Serving Christ whole heartedly.
Our being consists of more than the here and now - indeed many moments of self awareness, many different times of personalities traits, of moments in good and in bad. For both when we are awake and when we are asleep our spirit shapes and is being shaped. Though we have lived the past it is still living within us in the present and will influence the future – true image of God to be!
Truly our being is as mysterious and vast as the universe. What I mean to say with this is that our soul makes us up in its entirety, every moment of our existence both good and bad. All these times we ruled ourself with our contemporary and mood shifting sense of self – our I am - interacting with us in everyday life – even if we have forgotten the moments! For in our soul our deeds are written as it were on a 'scroll of remembrance' – and influence our thoughts, choices and decision making processes and builds our sense of self, with shifting shades of light and darkness. We are all children of Time.
If you are anything like me then you will cycle up and down in your faith life. In my Teenage years I was more down on faith then up. Consequently my deeds reflected my spiritual mood. Though I 'served' the Lord in some respects, in that I believed in Him, yet I had major outbursts of living it up, getting drunk, chasing the girls, wildly spending my money and experimenting with sex. Ouch that hurt! That hurt a lot, especially when the mood cycled past and I couldn't get into contact with God no more, had an empty wallet and had made people angry or disappointed with me – or at least that is how I often experienced it.
What I try to say with this is that often we are all divided up inside our heart into many different sections of self, we rule ourselves through different moods, likes and times and consequently make different choices all the time, some paradoxically opposed to the other. As it is in this world so it is often in us. Much division, conflict, wars and rumours of wars, light, darkness, good and bad! In truth we are are woven with many strains, colours and sizes of thread.
Don't you reckon...?
Then what about the times we hate, even ourself, what about those times we are angry and fill ourself up with angry thoughts even about our loved ones? What about racial hatred or social dislikes? What about our fantasies, fears and wants? What about loving loved ones? What about just decisions? Now I haven't even talked about the place the lie and dishonesty has in our life, and please consider all the junk we have stored? (Social, political and religious manipulation made sure of that! (Just think about Hollywood for example, or the forced 'education' of our young.)
As you can see we are complex individuals hopelessly segregated and sometimes completely taken up by the needs and demands of mere flesh, the world and Satan - and consequently torn apart by the forces to be, often almost unrecognizable to who we truly should be – not reflecting God's image and as we know such is called sin!
Not only dwells there all kind of potential wrong within, we also have a 'good self' - truly a whole a clan of attitudes, morals, values and beliefs influencing our decision making processes. How do we rule with our 'good self', our inner king or queen? Do we rule in loving truth? Even the times we are walking through sin? Struggle with God, self or others. Are we trying to annihilate others, denying them the right to be as they are, or deny parts of our own God given personality at such times? Perhaps we rule in the pharisee style? A life full of do and don't dos. Or maybe we don't care much about our not so nice selves and judge ourselves within - and so live fragmented lives. Some of us even turn into full-time slaves of personal desires, wants and dislikes, worldly influences and become Satan's puppet on strings, stuck with burning desires, denial of truth - spiritual genocide within!
Nevertheless we are supposed to govern life, not be a slave to it. Remember, we are allowed to rule with Christ? Mastering life has always been the offer of Christ. Jesus wants us to rule our being in the Spirit of love and truth – both our good and bad times – He wants to set us free from our struggles and stop the internal genocide, and shape our being into newness of life. He wants to do it through rebuilding us in loving truth.
Honestly true! He wants to love our sin out of us and rebuild the lies that make up our own private selves with truth! He wants to make sure that what is opposed to you will benefit you in end. He wants to save you, not bind you to religious or not so religious points of views – not even your own – but grant you true life through the Spirit of loving truth.
Christ invites us to come and bring our complete self to Him, both good and bad and let Him decide what is just, good and right for us. Oh He knows it so much better than we ever could, and patiently teaches us the way we should go. The battles we have then are our own hesitations in letting go of our lives. Indeed inner wrong will set itself up against us. Nevertheless love in/for truth wins the day (Revelation.) This is the right way to battle – to stay in Christ's love and to stay or return into His truth always, so wrongdoing dies out of us, time and again, while loving and truthfulness rebuild us into who we are of old.
For if the truth that Christ died for our sin stands central, then spiritual rest and thankfulness of heart will grow inside of us as a bulwark never shaken, no matter how good or bad our physical life is going, spiritually we shall be at peace.
Can you see that Christ wants to save us from the very forces that conquer our life time and again? Freedom is what Jesus brings and wholeness of inner being is what He teaches us all about. All we need to do is trust our Saviour and surrender our whole hearts to Him. Let His Word and Spirit dwell richly in us so He can transform us into this wonderful newness of life. A life which is learning to walk in truth and in love and so truly be in the image of our Creator, however small the imprint.
Becoming Christ like is what that means. Christ walked the truth to a tee and loved perfectly well the whole way through. He loved God the Father with His whole heart. He is One with God. So for us to find ourselves in a loving and living relationship with our Heavenly Father we need Jesus to lead us there. The Bible teaches that only the pure shall see God. From ourselves we cannot offer much purity, I found, for we are not like Christ and we, despite our greatest effort, are not pure. I'm assured that nobody can have Christ-likeness in self, but those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ and let themselves be let by His Spirit – the Spirit of Truth who brings us Love, as His greatest gift, or rather brings us onto the Way of Love - as that is the Truth.
Our being consists of more than the here and now - indeed many moments of self awareness, many different times of personalities traits, of moments in good and in bad. For both when we are awake and when we are asleep our spirit shapes and is being shaped. Though we have lived the past it is still living within us in the present and will influence the future – true image of God to be!
Truly our being is as mysterious and vast as the universe. What I mean to say with this is that our soul makes us up in its entirety, every moment of our existence both good and bad. All these times we ruled ourself with our contemporary and mood shifting sense of self – our I am - interacting with us in everyday life – even if we have forgotten the moments! For in our soul our deeds are written as it were on a 'scroll of remembrance' – and influence our thoughts, choices and decision making processes and builds our sense of self, with shifting shades of light and darkness. We are all children of Time.
If you are anything like me then you will cycle up and down in your faith life. In my Teenage years I was more down on faith then up. Consequently my deeds reflected my spiritual mood. Though I 'served' the Lord in some respects, in that I believed in Him, yet I had major outbursts of living it up, getting drunk, chasing the girls, wildly spending my money and experimenting with sex. Ouch that hurt! That hurt a lot, especially when the mood cycled past and I couldn't get into contact with God no more, had an empty wallet and had made people angry or disappointed with me – or at least that is how I often experienced it.
What I try to say with this is that often we are all divided up inside our heart into many different sections of self, we rule ourselves through different moods, likes and times and consequently make different choices all the time, some paradoxically opposed to the other. As it is in this world so it is often in us. Much division, conflict, wars and rumours of wars, light, darkness, good and bad! In truth we are are woven with many strains, colours and sizes of thread.
Don't you reckon...?
Then what about the times we hate, even ourself, what about those times we are angry and fill ourself up with angry thoughts even about our loved ones? What about racial hatred or social dislikes? What about our fantasies, fears and wants? What about loving loved ones? What about just decisions? Now I haven't even talked about the place the lie and dishonesty has in our life, and please consider all the junk we have stored? (Social, political and religious manipulation made sure of that! (Just think about Hollywood for example, or the forced 'education' of our young.)
As you can see we are complex individuals hopelessly segregated and sometimes completely taken up by the needs and demands of mere flesh, the world and Satan - and consequently torn apart by the forces to be, often almost unrecognizable to who we truly should be – not reflecting God's image and as we know such is called sin!
Not only dwells there all kind of potential wrong within, we also have a 'good self' - truly a whole a clan of attitudes, morals, values and beliefs influencing our decision making processes. How do we rule with our 'good self', our inner king or queen? Do we rule in loving truth? Even the times we are walking through sin? Struggle with God, self or others. Are we trying to annihilate others, denying them the right to be as they are, or deny parts of our own God given personality at such times? Perhaps we rule in the pharisee style? A life full of do and don't dos. Or maybe we don't care much about our not so nice selves and judge ourselves within - and so live fragmented lives. Some of us even turn into full-time slaves of personal desires, wants and dislikes, worldly influences and become Satan's puppet on strings, stuck with burning desires, denial of truth - spiritual genocide within!
Nevertheless we are supposed to govern life, not be a slave to it. Remember, we are allowed to rule with Christ? Mastering life has always been the offer of Christ. Jesus wants us to rule our being in the Spirit of love and truth – both our good and bad times – He wants to set us free from our struggles and stop the internal genocide, and shape our being into newness of life. He wants to do it through rebuilding us in loving truth.
Honestly true! He wants to love our sin out of us and rebuild the lies that make up our own private selves with truth! He wants to make sure that what is opposed to you will benefit you in end. He wants to save you, not bind you to religious or not so religious points of views – not even your own – but grant you true life through the Spirit of loving truth.
Christ invites us to come and bring our complete self to Him, both good and bad and let Him decide what is just, good and right for us. Oh He knows it so much better than we ever could, and patiently teaches us the way we should go. The battles we have then are our own hesitations in letting go of our lives. Indeed inner wrong will set itself up against us. Nevertheless love in/for truth wins the day (Revelation.) This is the right way to battle – to stay in Christ's love and to stay or return into His truth always, so wrongdoing dies out of us, time and again, while loving and truthfulness rebuild us into who we are of old.
For if the truth that Christ died for our sin stands central, then spiritual rest and thankfulness of heart will grow inside of us as a bulwark never shaken, no matter how good or bad our physical life is going, spiritually we shall be at peace.
Can you see that Christ wants to save us from the very forces that conquer our life time and again? Freedom is what Jesus brings and wholeness of inner being is what He teaches us all about. All we need to do is trust our Saviour and surrender our whole hearts to Him. Let His Word and Spirit dwell richly in us so He can transform us into this wonderful newness of life. A life which is learning to walk in truth and in love and so truly be in the image of our Creator, however small the imprint.
Becoming Christ like is what that means. Christ walked the truth to a tee and loved perfectly well the whole way through. He loved God the Father with His whole heart. He is One with God. So for us to find ourselves in a loving and living relationship with our Heavenly Father we need Jesus to lead us there. The Bible teaches that only the pure shall see God. From ourselves we cannot offer much purity, I found, for we are not like Christ and we, despite our greatest effort, are not pure. I'm assured that nobody can have Christ-likeness in self, but those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ and let themselves be let by His Spirit – the Spirit of Truth who brings us Love, as His greatest gift, or rather brings us onto the Way of Love - as that is the Truth.
