Facts And Truth

The fact is that you are weak and have all these things to contend with in the flesh. The truth is that you are a child of God, a prince, a priest, and an overcomer. You can believe the facts or the truth in Christ. You are a new creation in Christ. You have been bought with His blood. You are chosen and ordained to be a priest in the household of God. God has appointed you and called you according to His purpose in Christ Jesus. This is what changed the disciples from fishermen to fishers of men. They became world movers through their changed vision of themselves based on the truth revealed to them through Christ. The Holy Spirit came and endowed them with power so that they could now move mountains of fear and sickness and turn the world upside down.

Word

Here is the basis for the word of God in transforming lives so that when facts appear to be true, the truth comes in and reverses it. Jesus said He is the truth and in Him, the facts of your life are changed. In Him, all things are possible for He is the truth. All who call on Him will be saved. Today live in the light of the truth rather than the facts and see how sickness and disease will flee in His Name. His truth transforms and does not just change things. He turned water into wine when He spoke it into existence. The facts were changed by the truth of His word. So also lives can be transformed by His abiding word.

The transformation of hearts is the key to deliverance. So many are caught up in knowing the facts and get lost in it. Truth evades them for they have reasoned it out through their store of facts. When the heart is changed what appeared to be truth changes. This is what changes lives. Jesus came to transform our hearts, not our heads. Facts are to do with our head knowledge. This never leads to eternal life. Come and be transformed today by His living word and live abundantly.

What Spirit Is Driving You?

Most of us are unaware of the Spirit world because we mainly operate from our soul. Our soul is programmed from birth to think like the world. We receive some religious instructions from our parents and school but they are peripheral to our main mode of operation. Our thoughts and feelings, therefore, drive our daily operations. Through the Fall we have fallen from the grace of God and so have learnt to rely on our own strength. Circumstances and experiences lead us to be self-reliant. We are mainly thinking of survival in a dog-eat-dog world. We survive by taking from others and stepping on them to promote our own self-esteem. This works for some time till we become victims of our own greedy desires.

Spirits

We are mostly unaware of the spirit world which is hidden from us through camouflage and deceit. However, those who become aware of this dimension get sucked into it and become prisoners of it. Evil spirits are behind a lot of diseases and disorders we see in daily life. We too are driven by spirits but reason them away due to human weakness or relegate it to the psychological domain. Spirits operate in darkness and therefore hide behind a facade of good looks and social etiquette. This works for some time and we can fool most people sometimes but not all the time. The facade drops during a crisis and the real you is revealed.

Solution

A good question to ask is, what spirit is driving me? Is it a spirit of pride, jealousy, lust, power etc? Identifying the spirit behind your behaviors will enable you to address them directly. Jesus always identified the spirit behind the words. He addressed them directly and cast them out and set the captive free. We need to do the same. We need to first repent of our sinful behaviors and then cast the demon driving us, out of us, in Jesus Name. Jesus gave us authority to do so and only His Name is able to do so. No other gods can do this because they are all controlled by the god of this world, Satan. Let us today discern and be set free in Jesus Name.

Thinking And Living As A Community

God rescues those who are abandoned by the world. The world judges by externals while God looks at the heart. The world is deceived by the illusion of the real. Discern and do not judge by your image of what you see. What you see is an illusion of the real. Your brain interprets what it sees and hears. It is subjective in its interpretation. Language is deficient in expressing what it really sees and perceives. This is why knowledge is partial and limited by the perception of the subject. God knows everything about everything. He sees as a whole while you see in parts. Your brain is limited in its capacity to see as a whole. Your own biases limit your vision of the whole. This is why many counselors help to make up for this deficiency. 

Community

Community is the only way to see the whole. One brain cannot do everything. Just as there are different parts to the body and each part has a purpose to fulfill, so also see yourself as a part, not the whole. Selfishness has robbed the community of its purpose. Jesus came to build His Kingdom and he started with his disciples. Yet one can see the tussle that went on in that small group to maintain unity. Each one had his own way of thinking and doing things. When you move from your point of view to that of the community, then your focus changes. 

Solution

Building a community is essential to sustainability. Without community, there is no hope of maintaining peace. True community builds trust and confidence and longevity. The church is a community of believers. Yet what we see is a Church invaded by the values of the world. The church needs to move to real community living to impact the world. This is only possible as we live united in the Holy Spirit and surrender our own will.

What Does It Mean To Die To Self?

Jesus said, "If any man desires to follow Me, let him give up his own way, take up his cross, and follow Me".Matt 16:24. This is a hard saying but there is no other way to follow Jesus. To deny oneself is to die to self. There is no resurrection but through death. Jesus had to die to rise in resurrection power. So also we must daily die to self to experience His resurrection power. We are to offer up ourselves as a living sacrifice. This means that we can get off the altar of sacrifice. A dead sacrifice is dead but a living sacrifice has life in it. We have to walk like a dead man. We are dead to self, the world, and the devil and alive to God.

Fire

The burning bush that Moses saw is a symbol of the fire that will engulf us as we die to ourselves. This fire burns up everything that is of self and the fire produces resurrection power. Without His resurrection power, all we do is operate in our own strength. We can imitate a lot of things of the Spirit in the flesh. This is what we see in most churches. We operate from our soul man and little from the spirit man. We have counterfeited what is of the Spirit. This is why Jesus had a severe word for the seven churches in the book of Revelation. We could easily apply those messages to those churches in our present day. We need to repent and turn from our wicked ways.

Self

Dying to self is to die to our own selfish thoughts, feelings, and will. These thoughts must be replaced by God's thoughts or words. In this way, we get transformed into the likeness of Jesus. The Holy Spirit was sent for this very purpose. Jesus came to baptize us in the Holy Spirit and fire. Few of us desire to be baptized in the fire. There is no other way to be purified and to be the holy temple of God. The fire purifies and empowers. Let us today offer ourselves up as a living sacrifice and be changed for the glory of God.