Today we continue our series entitled, “God Loves You”, under the overall theme for the year of, “Supernatural Manifestation.” In yesterday’s message I explained that there are three parts of you: spirit, soul and body. The day you give your life to Christ and are Born-Again, your spirit is made new, but your soul (which houses your mind, emotions and will) is not, and your body (which will be changed some day) is also not. So the only part of you that was changed was your spirit. Your spirit WAS changed, your body WILL BE changed, and what that leaves you with is your soul. After you are Born-Again you spend the remainder of your days on the planet attempting to get your sould changed to line up with God’s opinion of you.
The message I have been teaching in this series, that we must see ourselves “As Jesus is, in this world”, is critical, because we will never operate like Him, until we see ourselves like Him. In the closing minutes of the video version of yesterday’s message, I said, “When you come to God and are Born-Again, you are a new man, living in an old body, and you need a new mind. You need a new mind, because we all come to God with a certain level of baggage.” I will start today, where I ended yesterday. But before I do, let’s get back to the scripture we have been meditating on for weeks:
The Apostle John said:
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. 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 4:16, 17 KJV)
So what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. We come to God with baggage.
a) If we came to God with zero baggage, meaning that we came to Him as a ‘blank slate’, then we would be free to quickly become whatever and whoever the Holy Spirit instructed us to be. We would quickly accept whatever God said about our future, we would open our heart to His plans and we would see ourselves according to His opinion of us. However, none of us come to God as a ‘blank slate’. We were already programmed by the world. So we had to get both deprogrammed and reprogrammed to like and act like Jesus.
b) The day I accepted Jesus as Lord I had recently turned 23 years old, I was a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army, and I was programmed to think and act like a brash, bold and somewhat-arrogant self-proclaimed “Dominican kid from Brooklyn”. Almost 22 years later, my upbringing in Brooklyn still has a lot to do with who I am. I have gone on an amazing journey of transformation over these 22 years, but I am not going to tell you it was always easy. Humans don’t like to change. So the truth is, I fought God and the change He wanted to enact in my life.
2. Our mind must be renewed to the point where we can fully embrace all Jesus is.
a) When I first came to Jesus, I had a hard time accepting the amazing things the Holy Spirit was revealing to me about the plans He made for me before the world began. Why? Because I am the son of immigrant parents, raised on welfare, in a terrible neighborhood, and I was told as a child (in school — certainly NOT by my mother), that the chances of me becoming anything significant were between slim and none. So when God was speaking to me about His goodness, I had an internal struggle. My mind was programmed in such a way, that it was hard for me to accept what God called me to do. This is why the Bible teaches us that our minds must be renewed.
b) I could never see myself, “As Jesus is, in this world”, until my mind was renewed to embrace the fullness of ALL that Jesus was FOR ME! The goodness of God and His amazing unearned grace was foreign to me, because I had worked hard for everything I had ever achieved in life to that point. I was programmed to look at every opportunity through the lens of hard work and human effort. Whereas God was speaking to me about things He simply wanted to give me, because He loves me and He called me to do them. This is part of ‘the battle in the mind’ we all must win.
I will stop here for today and discuss this further tomorrow.
Closing Confession: Father, this is a year of Great Victory for me. I say this with confidence, because I have learned to place all my confidence in You! You are the source of my strength. You are the strength of my life. I am who You say I am. I can do what You say I can do. I release the pain and the limits of my past. I fully embrace who You called me to be and what You called me to do. I enter into this day ready to be a conduit of Your glory. Because as Jesus is, so am I, in this world! I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper.
