spiritual spotlight

The message this week was about the Carnal Mind based off of Romans 13. Talk about the hammer being brought down! This is a hard topic for both the preacher and the audience, not to mention rare and probably considered outdated. I don't ever recall hearing a sermon so painfully true, really something I would rather not think about YET so incredibly important and necessary for every Christian. I wish I had heard this sermon when I was 20, it probably would have saved me a ton of life's headaches..maybe. Carnal nature. I'm still pondering and reflecting. I found these incredible quotes summing up pretty much a lot of my Christian life...sigh. Talk about a spiritual spotlight. Thank you God for providing a servant who is willing to say the unpopular truth.

Carnal believers are moved easily. On one occasion they may be extremely excited an happy, on another occasion, very despondent and sad. In the happy moment they judge the world too small to contain them, and so they soar on wings to the heavens; but in the moment of sadness they conclude that the world has had enough of them and will be glad to be rid of them... their lives are susceptible to constant changes for they are governed by their emotions.-Watchman Nee

Though all Christians possess a regenerated spirit, not all Christians are spiritual. Many are still fleshly. Their carnal mind is still full of wandering thoughts, reasons and plans; their emotion runs wild with many carnal interests, desires and tendencies; and their will formulates many worldly judgements, arguments and opinions. They are so occupied in following the flesh that they have neither time nor inclination to listen to the voice of intuition. Since the voice of the spirit is usually very soft, it cannot be heard unless it is listened to attentively with everything else quieted.-Watchman Nee

A real spiritual life is never dominated by, nor lived in, feeling. Rather does it regulate feeling. Nowadays Christians mistake a life of feeling for spiritual experience. This is because many have never entered into genuine spirituality and hence interpret happy sensation to be spiritual experience.-Watchman Nee

 A fleshly/carnal life will corrupt morals, weaken personal relationships, produce doubt about God and His Word, destroy prayer life and provide fertile ground for heresy.-John MacArthur 

God may allow His servant to succeed when He has disciplined him to a point where he does not need to succeed to be happy. The man who is elated by success and is cast down by failure is still a carnal man. At best his fruit will have a worm in it. A.W. Tozer

Romans 13: 11-14
¹¹ And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. ¹² The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³ Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴ Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.^[c] 

NOW past THEN

The question is, does it really matter now whether I said yes or no to a plan months ago? Suppose I said YES, would that have solved our problems? We would still have basic/fundamental problems lingering wouldn’t we? Suppose I said NO months ago, then does it really matter now? At the end of the day, isn’t what I say TODAY the most important thing? Whether I said yes or no, if we are looking for a way forward, it’s about now. But if you are looking to be right about months ago then the past is most important. But does that make the now or the future brighter? You are too hurt and stuck on the past that my saying yes NOW means nothing to you, which only follows then that I mean nothing to you NOW.

OMG

Since it’s the start of the school year, the kid’s leader at church thought they would discuss some school stuff. So after church we re-capped what went on.

 Leader: What do you hope to accomplish this school year?

Lil Man: Well…the 5^th graders have been beating us as kickball and I want us to win. I hope we can win the next time.

Blink, blink.. trying not to burst out laughing but composing myself, thank God I was driving. 

Me (seriously): So how about something academic,  what you hope to accomplish?

Lil Man: Well Mommy, recess is part of school so winning kickball is important.

End of conversation while I laugh and cry at the same time. Is anyone else’s kid obsessed with recess? Should I be concerned? I'm investigating "How to make Math, Science and other school work as fun as kickball" ASAP.

dear fourth grade, be nice

On the fourth day of school, I asked my lil man how things were going.  I was expecting some positives seeing as we have a nice teacher, no homework. “School is not fulfilling anymore…” Hmm, that caught me off-guard wondering whether to first clarify the meaning of ‘fulfilling’ or ask why it wasn’t.  “They just keep coming up with rules. First It was the STAR position, now we have to tuck in our shirts including gym shirts….”. The STAR position is some acronym for sitting upright and tracking the teacher and I clearly don’t remember what it stands for. My son demonstrated it with shoulders held unnaturally high and straight neck; I could see why he wasn’t surviving the day. I asked him to relax his shoulders a bit.  I agree, it is becoming a bit ‘military’, I mean untucked shirt has nothing to do with learning eh? He’s lucky he wasn’t around when I was growing up-, unpolished shoes (yikes), slightly unkempt nails, hair that was not in place, uniform that wasn’t pressed crisp among a myriad of other unrelated issues could earn you a proper punishment.  We all thought it was part of school life. I don’t know how much good that did, I hate ironing, don’t ever polish my shoes, the only school approved hair style in my day(cornrows) puts me in anxiety,  I do my nails real nice though.

How do you keep a fourth-grade boy motivated?  This morning, he was excited that he had Gym and since it had rained all night, the default outdoor activity would be kickball due to a flooded playground. “I’m glad it rained because I have my good shoes on for kickball”. See, on a regular day when there is no Gym and it rains, his dress-up shoes are not conducive to a good kickball session. My son lives for recess. It’s a phase right? I mean he gets good grades; I guess that is more than I can ask for. 

When asked what in math he finds difficult, he said “nothing” (initially) and that he doesn’t really know what he hopes to learn this year. After mini-session on ‘we all have things we could polish up on’, the answer changed to fractions, but he was adamant that he didn’t find any math difficult, just did not find anything fun about it. I beg to differ remembering countless homework wrangles that we had last year-undermining my traditional learning methods, counting beans and what not over some new era rounding off methods. If this boy did not learn any more math moving forward he would be ok with life. I guess that is why I’m the parent and he is the kid. I don’t remember having ideas about school or otherwise but I was scared cold of becoming a farm hand-because that’s what you became around my parts if school came in one ear and out the other.  There were no options to school and doing well in school. You knew better than answer that recess is your favorite part of the day, there was a right answer to that question, no need putting your opinion or dreams in the path of your future.  So I’m trying to be a parent of the future without veering too far off the more trodden path, balancing opinions and necessity. Lord help me.

The word..grow up!

God has really been blessing and speaking into my life in the midst of all the craziness. I'm so grateful for all the trials he has brought my way so that I can grow into the person he wants me to be. Yesterday's sermon notes on "A mature mind":

Mature mind
A mature mind means to be fully developed in spiritual character and emotion.
God will make it clear where there is error in your ways and spiritual thinking.

Philippians 3
Take away :When I can't forget, I can't focus.
Christians need two core practices:

Forget and Focus

Forget:

God doesn't remember our sin after we ask for forgiveness. To forget is to lack concern for-enables healing. Must forget the hurtful, immoral, distressful, and boastful things.

Hurtful

Mature mind rejects the temptation to be obsessed with pain. Let it go. Be willing to let someone else's sin under the blood of Christ. If we refuse to forgive we become defined by our past. Root of bitterness defiles- like pickle glass always spills into whatever comes in touch with, no matter how good. Accept the lords dealing, he says ‘vengeance is mine’.
Immoral
Mature mind stops allowing the devil to diminish the power of the blood. If you are living in sin, bring under the blood, bring it to light. He forgives completely- let go of shame and guilt.
Distressful
Mature mind resists the control of the traumatic. Past events.
Boastful (Victories that make us boastful)

Mature mind rejects allowing our resume to be our downfall. The only one we should cheer for is Jesus. Must deny yourself and follow Christ.

Focus:

1.      Sober mind 1 Pet 4:7-life is not all about enjoying. Used to think like a child...now you are grown. All things are permissible, not everything is beneficial. 1 Pet 4:7- “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.”

2.      Set mind -Mature Christian, it's not about you, there is an upward call. God gets to choose. Col 3:1- “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”

When you can’t forget, you can’t focus, let it go and focus on what God has for you.

pondering true love

I write a lot when I’m down, but today I thought I would write when I’m up. I recently messed up big time. Something that I had done followed me and was attacking my inner peace. Even after writing the previous post about accepting freedom and leaving guilt behind, I was feeling pretty down. But I prayed consistently putting all my worries, anger….laying them all out to God because I know he is the only one who can give peace. 

I am a witness that God is faithful and his grace is sufficient for whatever step of life we are in. I am just beginning to peel the layers of understanding how truly loved I am. God cannot do any more for me than what is already done. He paid the ultimate sacrifice. God could not love me any more than he does right now. He doesn’t love me less when I’m straying, and he doesn’t love me more when I’m being “good”. 

When we meditate on his word, he reveals himself to us. I think it is because we are still and waiting upon him. I recently joined this inductive Bible study. Even though I just met these fellow believers, whenever we study the word of God and dig deeper not only I’m I encouraged, I have realized how “sweet” the Word of God is for lack of a better word. The book of John showing Jesus’ life just leaves me speechless at how amazingly cool Jesus was. But above all, full of grace, wisdom, holiness and really focused on fulfilling his mission on earth based on God’s love for us. 

God is love. Accept that, ponder on it, apply it.

Ephesians 3:16-19

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Transition: spiritual freedom

The spiritual transition has been hard to write on and I have had to stop, contemplate  and start again. In the last couple of years I have been ‘feeling’  that something wasn’t right. The comfort of life just wasn’t so appealing anymore even when ‘all things’ were going right. Roughly five years ago I was in a tight spot, my life was a mess, I was starting my life over and I had no one to hang onto but Jesus. I remember crying out to him and making promises and thinking how much I wanted to be obedient to him. God restored me, he restored my hope and vision for a bright future. Well apparently human beings suffer from great amnesia when it comes to what God has done for us and I’m no exception. Life got comfortable. The more comfortable I got, the less reliant on God I became.  Peace out God.

Prayers and bible reading more or less happened in church and when I felt guilty at home-which wasn’t that often. I was a good person, obeying most of the laws. If I had been reading my bible, I would know that Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for keeping the laws and not understanding truth. There is nothing wrong with being comfortable, but as Christians, stagnation can signal a much deeper problem.

True relationship with Jesus calls us to mature and keep growing, abounding in love, active in our faith, being filled with the spirit (Phillipians 1:9, Philemon1:6, Col 1:9 etc). 

I wasn’t doing much growing. Slowly my spiritual cistern was draining and I was struggling to keep up with everything.  People in church seem almost too perfect with no (spiritual) problems and certainly from the outside it didn’t seem like I should have any issues. Just like a car in neutral gear, I trudged along. My friend wikipedia states that the neutral gear "disengages all gear trains within the transmission, effectively disconnecting the transmission from the driven roadwheels, so the vehicle is able to move freely under its own weight and gain momentum without the motive force from the engine." Wow, that perfectly describes me in this situation, disengaging from my very source of strength and allowing my own strength to move me. No wonder I haven't been getting far! It seemed to work perfectly for a while, but what good is it if a car is disengaged from the engine? 

I seriously started(and continue) seeking God and I figured that a weekly prayer meeting might be the start. It’s amazing that when we seek God and open ourselves up to him, he hears us.  Jeremiah 29:12 says “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you”,  and continues in Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” God has been showing me things, things in me that I need to root out, showing me that I need to be in his presence daily if I’m to win this spiritual battle. To surrender.(yikes).

 Surrendering is the hardest thing to do for this independent minded-woman.

I started this post a week ago and while contemplating my thoughts, the pastor spoke about the freedom we should experience when we come to Christ. The Christian walk should be the most burden-free, since Jesus already paid for our shame and guilt and purchased our freedom.  When I come to Jesus, I can be assured that all my ugliness is lifted.

This is such a relief, because I have been examining myself and have been so distraught at my humanness, my imperfections; being angry, judging others, not doing for others, impatience, bitterness, conduct that I know would shame Jesus for the PRICE he paid for me.  I have questioned myself, my faith, my life-everything. Even with this knowledge, I have not kept the discipline and have done things I do not want to do; in short, I’m continually frustrated by myself. Sigh. How could I ever overcome ME and be the godly woman I desire and fulfill God’s will for my life?

We can all relate to this type of brokenness , we cannot relate to perfection that is sometimes expected of believers. It is humbling to know that God used people who were not perfect to fulfill his promises. Noah, Moses, David, Apostle Paul just to name a few did horrendous things BUT most importantly, they surrendered their lives to God’s grace.  I can attest that sin is strong and temptations are plenty, BUT our God has always been and continues to be greater.   I heard a preacher on radio state that as Christians we never graduate to the point where we are above grace. How true! We need God’s grace continuously if we are to abide in this freedom.

I don’t have to walk around feeling guilty and burdened.  I need to seek him and the accept the grace he offers and grow in my experience of him so that I don't take this grace lightly.  I’m committed to be in this journey of studying and understanding the word of God, waiting in expectancy as God shows me “great and unsearchable things I do not know”.

John 8:32: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”