Why Are You Trying to Stop Sinning?

So, a question for all those who are working hard at changing themselves to be more like Jesus or grow in sanctification or whatever else you call it... You may believe in varying methods of accountability or starving the source of sin, avoiding temptations or memorizing Scripture, maybe you believe that prayer is a big part of becoming free of some besetting sin you're struggling with. Perhaps fasting will help or whatever. My question is, what's the point? If you overcome whatever sin or sins you're working on, what will that accomplish? I'm very serious here, I want to know why you're doing it. Is it to please God? To be closer to him? To be holier or more righteous? So your testimony will be stronger? Some other reason I haven't mentioned? I really am interested in knowing...so please leave me a comment (anonymously is fine with me).

A Fair Fight Between Sin and Grace

Just read this excellent post over at Truth on the Way by Jon Sidnell, an up and coming grace preacher in the UK. So head over and read "A Fair Fight Between Sin and Grace"! You will be glad you did.

Legalism in Sanctification

One of the most frustrating things to deal with is people who understand that justification is by faith through grace and therefore believe there is no possible way that they are legalistic though they believe that they must follow laws in order to be sanctified. It's frustrating because the book of Galatians was clearly written specifically to deal with those who began in the Spirit by faith but were trying to 'be perfected' (hello, sanctification!) in the flesh. 'In the flesh' is clearly connected to 'under law' if you read on in chapter 3. So I was happy to find that Steve McVey addresses this very thing briefly in one of the 101 lies videos, Christian lies #30 "legalism is salvation by works".



If you are one of those who believe that salvation is from faith to works, I hope you are able to re-read Galatians keeping in mind that their problem was not beginning right but not continuing in faith. Don't worry! I'm not saying grace is a licence to sin! True sanctification will only happen if you believe God enough to totally abandon any hope in your obedience to the law and live by his Spirit. Do you think he will lead you into sin???????????

The Serpent in the Church

I know, I know, same old stuff! I just am having a hard time understanding why believers want to cling to the Law. Why is it we have such a difficult time throwing ourselves at the mercy of Jesus? Why do we still think that we are somehow lacking, that we have not really been created in God's image, that we need to become like God by our own effort?

Adam and Eve were perfect, had perfect standing before God and perfect fellowship with God. They were created in God's own image!!! And yet they fell for the lie when the serpent came to them saying "don't you want to be like God?", they decided that God's word pronouncing them to be in his image was not enough and they decided that having the knowledge of good and evil ( MORAL LAW) would be able to make them more godly.

And so sin entered Adam's race through the seemingly good desire to be more godly
and our perfect standing and perfect fellowship with God was broken. God provided temporary forgiveness through the shedding of the blood of animals so that man could still have some semblance of relationship with his Creator. But the reason the blood of animals had any power was because of the blood of Jesus which would be shed at the right moment in history, once for all. God had a plan to completely destroy the power of Satan, and that plan was to forge a new covenant with man that was completely unbreakable!

This covenant was ratified by God the father and God the Son, Jesus, who became human in order to break the curse of sin and the law (which is the power of sin, not the other way around 1 Cor. 15:55-57) BECAUSE JESUS IS THE MEDIATOR OF THIS NEW COVENANT IT CAN NEVER BE BROKEN BY US. We enter into the new covenant simply by agreeing that Jesus may be our representative, by putting our trust in him. This, my friends, is the simple good news that we call the gospel!

So, Scripture is clear! We are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), we are the righteousness of God ( 2 Corinthians 5:20-21. I hope we can all agree that we've been reconciled back to God and our original position in Adam before the fall has not only been restored but it has been restored permanently without any fear of our breaking the covenant this time...once again...because of Jesus...

Now, though Satan can never ever affect our relationship with God the way he did with Adam, he can still tell us lies which, if we choose to believe them, will produce unbelief in God. This unbelief will drastically undermine the level of freedom and power we walk in. In fact, unbelief will lead us to live according to the flesh under law rather than by the Spirit, and it will cause us to sin.

The saddest thing about this is that most of the church seems to be falling for the same lie Adam did! The serpent has slithered his way into the church and he is still expounding the benefits of the Law! After being restored back to our Creator's original design, we are still tempted to believe that we need the knowledge of good and evil, the moral law (the ten commandments!) to perfect us, faith in Jesus is far too simplistic.

I don't believe that the Law was given to reveal the character of God, for one thing, there is no evil in God. And if that were the case, the law would have been given to Adam and Eve in the very beginning. The law was given to reveal the fallen character of man,to uncover sin, to provoke sin, to make sin spring to life(Romans 7:4-6, Romans 7:9). Jesus was given to reveal the character of God!

"And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known." John 1:16-18

Do you really believe this? We could not intimately know God through the law which came through Moses, in fact, any of the Old Testament people who knew God knew God by faith. Though for hundreds of years the Jews worked to obey the law and thereby know God, Scripture tells us that no one saw God until Jesus. The law was not given to reveal God to us, the law actually separates us from God by producing fear in us (Hebrews 12:18-21), it perpetuates death and curse, it can only uncover our sin and it keeps us in bondage as slaves(Gal. 4:1-7).

Jesus came to reveal God to us for the first time (as fallen man) and he came to do battle with sin and the law (which are the weapons that armed the devil against us Col. 2:13-15), to die through the law to the law (Gal. 2:18-20), to cancel the written code that stood against us, to become the end of the law for all who believe (Romans 10:4), because he did not come to condemn the lost but to save them and the law could not save us! That's why Jesus came with truth and grace, not the law!

So next time the serpent comes to you extolling the beauty and wonder of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, why don't you pass...why don't you take the bread and the cup and feast on the love of Jesus? The serpent doesn't belong in the church anymore.

Supernatural Transformation and Holiness--Joseph Prince

This is a great clip of Joseph Prince preaching on holiness and the purpose of the law vs. grace. If you have a couple of minutes it's worth watching, and I'd love to hear what you think of it. I love this quote from it:

"All true transformation is unconscious."

WHAT TO DO IF YOUR HUSBAND IS A LEGALIST

I know, a weird name for a blog post. I'm still mulling over the sanctification debate and will definitely be coming back with my take on it so far soon. But I wanted to write a little something about grace revelation and relationships. If you don't have a legalistic husband, maybe you have a legalistic wife, parent, child, sibling, friend....you get the picture. I've wondered many times "how do I deal with this person?" especially when it seems they are not understanding God's grace. And I've had many conversations with people about how to deal with many other persons in the same predicament.

First, how do you know you're dealing with legalist? Well, there are some signs...
Basically (and I've said this before) if you take a look at Galatians 5 you'll get a list of what the flesh, under law, produces when it works hard.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:18-21

Take a careful look at this list, don't just read quickly over it. I still have some signs of these at times myself, and I can tell you it's connected to trying to be holy myself, by taking my eyes off Christ and looking at law and methods of change. When we were really deep into legalism and completely unaware that we were, our lives and marriage could be pretty easily characterized by sexual immorality , impurity, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,and envy, to name a few!

Conversely, following this list you have the fruits of the Spirit (fruits NOT works!):

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." Galatians 5:22-24

The legalist lacks love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Under law, all these good things were completely ellusive, we felt like God was dangling these delicious fruits in front of us all the time but we could never reach them.

Back to the dilemma, what to do with a legalist... First you have to really get a revelation of grace yourself, an ongoing revelation from the Holy Spirit. Then you need to rely on God to reveal his grace in the same way to your legalist, being open for him to use you in this process. This often look like responding to the legalist's sin with grace and love. As we receive grace, we can't help but let it spill over to those around us.

Really, this is usually a case of log and speck, if you know what I mean. When I find myself most frustrated with my husband's legalism, is when I'm most lacking grace myself. Slowly, sometimes painfully slowly, I'm learning that I can turn to God when I'm disappointed or impatient, or just plain hurt. I can march into the throne room of grace with confidence that I will receive mercy from my Father, I will be loved and he'll help me in exactly the way I need him to. Most of the time, I don't even know what I need, but he always does.

Our habit as women is to look to a man, our husband if we have one, and direct our desires to him as if he were God and able to fulfill and satisfy us. No man is sufficient for us , but God and his grace is! The more we experience God's all sufficient love for us, the more difficult it will be to offend or crush us and we'll be able to love our husbands (or anyone else)with God's supernatural love, the kind of love that softens and changes people, the kind of love that is constant whether you fail or succeed.

Does this mean we should overlook serious problems such as abuse? No, of course not, but as God reveals his heart to us more and more, we may be surprised at how we want to respond to people who are in serious sin.

We stop setting them up for failure by creating ultimatums and consequences, rules and regulations, by putting them under law. We begin to stop making accusations and start believing that there is truly hope and power for transformation , because we begin to believe the gospel! And at every turn the good news comes springing like living water from the depths of our being which is rooted in Christ, the resurrected Redeemer. Our words become life-giving instead of condemning and the power of the grace of God goes out to everyone we meet and sparks hope in them by his Holy Spirit. People who once joyously embraced salvation simply by faith but became enslaved to law again, prick up their hearts and ears and remember the joy of their salvation. They want to turn to God, they want to believe in Jesus again and turn from futile efforts of the flesh that always fall short. Together, we take the leap of all leaps of faith and let go all control over our own eternity and put every ounce of trust in God and his fatherly love that was demonstrated clearly once for all on the cross. And then, THEN, we will begin experience together transformations that are nothing short of miraculous...because with God NOTHING is impossible!

Ryan Rufus Writing Again--On Sanctification!

UPDATE: PLEASE SEE THIS POST: City Church International Hong Kong: Ryan Rufus, New Nature Publications Etc…Grace For Control and Abuse?


For those of you who've been around my blog for any length of time, you're aware that Aaron and I and many of our friends have benefitted immensely from the ministry of City Church International in Hong Kong. We've often listened to the preaching and teaching of Rob and Glenda Rufus, Ryan and Kylie Rufus, and others from their church and various other places from around the world. And you might remember me linking to a free book online at their website by Ryan Rufus called "Do Christians Still Have a Sinful Nature?", a book I still very highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read it already.  

Well, in a recent mp3 from CCI, Ryan tells of a prophetic dream (Regeneration Dec. 30 2007 )he had and one thing that became clear to him was that teaching on grace empowered sanctification was to be a major part of his ministry. I was so excited to hear that in light of some things I've been struggling through myself that I e-mailed him and asked if he'd be interested in writing anything for me to post on my blog. I got more than I hoped for! He's started writing a new book called "Sanctification by Grace" and has forwarded me a rough draft of the first chapter with permission to post as much as I like. So you're all in for a treat! Here's the first part (all emphasis mine):

Chapter 1: The trinity of man.

'I am a spirit, I live in a body and I have a soul.'

Before we talk about sanctification it's important to understand the three part nature of man because sanctification affects all three parts. If we don't understand them then we'll struggle to understand how certain scriptures apply to each part and sanctification will become confusing. You may think it's weird that I've started here, but this is foundational to understanding true sanctification, trust me. I believe this is one of the most important studies a Christian can do. Revelation on this subject will transform your life. So let's look at the trinity of man. (I'm going to take it from a real basic level so forgive me if it insults your intelligence please.)

Every human being is made up of 3 parts:

Spirit, soul and body. (scripture)

All Christians, I'm sure, are aware of their body. But many are unaware of their spirit and soul or at least the difference between them. But the word of God declares that it can divide between the two (Heb 4: 12).

Now there are also 3 realms know to man:

The physical realm, spiritual realm and the mental realm.
We all exist in these realms but how do we have access to them? Well with our bodies we access the physical realm. That happens through our 5 physical senses. Sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. With our spirits we access the spiritual realm. God is Spirit and we have been created in His likeness-spirit beings. Those who worship God must worship in 'spirit' and in truth. And with our soul or our mind we have access to the mental realm. Our mind has to do with our will, our intellect and our thoughts.

See, you are not just the hunk of flesh and bones that everyone else sees. You are much more than that. In fact that is just one part of you. And in fact that is just your earth suit. Even though it's the part that everyone knows you by, it is actually the least part of you! The most accurate and helpful way to look at this is to say:

'I am a spirit, I live in a body and I have a soul'.

You are a spirit, you live in a body and you have a soul!
You are a spirit, you live in a body, but you are not that body. It is your earth suit! If it died, you wouldn't die. The real you, which is your spirit, wouldn't die, it would go on to be with the Lord. (scripture). If you are born again then you will never die! That is your flesh may die, but you, the real you, your spirit, cannot die! It just goes instantly to be with the Lord.

Now how does salvation affect each one of those parts of us?

Salvation happened instantly in your spirit, is happening in your soul/mind and will one day happen in your body. (Scripture)
It has happened, is happening and will happen. It has happened in your spirit which is the most important thing. The fact that it happened in your spirit means that it is happening in your mind now and will happen in your body when we go to be with the Lord. It doesn't have to happen in your body and mind in order for it to happen in your spirit. It happened in your spirit first and because of that it is happening in your body and mind now.

At salvation:

-Salvation was instant in our spirit and made us alive with Christ. That's when we instantly received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm (Eph 1). That's when our spirit was seated in heavenly places with Christ (Eph 2), hidden in Christ (Col 3), became a co-heir with Christ (Eph2). Our spirit was born again (Titus 2). Our spirit became a new creation at the point of salvation (2 Cor 5:17). Our spirits were born again.

-Nothing changed in our mind or our body. We didn't receive a new mind or a new body. It stayed exactly the same. We still have all the same memories in our minds and even the same thinking (accept for the fact that we believe in Jesus as our savior). That's why Romans 12, 2 tells us we need to renew our minds. We also still have all the same urges and appetites in our bodies. That's why Romans 12:1 tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. It's foolish to think that salvation changed the desires of our bodies and/or the thought processes and memories of our minds. It didn't.

Salvation changed the inner man and it's the inner man that needs to take control over the body and the mind and lead it into righteousness! It's the inner man that offers the body as a sacrifice. It's the inner man that subjects the mind to a renewing through the word of God. You can see how your inner man needs to be the one in control, otherwise your body will just naturally want to follow its appetites and your mind will continue to stay worldly and lead you into worldly thoughts and actions.
Now, God did something with your spirit/inner man- he expects you now (by that new spirit/inner man) to do something with your body and your mind.
Romans 12:1, 2

It wasn't your responsibility to do something with your spirit. That's the whole point, we couldn't. It could only be God! It was God's responsibility to do something with your inner man.

Now it's your responsibility to do something with your body and mind- not His! (Yes we surrender to Him and partner with him, but we can't give him control unless we are first in control.) That's why 'we' offer our bodies and 'we' renew our minds.
I want to talk about walking in the spirit and how we do that but first, let's talk about our heavenly eternal position and our earthly current condition:
When we were saved, what parts of us came into our eternal position and what parts of us remained in and become our current condition?

Well our spirit came into instant eternal position in Christ. (Hidden in Christ, anchored in Christ, seated with Christ, united with Christ etc). That can never be reversed or changed. If it could, it's like saying Jesus can be crucified twice which is absolutely impossible. Why? Simply because it's impossible for Jesus to die again.

Our position speaks about our spiritual position. Our spirits are with us currently now in our bodies and yet they are hidden in Christ in heavenly places as well. Try getting your mind around that! (Col 3)

Our body and our mind remained in their same condition which has become our current earthly condition. Our eternal position is not subject to change but our current condition is definitely subject to change.

Our eternal position cannot be influenced by our current condition. But our current condition can be influenced by our eternal position! That's what this whole book is about!!!
To be continued...

Why I Share the Bad Stuff in Public...

My husband asked me if I thought it was a good idea to share things like in my last post, being brutally honest about whatever I'm struggling with on the world wide web. Just thought you all might be interested in why I choose to be as transparent on here as possible. It's really for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I've mentioned before I use my blog as a kind of journal of my life so I (and my family) will be able to look back on what God has done.

Second of all, I think God gets way more glory when people can see the story from start to finish. In other words, if I didn't share the ugly parts of what I'm dealing with, my testimony will not be as amazing to you when I tell you how God has transformed and conformed me to Jesus. Yes, I have faith that the things I'm struggling with now will be a great story of God's grace and power at some point in the future, and even now it proves how faithful he is to sustain, comfort, and pour out compassion on his children. Already my faith has been boosted since I wrote the last post. Perhaps I'll share that little story next, it's a little funny...