“Empty yourself and let God fill you.” Why get rid of what God gave? Embrace that He HAS filled you—exactly the way He intended. Besides, how could a self empty itself? That’s crazy.
“I just need to get out of God’s way.” You are not a blockade or a problem. You’re His perfect vessel, and He lives through you, not AROUND you.
“I’m not perfect—God isn’t finished with me yet.” Actually, you are perfect in Christ, and you are finished. You’re simply growing up in faith about that.
“I’m just a sinner saved by grace.” The grace that saved you changed you. You are no longer a sinner, but a son…a saint. Do not diminish God’s grace in order to inaccurately explain behavior.
These are not humble things to say; they are lies that disguise you to yourself, injuring and blinding you to the magnificence of the gospel. You and I cannot live well in faith about Jesus if we accept that He failed to accomplish what the gospel says He did. Instead, we will try to become something we already are, or we will try to get rid of something He already has. Either way, that’s crazy . . . but we’re not crazy. We are not hybrids—both old and new—we are new creations.
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Each day in the Lord is an opportunity for Him to help us lose the grip of religious double-talk. We think humility is kicking in when we start to agree with the enemy's opinion of us, and if we linger, then the truth becomes vague and eventually twisted. I'm thankful that grace has come to set the record straight, that the life of Christ within settles the lie of "distance". It kills the false message of dual nature. Its delight is witnessed within our hearts as we walk in freedom, and those sin and law chains are blown off our identity landscape.
ReplyDeleteIt's the battle in the mind, the final place where belief victories come from the merciful and loving revelation of the truth of the gospel of grace.
I hope we believers ask for and walk in His perfect peace and rest, making the choice to believe Him in that one final sacrifice.
Ralph, thanks for the truth tools and reminders to shut off the spiritual schizophrenia!
-Walter