Jan 30, 2010

Roll Away Your Stone - Part 3 - The Process

This may very well be the hardest part.  It was tough to realize that we don't know it all, and even tougher to surrender to God's double edged sword, letting His Logos work in our hearts and most importantly in our soul.  But here is the hardest part yet.  That is continuing to abide in God's Logos and to have faith to believe that freedom is truly possible and that God is bringing it to completion in your life.  The last three steps, Know the Truth, Be Free, and Be Free Indeed, are all a part of the process that we must work through.  It is tough to make ourselves persevere and continue to abide through all of them to the end.  Our logos wants to take over and say "Okay, I have believed and I've been abiding.  I still don't see the results, so I think I have done enough.  I'll be fine the way I am."  But if we know the truth and truly believe it, we must continue to fill ourselves with the truth of God's Word. And we must continue to abide in that truth, until we see freedom in our spirit and soul.  These steps may take months to work through, but it will be worth all of the pain in the end.  Just like giving birth to a baby, the pain and agony of childbirth may be terrible, but just one look at your tiny baby's face and the joy and love you feel makes all the pain and agony worth it. 


 Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” 
John 8:31-32

Jan 20, 2010

Roll Away Your Stone - Part 2 - The Provision

Our Pastor has been preaching about Psalms 23 for the last few weeks, - I just love it when God brings two different unrelated things together to make a point.- Anyway, he told a story of some shepherds who wanted to take a break for some much needed breakfast, and left their 15,000 sheep alone for about 30 min.  Well while they were gone one of the sheep decided to jump off of a cliff, and before the half an hour was up, all 15,000 sheep had followed suit, and jumped off the cliff, and four hundred and fifty sheep died that day.

This story shows us just how stupid sheep are.  And yet God says that we are his sheep and he is our shepherd.  The good thing about it is that God is the Good Shepherd and he never will leave us to go get some chow.  We should all be thankful for that!!  But my point is that part of the reason we are so much like sheep, is that we believe that we are smart, yes, even smarter than God, and we believe this because we all suffer from an exalted soul. We all have the tendency to think that we could handle things better than God, and we don't trust Him or look to Him for answers, when He is the very Creator of all things and has the power to overcome anything that we could ever encounter or need.  This section of Roll Away Your Stone has dealt with the issues we all have with our exalted soul, and presents the only way to deal with it.  Now our souls don't want to relinquish their power and the soul will fight every step of the way.  But it all comes down to this.  Jesus Christ came to earth, fully God and yet fully man, and he faced every temptation we face.  Yet Jesus did not allow His soul to exalt itself and take control.  Jesus lived a perfect life and did nothing that God the Father did not tell Him to do.  So when Jesus went physically to the cross, it was not just His body, and spirit, that died, it was His soul.  He won the battle for our souls.  Jesus paid the price so that we would not have to physically die, but we all must take a trip to the cross and laydown our own wants desires and wills, our exalted soul, and let the Spirit of the Living God lead and direct us.  It must be a daily sacrifice, we cannot go just once.  But every day, sometimes multiple times a day.  When we do this, the Holy Spirit is able to work in our souls and bring our souls into the proper place, a place of rest and peace.  When our soul is in charge of the decision making, it is striving and working in a position that God never intended it to be in.  Only when we bring it to the cross and lay it down, can we find the rest and peace that David is talking about in Psalms 23. 

Here is a music video that says it all.  Make this your prayer today!

Jan 10, 2010

Roll Away Your Stone - Part 1 - The Problem

It is truly amazing how God formed our body, soul, and spirit to work together.  When Adam and Eve put their desires before what God asked of them, it changed everything about them and about each and every person that has ever walked on the face of the earth.  What a picture it is!  Just try to imagine walking with God so intimately.  What a difference it would make in our day to day lives if we could walk with God today as Adam and Eve walked with Him back before the fall. 
In each chapter in this section we learned so much valuable information.  I hope that you are taking notes and really looking at the things we are learning.  I believe that God really does want to restore our brokenness and make us whole again.  But in order for Him to do that, we have to realize there is a problem and then give the problem to God and let Him work in our hearts and lives.  We must lean on Him and ask Him to lead our every decision.
If you went through the Beth Moore Study "Loving Well" with us in November, I want you to apply what we learned through that study to the things we are learning in this book.  The strongholds that Dutch Sheets talks about in the last chapter, reminded me of the duct tape that we apply to our hearts.  Once again, God will fill us with His perfect love and heal our wounded hearts if we will allow Him to do so.  This book is showing us a little more of the problems or reasons why we are not able to love others the way God wants us to, without having His perfect love flowing through us.

Here are a few things that stood out to me in this section:
  • God did not intend for you to live a defeated existence that always loses its battles.
  • The promises of God are not automatic.  It is through a process that we will grow and see God's promises come into our lives.  We must be obedient to God's comands and then we will see His blessings and promises.
  • The soul's function was not to control or lead but to serve our spirit.
  • We were not made to function and make decisions apart from God's influence and instruction.
  • By exalting the soul, we made ourselves unable to comprehend the things of God.  Now we must have a revelation to see spiritual truth.
  • What is housed in your subconscious shapes every part of who you are.
  • We are not controlled by truth, but by what we perceive to be truth.
  • God wants to restore us to the original state, if we will only allow Him!