The Spiritual Side of an Artesian Well -- Part 2

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

Yesterday I blogged on the workings of an artesian well.  Today, let's look at the amazing application we can take from it, and by it, discover the exciting experience we will have when we surrender our whole lives to God!

"Now here is where it gets fun!  Looking at the spiritual application that we can glean from the artesian well, we can clearly see the unmistakeable similarities between it and our surrender.  Let these points of comparison minister to you as you see the perfection of God's picture of the power of your surrender to Him.

1. The Holy Spirit indwells us at the time of our salvation.  He rains down on us from Heaven and comes into our very hearts, His Tabernacle.  He took the path of least resistance, filling up the holes of our sin-ravaged lives, as He made His way down deep inside of our souls.
2. Once inside of us, our fleshly, sinful pride traps  Him, so that He resides deep within us, waiting to be released by our full surrender to His authority and control.  We know His power is there inside of us, but we don't often see it exploding forth in our lives, and neither does anyone else.  He remains hidden, and our pride keeps us from surrendering fully to His Lordship.
3. When we decide to bring in the heavy equipment of repentance and surrender, a deep boring  will take place within our hearts.  This repentance and surrender will break through what has been our impermeable sin and pride.  Once our repentance and brokenness go deep enough, the Holy Spirit is released  in us, and out of us, like a powerful fountain.  He will shoot upward to the Father, glorifying Him and granting us power and victory over our sin.  Then others will also experience the power of our surrender as we begin to walk under the influence of the Spirit instead of our flesh and sin nature.  They will see the 'new and greatly improved' us!

It is the rain in the diagram that is the Holy Spirit.  In the Word, the Spirit is often spoken of as water of various kinds.  The porous rock is the sin in our lives.  It is all the holes in our sinful hearts that are obvious as we came to know the Lord.  But then, as is often the case, the Holy Spirit becomes trapped inside of us by the impermeable rock of our fleshly pride and daily sin.  The Holy Spirit is now rendered powerless and useless [just like the trapped rain water in the artesian well]  because we refuse to allow Him to have full control of our lives.  Do you see how our brokenness over sin, and the repentance and surrender that follows, is the drill that is necessary for the Spirit to come forth from us in power?  Without our repentance and surrender to the Spirit, He lies trapped inside of us with nowhere to go.  He is the power inside of us that we have been given to be all that God intended for us to be.  When He is not allowed to explode out from us by our surrender, we live powerless lives that are without victory over sin.  We live in the flesh instead of in the Spirit.  In this state, we will surely die and stand before the Lord with regrets for not having become the person God desired and empowered us to be.  And we will have little, if any impact, on a lost and dying world.

Awesome, isn't it?   You have been equipped to walk in the power of the Spirit through your acts of being broken and repentant of your sin, and surrendered completely to God.  These are the drills God uses to release the trapped Spirit from within you! 

Can you now share this principle with others who might need to know how to set the Spirit inside of them free?  What a great visual to use with those who ask you what has happened to you, and how it is that you have changed.  You can now witness to them that it is the power of the Spirit in you, that has been released out of you by your surrender to the perfect will of God, that they are witnessing in you!"

Now, that is a testimony!

Who Controls You?

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

This morning I want to teach you a practical principle.  Let me begin with a question.  Is Jesus the LORD of your life?  To know Jesus as your Lord is to know that you are not in control of anything--He is.  And in order for Him to be in full control of you, you must live in a perpetual state of surrender. Moving from knowing Jesus as your Savior to knowing Him as both Savior and Lord requires a shift in your mindset.  You must begin to consider, over and over, that you are no longer in charge of your life; He is in control of it...every moment and aspect  of your today and everyday!

"Jesus will never be the Lord  of the lost in this world because they have yet to receive Him as their Savior.  We believers tend to accept and know Him readily as our Savior, yet we struggle to allow Him to be Lord.  Quite often the only real difference between the lost and the saved is that we believe that Jesus died to save us.  Most of us do not know Him as Lord  any more than the world does.  We only seem to know that He is supposed to be our Lord.  In actuality, for Him to be Lord, we have to live life surrendered to Him.  That will require us to crucify our desire to be in control of everything in our lives."

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.  (Romans 12: 1-2)

"By looking at the Greek definitions of a couple of phrases (one today and one in tomorrow's blog) from Romans 12:1-2, we see a critical step in the walk of every believer.  The true rendering of the phrase 'present yourselves' is this:  a presenting and a yielding of your whole self.  Now let me ask you [another] important question.  Were you fully surrendered at the time of your salvation?  If you are like me, the answer is a resounding 'no!'  Jesus did not become the Lord  of everything in my life the moment I was saved.  He was both capable of and available to be that, but on the day that I was saved, I only surrendered to Him as my Savior.  I had no understanding of what it meant to know Jesus as my Lord,  my Master, as the one in full control of me."

Is that your testimony as well?  Then we must find motivation in our spiritual journey to discover the place where Jesus is Lord of us. That motivation can only be found and realized as we begin to truly know that Jesus is to be in full control of us, and respond to that by fully surrendering to Him.

Standing Out Or Blending In?

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

"Just like Abraham was asked to sacrifice his own flesh and blood, Isaac his only son, we have an altar of death that we must face as well.  And the sacrifice we must bring to the altar is our flesh.  These two verses describe it well.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship. (Romans 12:1)

God is asking for our crucified flesh when He urges us to be living sacrifices.  You might be asking what your flesh actually is.  What is God really asking for?  Your flesh is made up of the body , the mind , our intent,  and our thoughts.  Our flesh is anything that stands in opposition to what God says.  And this is what God asks of us:  to put to death anything that is unacceptable to Him.  This crucifixion of our flesh unto death, given up as a sacrifice of our living being, is what God defines as worship.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

This a a huge problem with Christians today.  We don't look any different, in most cases, than those who are not believers.  The world can barely tell the difference, if at all.  We do not stand out; we blend in.  We are conformed to the world when we watch the same television shows and movies that the world watches.  We are conformed to the world when our CD's, iPods, and radios pump the same kind of music into our minds and hearts that the world listens to.  We dress like the world. talk like the world, and think like the world.  We take firm hold o the reins of our lives every morning when we wake up, and we don't lay them down until we fall into bed at night.  We continue doing what we know is wrong to do.  We want the same things that the godless want--more money, bigger homes, all the newest toys--security in all the wrong things.  We often are independent, self-sufficient, multi-taskers who have no need for a God who wants to take away our control."

In order for God to have His rightful title of Lord of our lives, we must crucify our flesh.  We will make the choice to blend in or stand out.  So which one are you?  Are you a chameleon who changes with every situation, always protecting himself by blending in?  Or are one who, moment by moment, is courageously crucifying your fleshly and worldly drives in order to be the stand out Christian God desires you to be?

We Are Withering Grass

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(Excerpted from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

"Generally, the word 'surrender' means to give up something completely, after striving to maintain possession of it.  Are you making the spiritual connection?  Our flesh keeps trying to hang onto the control of our lives, and that control can be seen every time that we fall prey to temptation.  The sin that follows the temptation is a clear indication that we are controlled in that area by our flesh.  Isaiah spoke about our flesh, spelling out the truth about it:

All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers and the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.  The grass wither, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.  (Isaiah 40: 6b-8)

Isaiah compares people who are walking in the flesh with grass and flowers.  According to the verses, our flesh is in a constant state of decline!  Not only are we physically withering and fading year by year, but our sinful flesh which desires to be in control of our whole lives, is getting worse and worse.  Our flesh, more and more, wants to be in control and make all the decisions based on what will both please and feed it.  When we walk in the flesh and under its control, a spiritual type of death begins to take place in us.  While we might be spiritually growing and our walk with God improving, our flesh is declining.  Sinful, human flesh can never be improved upon.  It has no ability to improve since it is in a constantly declining and withering.  The older you get, the more clearly you will see this truth in action."

Through the years my spiritual heart has grown stronger.  But at the same time I have discovered my sins have become more and more about my pride issues and poor attitudes.  This is my flesh.  I am growing spiritually, but my natural, ungodly, self-focused desires have become far stronger than they were 30 years ago.  My spirit is improving, but my flesh is getting worse.

While your spirit can be improved upon, your flesh can not.   By nature, it will become worse and worse, so stop trying to improve it in your own power.  Why not surrender your flesh to the Spirit and walk with Him?  Let Him be in control of your actions and responses.  Then you will begin to see great improvement in your spiritual life!