Taking A Look Back

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 11)

Taking a look back to where we have been in our journey from the Tabernacle Door into the Holy of Holies will always be profitable.  Seeing where you have been, and knowing where your are heading, is the key to living victoriously in the present!

"If we have been making spiritual adjustments during the previous chapters, then we are well into the journey of our lifetime.  This journey has taken us through Moses' Tabernacle, learning how it relates to our journey toward Christ-likeness and how to appropriate its applicable truths to our spiritual lives.  The Tabernacle, being likened to our hearts, the very place where God now resides, was a tool that we used, not only for discovering where we currently stand on this journey to whole-heartedness on this earth, but also for plotting the journey to our Heavenly home.

But the Tabernacle left us with some questions.  We discovered that we were at crossroads, needing to make a decision as to how we would live our lives.  Knowing where we are at [in the journey] leads us on to a choice as to which direction we will now travel.  The crossroads was an opportunity for us to clearly understand that we must consider our ways so that we might choose the correct spiritual paths for the rest of our lives.  But that chapter left us with yet another question--just how doe we continually choose the right path?

That question forced us to take a better look at our hearts, the Tabernacle of God.  If we were to consider our ways, it would be critical that we take a magnifying glass to what our 'ways' have actually been.  By filling in the cracked and damaged Heart Diagram with those things that keep us separated from intimacy with God, we soon discovered that our 'ways' have been bound up in gods, the sins that we bow down to and worship.  I doubt that your filled-in heart was a pretty picture.  I know that mine horrified me as I realized, with great clarity, just how sinful a place my heart was.  It saddened me, as I am sure yours did you, to see the gods that replaced Jesus on the throne of my heart.

But it was not going to be enough to just identify what was keeping us out of the Holy of Holies.  Something had to be done within our sinful hearts.  God definitely needed to be placed in the center of our hearts, replacing the sin and pridefulness, or we would surely fail in the journey.  Our attempts without God will always end up just exactly like our feeble attempts at New Year's resolutions!  As we returned to the Word, we discovered that God had a plan for us to dispossess the gods of our hearts by taking full vengeance on them.  They had to be dethroned!  It was the answer to yet another unspoken question.

What makes taking full vengeance on our sins and gods so difficult is that we are prone to disobey the commands of God, even when they are clearly spelled out for us.  We learned that there are spiritual consequences for not fully following all that God has commanded us to do.  The only way to be obedient is to understand and practice the discipline of surrender.  We learned that in surrendering to God, the power of the Holy Spirit is released from us, and that He is able to overcome sin and bring victory to our lives through that surrender.  This was what we learned from the Artesian Well.  Our life goal should be to live our lives surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ!"

These 3 Diagrams, of the Tabernacle's spiritual journey, of a sin-filled Heart, and of the power and victory we can experience in the Artesian Well's release of the Spirit by surrender, are to be used for your on-going spiritual growth.  God is calling you to maturity in Christ!

Pausing To Contemplate

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

At the end of each chapter of my book, there are 5 questions to answer, each one designed to help you look within, come up with the real answers, and hopefully move you closer to God as you contemplate your spiritual journey.  So, before we move on to quotes in this blog from Chapter 10, I want to give you this opportunity to pause and look within your heart.  This time of introspection will hopefully help you discover some truths about yourself that you might not have thought of otherwise.  Here are your 5  questions.   (Okay 8, in this case;  sometimes certain questions beg another!)


"PERSONAL INTROSPECTION

1. When you allow your flesh to have control and make the decisions in your life, who is truly the god of your life?
2. By what actions can God and all you come in contact with see that you are walking on the Highway to Holiness?  How do your answers line up with 2 Chronicles 7: 14 and Romans 12: 1-2?
3. How does surrender differ from making New Year's resolutions?  Who is in control when you surrender, and when you resolve to change?
4. What part of the Tabernacle symbolizes the crucifixion of our flesh, our greatest surrender?  How close are you to the Holy of Holies when you are surrendering your flesh?
5. In which areas of your heart is your surrender like a yo-yo -- you throw out the sin, but it seems to keep coming back?  Consider whether or not you have truly surrendered it."

What did your answers to the questions reveal to you?  By looking within you are able to process what you have been learning.  Never leave this step of your growth to chance.  Read the questions, ask yourself for the real answer, consider what your answers mean, and then determine what course corrections God might be asking you to make.  It is all a part of your spiritual healing.

Choose Your Path: Complacency or Vengeance

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"Think back now to the Tabernacle we studied a few chapters back.  Do you remember the courts and their purposes?  If you have been hanging around in the Outer Court, comfortable enough in your salvation and baptism, yet oblivious to the victory over sin that God is calling you to, it is time for you to take a step into the Inner Court of obedience.  Are you already in the Inner court, enjoying the Holy Spirit's company and the Word of God, but still living in cyclical sin?  Then it's time for you to put shoe leather on the soles of your spiritual walking shoes!  It's time to take some serious vengeance on your sin!  Are you willing now for your heart to be laid bare before you and the Lord, so that the idols and sin can be removed?  If you are not willing, you will not be able to grow any closer to God than you currently are.  Are you satisfied with that, and satisfied with living your 'small g' god-driven life?

God sent Israel to war!  This will be no less a battle for us, and it will likely last for our entire life.  Will God find you obedient to this call, or will you take the easiest, most flesh-pleasing way out?  The first will lead yo to victory and intimacy with God; the other will eventually defeat you and keep you from drawing near to God.  The choice, ultimately, is yours.  Choose wisely.  Choose to take full vengeance on your sin.  The alternative is only  foolishness, and ultimately it reveals your complacency.  Consider these wise words that speak of this kind of complacency in your Christian walk.

Complacency is a blight that saps energy, dulls attitudes, and cases a drain on the brain.  The first symptom is satisfaction with things as they are.  The second is rejection of thins as the might be.  'Good enough' becomes today's watchword and tomorrow's standard.  Complacency makes people fear the unknown, mistrust the untried, and abhor the new.  Like water, complacent people follow the easiest course--downhill.   They draw false strength from looking back."

What path have you chosen?  Do you need to change your course?

Your spiritual journey is made up of countless choices between your flesh and the Spirit who dwells inside of you. The valley of decision is often a bloody battlefield. But the Spirit CAN win each battle if you are surrendered to Him.

(Quoted from Chapter 7, "Taking Full Vengeance" from Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory by Cheryl Gnagey)

THE RESURRECTED LIFE -- Day 35

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Day 35:  Peter  (Matthew 26: 31-35, 69-75)

Peter’s spiritual journey proved to be long and difficult—painful, to be exact.  His pride had gotten the better of him too many times to count.  But it hadn’t always been like that.  When he met Jesus on a deep sea fishing trip, Peter fell down at Jesus’ feet, proclaiming his sinful unworthiness.  That day he began his journey with Christ.

From the beginning there seemed to be favor on his life.  It was Peter who was called to walk on the water to Jesus.  It was Peter who first declared that Jesus was the Christ.  Christ said of his bold statement, “Upon this rock I will build My church.”  He was one of three who saw Jesus transfigured and was allowed to see Moses and Elijah as well.

Despite these incredible events, Peter seemed to keep trusting in himself.  He sank in the waves.  He thought it would be a great idea to build tents for Jesus and Moses and Elijah, pridefully hanging on to the fact that he had been a part of that powerful moment.  On that day, God spoke aloud and said, “Listen to My Son!”  But listening wasn’t Peter’s strong suit, either.  He can be found on the pages of the Bible usually speaking with great devotion, but little follow through.  “I will never fall away.  I will never deny You,” are the words that surely played over and over in his head along with his three denials of Christ just before His trial.  Had Jesus not said, “You will deny me three times”?

Peter’s pride had caused him to rely more on himself than to trust in Jesus and His word, and he paid a bitter price for it.  I wonder if anyone has wept harder over their sins than Peter.  On the other hand, it’s possible that no one understands forgiveness to the same degree as Peter.  After the failure of falling to pride, Peter received his forgiveness and went on to preach salvation with a boldness that caused thousands to be born again.  Thus, the early church was born, and he learned to tenderly care for and feed God’s sheep.  In the two letters of Peter that have been preserved in the Bible, he feeds us today, as well.

What sins cause you to deny Jesus?  How do you trust more in yourself than in Jesus and His Word?  What have been the results of such a walk?  Is repentance your next step, or will you deny that it needs to be?

40 Days of the Resurrected Life

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This is a season of preparation for Resurrection Sunday.  Many people celebrate by offering to remove something from their life for 40 days.  I offer you something quite different--a chance to see, in your life, a true spiritual resurrection.  By looking at the lives of 40 people who experienced this kind of radical change, I pray you too may be inspired to look within your own heart, to see the sin that dwells there, and to lay it down before the Resurrected Christ, with no intention of returning to it when the season of preparation is over.  This is true sacrifice and offering to God.  By taking such action, you will see that your life has been resurrected from sin and death!

Beginning tomorrow, February 29, you will find a daily devotional on this site that is designed to take you on such a journey.   If you would like to be prepared for Holy Week and the day we celebrate our Lord and Savior's Resurrection, this daily devotional will help you come to His cross in purity and holiness as you surrender yourself to Him day by day.

This devotional is not intended to be for your reading enjoyment.  On the contrary, it has been written so that you will be introspective.  It is designed so that you can ask yourself questions that will, hopefully, lead you to a true assessment of yourself and to a calling of God to be who He wants you to be.  You can also ask yourself which person in each devotional you most relate to or resemble.  And be prepared--sometimes you won’t like what you discover about yourself.  That’s alright…keep looking at your heart and asking the deeper questions!

Prayerfully read each Bible passage before reading the devotional, looking at the cross references as well.  They will add further insight to the daily story.  Your heart is of extreme importance to Jesus.  During these 40 days, be faithful to do what is necessary in order to bring a changed heart to the Resurrected Jesus.  Roll the stone away from your heart, and take a walk around in there!  Be open to discovering the things in you that are displeasing to God. When you discover something, tell God about it and ask Him to transform you by the reading of the Word, by prayer and by the Spirit.  Then begin to spend more time with Him, so that He can transform you.  It is through your relationship with Him that He will change you.

No matter how difficult, rejoice in the journey.   He has risen so that you may have a resurrected heart!  Hallelujah! 

And let me know that you are following this devotional by your comments and "likes."  That would be a delight to my soul! 

Little By Little

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Israel would soon enter the Promised Land to conquer the people there. But God would not simply and swiftly destroy them. Instead, He told His chosen that it would happen "little by little," knowing that removing all of their enemies would leave them vulnerable. God wants permission to come into our hearts and destroy every one of His enemies, but it will be a process, little by little, until all are destroyed.

One of the hardest things for me in my spiritual journey is that the weeding out of the sinful overgrowth in my heart is taking a long time.  I want the flower bed to be free of weeds right now!  I have figured out that I cannot do the transforming; only the Spirit of God in me can.  But that means I have little say in when my transformation regarding a particular sin will be complete.  As a matter of fact, my only part in that is to surrender to His control, and obey when I hear His voice directing my pathway.

God, in His infinite wisdom, also knows that if I am to grow spiritually, that removing everything now would rob me of the ability to put down deep roots as I grow that will help me withstand the next temptation to fall to that sin.  Quick removal of all my sin would leave me quite vulnerable to the temptation.  When Moses was speaking to Israel about the "little by little" removal of the Canaanites from the land, he warned them that quick destruction of the people in the entire land would cause them to fall prey to the "wild beasts that will grow too numerous" for them.  The same principle is true for us!

God is utterly faithful, though.  By His Spirit His purpose and plan is to drive out every evil thing in us, until they are "utterly destroyed."  Little by little, He will do this as He watches us grow in our trust and faith in Him, and in our patience as well!