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 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