, where the other is earthly and carnal. The first man was of the earth and earthly. The new creation is Christ in you--the Lord of heaven (1 Cor.15:47). This thing about thoughts--God is vitally interested in what we are thinking about down deep within our souls. He knows, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” You just naturally or supernaturally become one with what you think about. Man is concerned with our deed, where God is more concerned with our thoughts and motives. Every deed is the fruit of thought. Thoughts are either constructive or destructive. Thoughts build bridges, fly airplanes, climb mountains, and every other thing that this society we live in produces. Thoughts are the motivation behind our deeds. We as human beings are prone to overlook their significance because we understand little of Spiritual or unseen things. Man goes about striving to correct his actions not realizing that the reason he is losing the battle is because what he is thinking about is working against him. He who can control his thoughts can make his decisions with the utmost resolve. “To be carnally minded is death, but to be Spiritually-minded is life and peace.”--Rom.8:6 If we are new creatures, (God’s Word declares we are, 2 Cor.5:17) then isn’t it necessary to change our patterns of thinking from the old to the new? What good on this earth will it do us, or anyone else for that matter, to be new creatures in Spirit (Heart) but old in our thoughts? If someone made us anew, but we continued to go on thinking like the old, we would be like someone rich thinking like someone poor. I am not suggesting that we can think our way into God’s kingdom. There is only one way in and that is Jesus; but if we have taken that way, then we are in. What use is it to continue in the old way? The Bible says we have already been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God (Col.l:13). We are told to be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Rom. 12:1-2). That simply means that just because our Spiritual location has been changed, it doesn’t mean that automatically our thoughts were changed too. Jesus did the transporting, but you and I must do the changing in our ways of thinking. Incidentally that’s the Gospel that Jesus taught when He said, “Repent the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Repent means to change one’s thoughts and opinions. There must be something wrong with ours or we would not be commanded to change--to put off the old and put on the new which is to be renewed in knowledge after the image of God (Col. 3:10). Thoughts--strange things--but how serious we should observe them. We are told in God’s Word not to believe every spirit because some are not of God. Thoughts are spirits in one way just like God Himself. Jesus taught that God is a Spirit. John says God is the Word or the Logos which is Divine thought. Jesus thought only about God or the Logos. God or the Logos was in His thoughts. God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways your ways.” I do not mean to put God on the same level as the devil. I simply mean that Satan is a spirit and so is God. Jesus plainly clarified this. The difference is that Satan is a liar. He is deceptive, crafty, subtle, sneaky, deceitful, guileful, sly, and cunning. Above all of this, he is liar and his stronghold is the carnal mind. The simple truth is that God and Satan both basically use the same method--thoughts. Satan is so skilled in concealing his intentions that we are warned in scripture to be sober, vigilant, aware (1 Peter 5:8), and try the spirits (1 John 4:1). We need to weigh our thoughts carefully if we are not sure of their origin. We are emphatically told that we do not war against flesh and blood, but against wicked spirits in spiritual places (Eph. 6:12). We are told the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds that Satan has had over our minds--casting down imaginations, dethroning, and bringing every thought into subjection and captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor.10:5). That’s how important thoughts are to God, so shouldn’t they be that important to us? We are also told to put on the armor of God so we may stand in the evil day (Eph.6:13). We will not enjoy the victory that Christ has already procured for us until we by an act of will bring our minds to the foot of His throne and make every thought bow its knee, confessing (acknowledging) that Jesus is Lord (sovereign ruler) to the glory of God. We will only rule and reign in this life to the extent that Christ reigns in us. It is in submission to the King that we enjoy the benefits of His Kingdom. Jesus says, “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit down with me in My throne even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in His throne.” Rev.3:21. We are to sit down with Him in the throne of God having ceased from our own strugg1es--having submitted and enter into the rest of God (Heb. 4:3). There remains a rest for the people of God, but there will be no rest without submission to the King. Our rest will be in direct proportion to our willingness to submit that God might be all in all. God is not as concerned about our ways as we might think. That’s Satan’s method of hiding the real issues. The real issue is “whose thoughts are your thoughts?” Remember there is no in-between-ground--thoughts either come from God or from the devil. Be it understood that we are talking about spiritual things because we are talking about spiritual problems and a Spiritual victory. There are thoughts that have to do with the sciences of this world, but they have nothing to do with our Spiritua1 standing in Christ. I am talking about things that are vital to our Spiritual survival because that’s what Jesus is concerned with and that is because His kingdom is not of this world.