Can a leopard change its spots? A lesson we must learn...

[gideons300]

Oh, if we could understand this principle. Why is the church so lukewarm, so religious, and yet not truly walking in the joy of victory? Simple, it is sin. But how do we overcome the sins that so easily beset us? What does the word say? Does it say to diligently fight to obtain viototy over them. Does it say to overcome them with hard effort and bloody knuckel effort? No, it tell us to set them aside.

There, there is the root of our problem. We are relying on grace to get us forgiven, but then we have the weight of obedience trown back on our shoulders as we try to make our old sinful heart bring froth holy fruit.

And I believe with all my heart, this is the answer on how we walk in victory over sin, and bring every thought into the obedienmce of Christ.

We need a new heart, a new nature.

Our old fallen nature, our flesh, is simply doing what it does by nature, it sins! We are told that it is enmity with God and is not subject to His will, nor can it be. It thinks self-pleasing thoughts, and most of us have fallen into the trap satan has laid for us, and are caught up in trying to teach ourselves to stop thinking bad thoughts, stop doing bad things and it is simply impossible.

The word asks us in Jeremiah 13:

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?"

The answer, we would all agree is no, it is impossible, and any who tries is a fool. Right? Yet we all have fallen, hook, line and sinker for attempting to do the very same thing! Listen again to God as He continues:

"Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil."

We try to reason with our old nature. We attempt to discipline it. We chain it down, all to no avail. But we do not understand. New wine cannot go into old wineskins, we new new wineskins to hold it. The plain and simple answer is that we need a new nature, a new heart! Amen?

So where does that leave us? In Romans 6, this exact issue is under discussion and nowhere in the entire word of God will it be made any clearer.

Paul tells us that when Christ died, He died to sin ONE time, and then rose to newness of life. Then he says that if we have accepted Jesus as Lord, and have been baptized into Him, we died with Him! We rose with Him! So he tells us the exact path we must now take as we know these things. He tells us to reckon ourselves dead to sin in the same way Jesus died to sin. And how did He die? - ONCE! He tells us to reckon that we are now alive from the dead, new men with new natures.He tells us to new yiled ourselves not as groveling sinners, needing to die, but as new creatures, as those who are alive from the dead!

That word "reckon is an interesting word, a banking term, from which we get "reconcile". It means "to count into inventory".

Suppose you win the lottery. You hold the winning ticket. Are you rich? Yes! Do you have the money in your bank yet? No. But you have reckoned that you are now worth 10 million dollars. The weight of poverty is off your shoulders and you know your life is going to be totally different. It is the exact same way with the new man Christ has made each of us.

In the same way, God wants us, by faith, to take His word as our truth, our "ticket". He cannot lie. We are new creatures, He tells us, yet how few believe this? How many there are who still go seaching for food in trash cans, eeking out a daily existence, with the lottery ticket in our possession but not accepting the fact we are no longer that poor man, but rich! And why? Becasue we believe that lottery ticket is worth the ten million dollars, we reckon it to be ours, now, regardless of whether or not we see the money yet deposited on our bank account.

Here is the jist of the matter. We are new creatures in Christ, and old things are passed away. It is done, finished! BUT, when will it profit us? WHEN WE BELIEVE IT and receive it as ours, and not until.

Until we set our face like a flint, get our eyes off our problem, our weakness, our sinfulness, and choose to beleve the amazing promises of God, claiming them as ours, we will be rich men walking around as beggars still.

So what HAS God promised us?

God will with every temptation, make a way of escape.

Sin shall not have dominion over us.

We can do all things thru Christ who strengthens us.

We are not in the flesh but in the spirit.

We are new creatures in Christ, and old things have passed away.

We are now light in the Lord.

We are more than conquorers.

Greater is he who is in us, than he who is in the world.

As we choose to believe these truths, and receive them, stand in them, we enter into the real battle we are to fight, the good fight of faith. God wants us to become strong in faith in Him and what He has promised us, for in this way, we honor our God.

And here is what we find, As we choose to believe these things God has plainly stated, they become our "shield of faith" and what are we told about that shield?

"Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked."

Ephesians 6:16

There is only one way to truly defeat sin in our lives. A new heart, and God has it for us. All He asks us to do is to trust Him, to believe His words to us. He wants us to become overcomers, and it is only through faith that we can do so. We are weak, far weaker than we even know. But God is strong and it is HIS job to change us and to keep us from falling.

"and this is the victory that overcometh the world, [even] our faith."

1 John 5:4

Blessings,

Bruce

 

[Christownsme]

My mouth is shut. I can't say much, except I don't really trust God nor believe his promises like I need to. You've put so much into this post, and I can learn from it. Thanks

 

[MinisterTony]

A leopard cannot change it's spots anymore than an lemon can turn into an orange.

However, a leopard can decide to become the best leopard it can become.

 

[gideons300]

My mouth is shut. I can't say much, except I don't really trust God nor believe his promises like I need to. You've put so much into this post, and I can learn from it. Thanks

Brother, you have all the faith you need. It may still be in seed form, but God gave you that gift and it is all you need. Step out and plant it. A weal little seed, planted in the crack of a sidewalk, can uproot that concrete completely, given time. All the power needed is hidden in that one little seed.

Blessings,

Bruce

 

[gideons300]

A leopard cannot change it's spots anymore than an lemon can turn into an orange.

However, a leopard can decide to become the best leopard it can become.

Brother, when I finally took God at his word and believed that without Holiness, no man shall see the Lord, that ALL my righteousness was as filty rags, and grieved every time I sinned, truly grieved, and admitted to God and more importantly myself that being"the best leopard I can be" was not good enough, it was then I was ready to hear what God has ever so clearly promised us.

God has told us He has to be the builder of our house but first we must let go of the hammer and tell Him we are incapable of doing it.

In Ezekiel 36, God speaks and says that under the new covenant, He will cause us to walk in His ways. Then he says this and I pray we all hear this wonderful word:

"I shall yet be inquired of by the House of Israel to do it for them."

The hardest lesson we must learn in the Christian walk is our utter inability to walk in purity and holiness and admit our need for Him to do it in us. It is then that the schoolmaster (demands, laws, duties given thru law) has done its work, to break up our pride and self confidence so that we can come to him truly weak and in need and finally believe the promises I have shared here.

Tony, I am very much like you. I walked like you and sounded like you for over thirty years but when I finally broke, and cried out that His ways were too high, too hard, impossible for me to fulfill, it was then and only then that the schoolmaster released his grip on me and the fullness of grace finally sprouted in my heart.

This is not theory to me, Tony, but something I have gone thru over almost four decades, 37 years of wandering in the wilderness, and two years in the promised land. My life is not the same and I pray, truly pray for all to see how amazing this salvation God has given us really is. Our strength is a liability, not an asset. We must get weaker, not stronger. But it is our pride, our flesh, which refuses to admit its failure. "I will try HARDER!" we tell ourselves, but we fail again, only to take another lap around Sinai.

We are not called to be the best leopards we can be, dear brother. We are called to be brothers of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Blessings,

Bruce

 

[Silver2001]

God has told us He has to be the builder of our house but first we must let go of the hammer and tell Him we are incapable of doing it.

You are absolutely right in this quote Bruce. However, there is a very fine line between doing it yourself and letting God do it for you. When you say you must let go of the hammer, it is a act of someone's will. At that point, God cannot do any work until the person is submitted. It is a constant submission to let God do the work in our hearts, and allow Him to change us.

I appreciate you sharing that with us brother.

Silver
religious-updates.blogspot.com/

 

[gideons300]

You are absolutely right in this quote Bruce. However, there is a very fine line between doing it yourself and letting God do it for you. When you say you must let go of the hammer, it is a act of someone's will. At that point, God cannot do any work until the person is submitted. It is a constant submission to let God do the work in our hearts, and allow Him to change us.

I appreciate you sharing that with us brother.

Silver
religious-updates.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much, Silver. You are right, it is a fine line and often misunderstood. We are never turned into robots doing God's will, it is always willing obedience that God longs for.

What we do not understand is that by putting off the old nature, reckoning that we died to sin once, just as Jesus did, and putting on the new man, yielding ourselves to God as those that are alive from the dead, this amazing act of faith is what allows the power of Christ to frely begin to work in us.

It is indeed Christ in us that is our hope of glory, but let us not forget, He dwells in our hearts how? By faith. I am convinced by scriptures that when we have the audacity to only believe, God will match that audacity by making fruit grow on us, barren, desert soil bearing lush fruits of righteousness. May we all re-discover radical faith and the joy of believing the impossible, just as Abraham did.

Blessings,

Bruce

 

[MinisterTony]

Brother, when I finally took God at his word and believed that without Holiness, no man shall see the Lord, that ALL my righteousness was as filty rags, and grieved every time I sinned, truly grieved, and admitted to God and more importantly myself that being"the best leopard I can be" was not good enough, it was then I was ready to hear what God has ever so clearly promised us.

God has told us He has to be the builder of our house but first we must let go of the hammer and tell Him we are incapable of doing it.

In Ezekiel 36, God speaks and says that under the new covenant, He will cause us to walk in His ways. Then he says this and I pray we all hear this wonderful word:

"I shall yet be inquired of by the House of Israel to do it for them."

The hardest lesson we must learn in the Christian walk is our utter inability to walk in purity and holiness and admit our need for Him to do it in us. It is then that the schoolmaster (demands, laws, duties given thru law) has done its work, to break up our pride and self confidence so that we can come to him truly weak and in need and finally believe the promises I have shared here.

Tony, I am very much like you. I walked like you and sounded like you for over thirty years but when I finally broke, and cried out that His ways were too high, too hard, impossible for me to fulfill, it was then and only then that the schoolmaster released his grip on me and the fullness of grace finally sprouted in my heart.

This is not theory to me, Tony, but something I have gone thru over almost four decades, 37 years of wandering in the wilderness, and two years in the promised land. My life is not the same and I pray, truly pray for all to see how amazing this salvation God has given us really is. Our strength is a liability, not an asset. We must get weaker, not stronger. But it is our pride, our flesh, which refuses to admit its failure. "I will try HARDER!" we tell ourselves, but we fail again, only to take another lap around Sinai.

We are not called to be the best leopards we can be, dear brother. We are called to be brothers of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Blessings,

Bruce

Bruce, your post is lovely but unfortunately it's fantasy and not reality. Once a leopard, always a leopard, but a leopard can become a better leopard. Paul's life was a great example, he was a "leopard", but he became a better "leopard", and yet he stated that he was still sinning terribly, Romans 7:15, but notice he was hating it now, where before he wasn't hating his sinning. And he was still not doing what he wanted to do, because he was still a "leopard" with old spots. But he definitely did become a better "leopard".

A lemon cannot transform into an apple. It can only become the best lemon it can.

It's not until after Jesus returns and CHANGES US that we will become like Jesus and be completely and totally TRANSFORMED and NEW, and it's only then that a "leopard" can change it's spots permanently, but not before, because if a "leopard" could change it's spots before Jesus comes back and makes the change, then Jesus wouldn't need to change the "leopard" would he when He returns again.

 

[gideons300]

Bruce, your post is lovely but unfortunately it's fantasy and not reality. Once a leopard, always a leopard, but a leopard can become a better leopard. Paul's life was a great example, he was a "leopard", but he became a better "leopard", and yet he stated that he was still sinning terribly, Romans 7:15, but notice he was hating it now, where before he wasn't hating his sinning. And he was still not doing what he wanted to do, because he was still a "leopard" with old spots. But he definitely did become a better "leopard".

A lemon cannot transform into an apple. It can only become the best lemon it can.

It's not until after Jesus returns and CHANGES US that we will become like Jesus and be completely and totally TRANSFORMED and NEW, and it's only then that a "leopard" can change it's spots permanently, but not before, because if a "leopard" could change it's spots before Jesus comes back and makes the change, then Jesus wouldn't need to change the "leopard" would he when He returns again.

Brother I mean no disrespect here but what you say simply is not backed up by scriptures.

We are told that we are no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit, if the spirit indwells us.

We are told that sin shall not reign over us.

We are told to put off the old man and to put on the new.

We are told that we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God.

Paul said that it was no longer him that liveth, but Christ who lives in him.

We are told old things have passed away and all has become new.

We are told that now we are light in the Lord.

We are told the we no longer owe the flesh anything.

We are told our shield of faith will quench ALL the fiery arrows cast at us.

We are told we will not be tempted beyond our capacity to obey, and with every single temptation, God will make a way of escape so we will not fall.

We are told Jesus came to set us free indeed, not just positionally. He that commits sin is a servant to sin. Jesus came " to turn every man away form his iniquity."

We are told that we are to walk in holiness and to be purfied in THIS life, unto the coming of the Lord.

We must, if we ever want to truly walk pleasing to Him to forsake our righteousness. Being the best leopard we can be is simply not the gospel. The gospel tells us that we must by faith "put off the old man with his deeds, and to put on the new man, created in righteousness and true holiness", now, in this life.

Shall we tell the sinners in the world "Well, it does not work for me, I am not free from the power of evil, so it will not work for you. I however am going to Heaven and you to Hell for doing the very same things because I trust and believe in God."? Do we not see why they might think us hypocrites?

If we believe in the Lord, Let us believe what He told us!

"We are NOW light in the Lord"

and it is only by believing this, accepting it as true, that we can obey the next verse:

"Walk as children of light."

Thank God the order was not reversed. It is only when we have the yoke taken off our neck, and are made new, that we can walk in holiness all the days of our lives. And once there, we must stand fast in the liberty and listen to the lies of satan no more.

Blessings, Tony

Bruce

 

[gideons300]

It's not until after Jesus returns and CHANGES US that we will become like Jesus and be completely and totally TRANSFORMED and NEW, and it's only then that a "leopard" can change it's spots permanently, but not before, because if a "leopard" could change it's spots before Jesus comes back and makes the change, then Jesus wouldn't need to change the "leopard" would he when He returns again.

Brother, no doubt we must still receive the redemption of our body at the coming of our Lord, but as to our nature, our new heart, that is part of the covenant we are to walk in now. The grace of God is not simply for forgiveness but for godliness and holiness. God is not coming back to make us without spot of wrinkle, but for a church which has learned to overcome satan and ALL his attacks. Sin is not to have dominion over us NOW. Victory is NOW. And how is this accomplished?

"And they overcame him (satan) by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony."

Until our testimony comes into agreement with what God has given to us, and we put off our old nature by faith and listen no longer to satan's lies, and put on the new man and stand fast in liberty, we will walk in defeat.

Until we truly believe, like Abraham, that what God has promised us, He is also able to perform, we will walk in defeat.

God is coming back for a church triumphant, not a defeated church that is still bound by sin and lukewarm becasue of it. It is the last days, and as He has told us, the way of truth is evil spoken of. But more and more desperate saints, tired of being satan's fodder, are launching out to believe His words and receive a nature that can overcome all the arrows satan hurls our way, non-stop.

Blessings,

Bruce

 

[gideons300]

It's very clear to me, and I am a well educated Christian Pastor, that gideons300 has no idea what his teaching.

That Minister Tony guy however, he knows his Bible, you don't!

Brother, if we were judged based upon knowledge of the word, one might have reason to boast. But in truth, we are to be judge by the attitudes of our heart, whether or not we walk in humility, lowliness, esteeming others better than ourselves. We are judged on how the character of Jesus, His love, his kindness, His gentleness has infiltrated our souls. This is the only true way to "take our spiritual temperature", to see if we are really n the right pathway. Jesus told us we would know them by their fruits, not their head knowledge of the Bible.

I can only speak of what God has done for me. I am totally unworthy of it, but it is true. Galatians tells us to cast out the bondswoman and her son. We cannot mix law and grace. It is an either/or situation.

The law was given to make us GUILTY, to teach us our need for full grace, to show us His ways are too high for us, that holiness is impossible without the indwelling holy God causing us to walk obediently. The law was to break us, to get us on our faces crying out like the man in the temple, crying "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!" But fra too often we have become pharisees, and our pride in our own accomplishments hides the grace of God he so wants to give us for victory.

It's purpose is not to point us to life but to our need to die. But what happens when we learn this lesson? We are released from the grip of the law of commandments and serve Him in newness of spirit. The law has no power to change us. It is for sinners, for the guilty, and God has declared us clean. We are no longer in the outer courts of our God but beckoned into the Holy of Holies by His grace alone.

Please understand, I am in no way saying sin s now ok. Does this give us right in this new liberty to sin, to do as we please? Not in the least. It holds us to a higher standard, not a lower one.

Paul said:

"For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"

Galatians 5:13-14

Do we see? If we love, will we murder or steal? No, we no longer need rules to guide us, the spirit Himself writes the desires of God on our hearts as we walk in love to ward one another.

This is the difference between the law of sin and death and the law of the spirit of life. The first tells us what to do, but it attempts to do so from the outside inward. In addition it offers no power to get us to obey, other than the threat of death.

The second, the new covenant, praise God, promises to cleanse us inside first, make us new wineskins, and then and give us the power though the indwelling spirit to obey all He asks of us. We are finally fit to hold the new wine and not let it leak out. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts and we, by nature, our new nature, do those things pleasing to God.

Let us walk in peace. You may see differently at the moment. That is ok. It does not change God's demand that we walk in love toward one another, amen?

Blessings,

Bruce

 

[Silver2001]

Jesus told us we would know them by their fruits, not their head knowledge of the Bible.

Dear Bruce,
That is well said. Satan quoted verses in the Bible to Jesus in Luke 4. I had a pastor years ago that used to tell me that demons know the Bible better than any of us. The Bible is just a book, but God makes His word alive into our hearts.
If you get two people reading the same verse, one being submissive to God, and another one just reading it; I can guarantee that the one that is submitted to God will see a whole different way than the other one.

God does not look at knowledge of the Bible, but He looks into our hearts.

 

[gideons300]

Dear Bruce,
That is well said. Satan quoted verses in the Bible to Jesus in Luke 4. I had a pastor years ago that used to tell me that demons know the Bible better than any of us. The Bible is just a book, but God makes His word alive into our hearts.
If you get two people reading the same verse, one being submissive to God, and another one just reading it; I can guarantee that the one that is submitted to God will see a whole different way than the other one.

God does not look at knowledge of the Bible, but He looks into our hearts.

Very well put, silver.

Thanks for your input.

Bruce