Romans 8:5-13
We have started a journey on breaking free from the lies of the enemy and learning to live in light of who we are. We are living free of condemnation because Jesus was condemned for us, He took our place, He took the full force of the punishment of the law and we receive this incredible freedom to live the Christian life.
You feel great on Sunday and then Wednesday hits! You were leading 3-0 after two periods and that your spiritual life takes a blow and the enemy has knocked you down and you are barely holding on...what happened??
However just like the Canadian JRs, as many have noted is like life. It is at the moment that we think we have it made, we are in the clear that we can get the life sucked right out of us. We might as well realize right now that as great and glorious it is to live in freedom, there are chains that are more than ready to shackle us.
OK, the enemy isn't Russia, and the battle is not for hockey supremacy. We do have an enemy and the battle is for Christ's supremacy in our lives!
So, then, we get derailed, we lose sight of our destination and we find ourselves back in a slump. How did it happen? How did we get here and even then when we to get back on track, we can even ask the wrong questions like
· How do I live the Christian life? and the point is this, if you ask the wrong question, you will most likely arrive at the wrong answer because the question is not how, but who! This isn’t a course that we take or a syllabus that we have been given to study, we have the living Jesus!
It is Jesus Christ, It is only because we are in Him, He fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law, He defeated sin and death.
In the story of Noah and his family in the Ark, God told Noah in Genesis 6:14 to make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.
“pitch” is the same for atonement (Kaphar). It is a picture of salvation!
The rains came down and the Lord shut them in. He didn’t give them 6 tent pegs, rope and a tarp and tell them to hang on. Noah and his family were shut in the ark and you are in Christ.
No matter how much the storm rages around you, you are covered and you are in His grip, in the palm of his hand, the apple of His eye.
TWO mindsets v5
The mindset that we must have must be tenacious in guarding the spiritual life within us. The understanding of setting our minds includes the whole action of our affections, our will and our reason.
It is our mind, our soul that determines which direction we are going to go, how we are going to be entertained, how we are going to feed our flesh.
Flesh – is your natural learned tendencies. Age of two when you said NO
Who is going to control the mind, the body or the Spirit?
Is my flesh controlling my thinking? If so, I am and I am experiencing death!
The mindset of the sinful nature
The root of the sinful nature is ‘my will, my time, my way’
The mindset set on what the Spirit desires
The heart of the Spirit desires to teach us ‘your will be done, in His time, pursuing His way’
There is a recognition of a divinely enabled obedience under the influence of the Spirit
Danish Theologian Soren Kierkegaard best summarized this when he said, “Life in Christ is best understood backwards but lived forward.”
We must live in light of who we are, who God has created us to be and then move out and live out His divine calling on our life.
Identifying your mindset v6-8
A death mindset:
· It is hostile towards God. There is this extreme enmity and hatred towards the ways of God.
· Is non submissive
· It cannot please God
A life mindset:
· Filled with peace
· Focused on the Spirit
· The word for control here means ‘to be under the domination of’
· Submissive to God
· Pleasing to Him
The cancer in the believer’s life is that I can receive all this, believe all this and my life will be completely unchanged.
TWO masters v9-11
Identifying your stronghold
Who is going to control your soul? Is it your flesh, by that I mean is your hope for happiness wrapped up in your house, your cars, your hobbies, the next vacation because that is death and it will always leave you wanting more.
The average person, thinks “I’m almost happy. I just need a little more money, a little more house, a little more….more, more, more…”
Well I have seen people first hand who have won the lottery and visited in their home. The toys – all there, every last one of them, but joy so completely missing. They are gripped by alcohol, stealing, broken family relationships.
What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.
A counterfeit god [idol] is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.
An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought.
The true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention. What do you enjoy daydreaming about? What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about?
Tim Keller in Counterfeit Gods.
The sinful nature
· Does not belong to Christ
· The sinful body (flesh) is alive
· The Spirit is dead
The Spirit of God and Christ
· Belongs to Christ – owner identification
· The sinful body (flesh) is dead
· The Spirit is alive
· Resurrection power
V9 The Spirit of God lives in you!
Dwells in you – Is He at home in you, can He kick back and rest in your thoughts, attitudes and in your heart? Do you enjoy His presence, His life? Or is He being quenched by the activities, the conversations that quench and choke out His presence in you?
The choices that we make affect our spouse, our children.
The reality is that your feelings on all this may check in and check out on you, but we can’t be driven around by our emotions.
In this battlefield where Satan loves to mess with your mind, you need to continually affirm out loud and claim over yourself who God says you are even when you don’t feel it.
Eventually, in time, our emotions will catch up after some serious reinforcement.
The homeless man with the golden radio voice has sure caught our attention this week. I’m not sure if he was a Christian, but he spoke about continuing to give thanks to the God no matter if he made 25 cents an hour or whether he made in his mind a significant amount. He made his mindset clear regardless of what took place in his circumstances.
How much better to begin each day thinking victory not defeat; to awake to grace, not shame; to encounter each temptation with thoughts like, Jesus, You are my Lord and Savior. I am your child – liberated and depending on your power. Therefore, Christ, this is Your day, to be lived for Your glory. Work through my eyes, my mouth, and through my thoughts and actions to carry out Your victory. And Lord, do that all day long.
Charles Swindoll in Grace Awakening
The Ultimatum! v12,13
Live according to the sinful nature and death becomes you.
Live in the Spirit and rip the heart out of the sinful nature.
I have seen a young man in my previous ministry gripped by pornography now overwhelmed by the love of Christ to the point that he has no desire to go back.
Galatians 5:16 Live by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the sinful nature.
Galatians 5:17,18
There is a real conflict going on between our Spirit and the flesh.
I also believe the blessing of living my life in the Spirit is that I become more fixated on walking in the Spirit and less on trying to stop fulfilling the desires of the flesh. I believe the more and more my appetite grows for the presence of the living God, the less attractive and appetizing the flesh becomes.
How do you perceive Scripture – does it look like, ‘you should’, ‘you must’, ‘you ought’ and is experienced as a demanding, nagging voice
OR is it perceived as an invitation – a revelation of what God intends to do in us and through us?
Faith hears the guiding of the Spirit’s voice and it is less about trying and more about surrending. It is more about what Jesus is doing in us than what I am unable to do myself.
Now if you are thinking that the difference between the law and the Spirit about the spiritual life is the difference between listening to the Spirit and just reading the Bible then you are missing the point because it is all in our approach.
The battlefield is how I’m going to engage in this battle between the flesh and the Spirit
Am I going to struggle to keep the law or am I’m going to be more focused on yielding to the Spirit?
The battle is between self- effort and will power vs enablement and the power of the Spirit
How do you relate to God? Is it about feeling good about ourselves? To me it is being more and more overwhelmed about the goodness of God in me.
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