Re: No man's reason... quote

If i am better at rejecting sin at it's earliest point than the average person who calls themselves a christian this is partly because i view it as essential and not at all optional to live Holy unto my Lord... which i believe separates me already from 90% of those who proclaim to be followers of Jesus... and i believe that once filled with the Holy Spirit, we are able to use our free will to consistently choose holiness over unholiness and i have made an extremely strong commitment to do this, one which i believe is exceedingly pleasing to my Lord and which places me vastly deeper in His blessing and favor than would otherwise be the case as i believe was true, for example, with the apostles and prophets in the old and new testaments, servants of God that God's children today can actually be like... as indeed a small percentage, but large number of believers indeed are since God never stopped rising up awesomely faithful servants like Samuel's and Elijah's and there are people alive today every bit as faithful to God as were these great men and have every bit as much of God's holy power flowing through their surrendered lives.

I believe a commitment to be dead to our flesh is what it is to obey our Lord's instruction to take up our cross and follow Him, choosing to live in the Spirit as empowered by the Spirit and as chosen by our free will. Technically this symbolic "death" to our flesh is not 100% as i know from personal experience and a struggle against sin has not completely disappeared, a point in which we agree, though Jesus did accomplish setting us free from captivity to sin and He does give us the strength by His Spirit to overcome in this fight.

I also believe that the more in love we have fallen with our Lord Jesus, a love that can be cultivated to ever deepening levels through deep obedience and deeply surrendered intimate prayer, the more we will despise sin and the easier it will be to consistently choose holiness over unholiness. It happens that i have fallen very deeply and passionately in love with my Lord and truly this has changed everything as compared to what it was to be a lukewarm believer. If a follower of Jesus catches Himself/herself in a sin one second into it and decides to continue in that sin longer, what does this say about this follower's love and commitment to their Lord? What would you do in this situation, stop at one second once you recognized your thought as sin, or choose to remain in sin longer? If you would choose to stop, then you and i have this in common and we would both be pleasing to our Lord.

Regarding Prov 16:18, there is a very false and detrimental yet popular definition of pride pervading mainstream christianity. Pride is having a rebellious/hard heart against God, something i certainly do not have, quite to the contrary, consistently soaking in His beautiful loving presence wanting only His will for my life including choosing to not willfully sin against Him even in my thoughts.

For example, was David "prideful" to believe that He could slay Goliath? Was His confidence of who he was as a son of his Father in heaven displeasing to the living God? Should we be any different? Knowing my identity in Christ is simply an awareness of who i am as my Lord's beloved and as my Father's son and an awareness i would love to see more believers catch on to. The false idea of what pride actually isn't causes most who call themselves christians to deny who they are in Christ, to deny the authority He has given us to walk in, to identify themselves as "sinners" rather than "saints", etc instead of genuinely believing that we can do all things in Christ Jesus, that we can move mountains, etc.

Part of the result of an opening of eyes in this area is that more believers would look like the disciples in the book of acts. A very good question to ask ourselves (as individuals i mean) is "do we?"... and if not, why not? And if we are not walking as the disciples in the book of acts, are we walking in such a way that our Lord Jesus never intended, replacing loving Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, allowing His holy power to pour through our surrendered lives with something else? The transitioning of the body of Christ towards knowing their identity in Him would also help the body to step into the instruction Jesus gave to His followers which is to heal the sick and cast out demons in His name... as opposed to ignoring this instruction which is what the vast majority of those who call themselves His followers do today.

Do you believe it is not possible to discipline oneself to "take every thought captive and bring it into obedience to Christ" as the bible teaches us to do?... and do you personally choose to obey or to disobey this particular biblical instruction? Blessings. Tweet