Take Responsibility. Perfect Your Walk. (The Cure Part 3)

Your walk with the Lord will be more perfect when you stop believing these charismatic urban legends. Start reading your Bible and understand that you are in control of your mind and your thoughts. You, and only you, own your mind and your thoughts, angels do not and Satan does not. Your mind is your property and you are the property of Jesus. Faith comes from God’s word. “So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.” The Word is the foundation of your Armor. Without the the Word you have no Armor. Read Ephesians 6 and you’ll see that every piece of the Armor comes from knowledge of God’s Word. Faith does not come from books about the Bible, it’s comes from the Bible.

How do you get rid of evil thoughts? It’s easy, you don’t need to read ten books, unless they are books in the Bible. Here’s how. Read Colossians 3. “….put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you….” How do you do that? “…set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.” Also you “…must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you.” I know it sounds so easy and so “Joel Osteen” but think about heavenly things and forgive others. Look at this scripture from Paul and see that peace of mind doesn’t come from going to deliverance ministry or binding some imagined spirit. Peace of mind comes from praise, prayer, reading the word and then doing what you have read.
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4

This is an excellent piece to read, “Can Christians be demon possessed? How can Satan influence believers?”

Take responsibility for yourself, gain knowledge, be relevant, Steve

Take Responsibility. Perfect Your Walk. (Part 2)

Christians often try to give the devil powers he doesn’t really have. For instance some Christians believe the devil can be everywhere at once. Only God is able to do that. He cannot read our minds and he cannot put thoughts in our heads. All Christians need to understand that only God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Satan is none of these.

None of us wants to believe that we are really capable of thinking some of the things that we do, which is possibly why we would rather believe Satan is able to put thoughts in our minds. Our sinful nature is truly that bad, God said, “”Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.” (Genesis) Every inclination we have is evil, every one. So yes we are capable of thinking those things. God also said “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) The word deceitful is translated from a Greek word that means “crooked, deceitful, polluted.” The words “desperately sick” are translated from a Greek word that means “desperately wicked, incurable, sick, woeful.” What kind of thoughts can a mind that is deceitfully polluted and incurably sick think of? One can not even imagine.

God said in Jeremiah 17:10 “I the Lord search the mind, I try the heart, even to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” He doesn’t say Satan, all the angels and I. He says “I” search the mind. Solomon prayed in 1 Kings 8 and said (speaking to God) “for you alone know the hearts of all men”. What could be more clear than this.

Not understanding these things has led some Christians to believe that Satan can read our thoughts and interject or insert thoughts directly into our minds. Some Christians believe there are spirits inside us that cause us to think evil thoughts. I recently heard about a spirit of pride and a spirit of suicide. This is called “demonic oppression.”

Born again, repentant believers of the Risen Christ are free from demonic oppression when we are saved. The blood of Jesus redeemed us. We are sanctified, set apart. We are children of God. I’m not saying there is instant translation. We all know it’s a renewing process. Our spirits are regenerated and we are renewed. (Colossians 3:10 2 Corinthians 4:16 Ephesians 4:23) Our sinful thoughts are our own; but the Spirit of God will renew us to repentance. Satan did not put those thoughts in our heads, we did. We may not want to believe we succumb to Satan’s influence, which is outside of our mind, but we do. Carefully read what James wrote, “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” Look at how sin happens, it forms in what we desire. Read it again and notice it says “..by his own evil desire”. Not something placed in our mind, it’s our own desire. Desire conceives sin, which if left unchecked gives death. So unrepentant sin will lead to death. Now read what Peter wrote, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Think of the scenes from the Wild Kingdom we’ve seen where the lion is chasing a herd and the weakest in the herd falls behind and is then picked off by the lion. This is what Satan does; the weakest are those who are unrepentant.
1. We have desires, which are sinful.
2. Satan puts what we desire in front of us or call it enticement. (Sex, drugs, more money, etc.)
3. We sin by making the choice to follow our desire, and committing what we have desired. (Take the drugs, have sex, do anything to have more money)
4. We choose to continue the sinful behavior, leading an unrepentant life.
5. We can then be, devoured by Satan and suffer spiritual and maybe physical death.

Read part 3 for the solution to the pollution.

Take Responsibility. Perfect Your Walk. (Part 1)

Christians often struggle with knowing what is or is not of God. Events happen in our world and we make every effort to determine if the event is a God thing or not. Too often we rely on our feelings to give a event credibility or deny its credibility.

I’ve recently started back to college at age 51. In the prologue of one of my textbooks, there is some good stuff about critical thinking. First off, critical thinking has nothing to do with criticism. It’s defined as: to question, to make sense of and to be able to analyze. Having a better understanding of the reasoning process helps me realize that to often we expect goose bumps, cold chills or some other experience to know truth from fiction or right from wrong. As an example, we sometimes hear the term “I felt a check in my spirit.” I’m not certain that the “check in the spirit” is a spiritually legitimate way to discern what is and what is not of the Lord. The Lord has given us this incredible ability to reason and to use critical thinking. He has given us His perfect Word to read and study. One place scripture affirms this is in the book of 2nd Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Paul also wrote, “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” Note any place about feelings in these verses. I believe it’s our lack of understanding of the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit works that leads to lean to heavily on feelings and experiences. Not that I understand everything about the Holy Spirit. But, I know the “Providential Will” of the Lord (that which is going to happen no matter what) and I know the “Moral Will” of the Lord (that which is written in scripture). If our feelings and experiences do not fall between those two, then they are false. For many followers of Christ, this concept is either unknown or it has been compromised so severely that the “check in spirit” goes unheard or (just as bad) is unreliable.(Go to LifeChurch.TV and look for a series called “What’s God’s Will, for a excellent teaching on God’s will.)

Take the time to read the entire Bible. This is the only way you will know and understand the boundaries of what is and what is not of the Lord. Reading your Bible will sharpen you instincts. Sharp instincts will aid, but never replace your scriptural knowledge.

Be knowledgeable. Be holy. Be relevant. Steve