This is so, so exciting!
Jesus is my life. He is alive. He is taking care of me every day of the week, every week of the year.
It's not about controlling my flesh anymore. The flesh is not me.
I can't believe it has taken me this long to understand that Jesus is my life.
I do not have to correct my "feelings" or thoughts.
They are not me.
This is not a life of trying to be good, trying to be bad, trying to be anything.
This is Jesus, my life!
Wow!
For the longest time, I wrote about this
Whenever I had fears, worries, hurts, I kept thinking that I had to do something about them. I would focus on ignoring bad thoughts and feelings, but then I would get focused on "What do I do now?"
Today, Oh Happy Day, Today!
Thank God for Pastor Joseph Prince!
Thank you, Jesus, for Pastors who have the resolute courage to announce who we are in Christ Jesus!
Check out these revelations, right from God's Word:
"Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 9Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. 10For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 11Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6: 8-11)
We are dead to sin.
It's not who we are. There is still flesh, but it is not us.
I have received Himself, I have received His Life.
I am part of Jesus!
"For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Ephesians 5:29-30)
This is no joke. This is not a game, this is not a mind-bending trick.
I am in Christ, and Christ is in me. We are inseparable.
I am part of His body. This part helps to explain:
"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4:17)
The thing that he has really caused all of this to come to such wonderful fruition is that I was so busy looking at my thoughts, my feelings.
I kept thinking that those feelings of fear, angry, resentment, lust, etc. -- those were "my feelings" that I had to do something about.
Today, Oh Happy Day! I realize now what has been preached to me all this time.
Of course I can declare "Don't be bullied by your body." We have a body, but the body is not who we are in full. I am a spirit, I possess a soul, and I live in a body, a body which will one day be fully redeemed. AMEN!
Why has it taken me so long to get this?
Because I kept trying to be the righteousness of God in Christ, when I already was the righteousness of God in Christ.
Paul writes this powerful revelation clearly in the past tense:
"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
He--God the Father--made (past tense) Jesus sin for us -- that we might be made (not "become", not "will become" but past tense "be made"--the righteousness of God in Christ.
I am not trying to be righteous, and when I declare that I have been made the righteousness of God in Christ, I am declaring a fact. I am renewing my mind to the truth of God's Word (Romans 12:1-2).
As long as we refuse to reckon ourselves dead to sin, as long as we continue to believe that the sin in our flesh is still something that we have to deal with, then we are declaring that Jesus somehow did not complete a perfect work at the Cross.
But that is simply not true!
Now, what was happening in my life, and what happens in the lives of many Christians, that they end up in the Romans 7 experience?
They keep trying to fix their flesh, not reckoning themselves dead to sin. They still try to keep the law, thinking that the Ten Commandments are a standard to live by, when in fact they are a standard which no one can keep, showing us our dead-in-trespasses state, and thus our need for the Savior!
"Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3:20)
and
"Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." (Galatians 2:16)
Paul could not have been clearly:
"23But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 24Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Galatians 3:23-25)
Jesus is our Life, and it is a life of walking in the Spirit, not the Flesh:
"3For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:3-4)
and also
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16)
So, when there are feelings of wrath, rage, lust (works of the flesh), we are to reckon ourselves dead to those sins (Romans 6:11), and to the sin in our flesh.
It's not something we have to do anything about it!
HALLELUJAH!
