Dying to Live
Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:21-24
When we are born again a miracle happens. We are given a new nature & a new heart. The problem is that the old one doesn’t go away. We are told to crucify it (the old nature). We have to discipline ourselves to think with the mind of Christ we’ve been given. We have this struggle going on within ourselves. It is really a war going. The strongest is the one that dominates. The problem is that our flesh is strong & our spirit is weak. How do we get our spirit man stronger so that he can dominate? To start with we have to choose to feed him more than we do our flesh man. Now for most of us we have spent a lifetime feeding our flesh & he is already strong. We need to die to things we used to do. We need to die to our selfish desires and submit our will to the will of Christ. But also, we must choose to feed our spirit man. How do we do that? Well, for starters, we must begin to devour the Word of God. Jesus said, “ Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Joshua 1:8 says, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day & night & be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous & successful. This is not just a nice sounding Scripture. We must choose to obey it & begin to do it on a daily basis in our lives. As we study God’s Word & meditate on it and we begin to pray without ceasing to the Father, our spirit man begins to grow. As we continue in it, we will find our spirit man growing and eventually he will get to the point where he is stronger than our flesh. This is a never ending project. We should live our lives feeding & growing our spirit man & denying our flesh and we will see spiritual growth. We will find ourselves not doing the things our former way of life but we will be thinking about & doing the things of the Kingdom. There will be a transformation in the way we think and we will notice our attitudes changing and the next thing you know we are operating in the mind of Christ!
Consumed by the call,
Pastor Marty