Recovery – Recovery In Christ Ministries

June 8, 2016June 9, 2016

Grace Heals: The Law Kills

To many, life is pointless, and the God of the Bible is a cruel jokester. Why? There is so much sorrow, and pain in this world that we each have to endure. Sometimes it is deeply troubling, and very confusing.

Before He created us, Yahweh knew that we would have to suffer, and go through all the trials and tribulations of earthly life. God could have created the earth, and us, in a completely different way, which did not require that we endure all these painful experiences.

Since God could have done things differently, but He chose not to, and we know His loving nature, we can surmise that there is a purpose for the suffering, and, in the end, we will benefit from it.

When Yahweh came to the earth, in the form of a man, the man, Yeshua (Jesus), He suffered many things. The man, Jesus, learned obedience through the things that He suffered. (Hebrews 5:8)

God in Christ subjected Himself to the same sufferings that He subjected us to, so that He, in His human form could be perfected. If the God-man, Jesus needed to go through all these things in order to learn obedience (be perfected), then you and I must also.

The man, Jesus, is our big brother, and if we wish to be glorified with Him, and inherit all things with Him, we must also suffer with Him. (Romans 8:17)

So yes, there is a purpose behind our suffering, and God is not a cruel jokester. Yahweh is preparing us for the glory that awaits us, and for the day that we will inherit the whole universe. See, if God were to bless someone with vast riches, before they were able to handle those riches, His blessing would destroy them, and many others. God is using our suffering to change us, so that He can bless us with things that we can’t even imagine! (1 Corinthians 2:9)

The Law

Yahweh created us as free-will creatures. Free-will creatures have within themselves the propensity to rebel, and attempt self-rule. If this propensity did not exist within us, then we would not be free-will creatures. Lucifer is a free-will creature, whom Yahweh blessed with unimaginable blessings, and even though Yahweh gave him the ability to handle these blessings, he chose not to, and rebelled. Perhaps, this is why there is no remedy for Satan.

After Lucifer fell, and became Satan (The Adversary), Yahweh created man. Yahweh placed these new free-will beings in a garden of pleasures, where they had everything they needed to prosper. Yahweh walked and talked with these free-will beings, and they were happy, and complete. And then, the law came.

Yahweh laid down the law. Yahweh told them that they could not eat the fruit that was on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or they would die. The law squeezed Adam and Eve, and what was in them came out for all to see. The Serpent (the adversary) used the law to draw Eve into sin, and the law brought out Adam’s propensity for self-rule, and he freely chose to rebel against Yahweh.

Yahweh came looking for His rebellious, lost children, and extended grace unto them, by killing an innocent animal in their place, and using its fur to clothe them, so that they would not be ashamed to fellowship with Him.

Man was created a little lower than the angels. Yahweh did not create man with the same level of perfection, power, and blessings that the angels enjoyed. Apparently, Yahweh can’t restore the angels, who rebelled against Him, because they were perfect in wisdom and power, and therefore had the absolute ability to obey, but chose to defy Him. (Hebrews 2:7; Ezekiel 28:13-19; Jude 1:6)

Yahweh didn’t create us in perfection, so that when we rebelled there would be a path that we could choose that would lead to perfection. And this path to perfection comes with many trials, tribulations and sorrows, which refine us, and teach us obedience, so that we can stand in our perfection, and not fall as the angels fell.

As we imperfect free-will creatures walk the path back to God, and personal perfection as free-will creatures, our sufferings are fitting us for the glory that awaits us. Yahweh is perfecting us through these unpleasant experiences, in order to ensure that we will never rebel against Him, once we have reached our perfected state. This is the only way it could be done, and hold our free-will state in tact.

Grace

Grace is not only a “legal state” we enter into, in which Yahweh clears us of all wrong doing, and promises not to count our sins against us, it is also Yeshua’s active, personal participation, in our daily lives. (Colossians 2:14; Romans 4:7-8; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Hebrews 4:16)

Paul said that he could do all things through Christ, who strengthens him. (Philippians 4:13) Did Paul mean that he could apply nuclear physics to solve the problem of defining matter in the ancient world? No, Paul meant that Yeshua would give him the grace he needed to make it through the trials, tribulations and sufferings that he had to go through. In all these things, Paul said that he was happy to go through them, because, Yeshua’s grace was sufficient. (2 Cor 12:10)

Yeshua’s daily intervention in our lives, via grace, will heal our wounds, change us, grow us up, and empower us to go through the trials, tribulations, and sufferings that we must go through in order to be perfected. So why do most of us resist Yeshua’s grace?

Yeshua’s grace empowers us to live, change, and grow. Yeshua sends His grace to us each day so that we can have joy, peace, and growth. Yeshua’s grace is the only thing that can really and truly change you and cause you to leave destructive compulsions, obsessions, and addictions in the past, without going to endless meetings.

Yeshua’s daily grace is the most precious and costly gift that He can possibly give us. Sadly, most of us resist Yeshua’s grace, and do not embrace it, so we have to live the Christian life in our own power. This drains us, and leaves us defeated, weak and confused.

How do we resist the grace of God? Well, by acting on our religious training, and putting ourselves under the law for righteousness!

The Law Kills

Religion says that we have to do this, or that, in order to be right with God, and receive His blessings. Religion says that if we are struggling with a habitual sin, God is upset with us, and withholding His blessings from us, until we get right. Religious leaders try to cut us off from grace, so that we have to depend on them, and their institutions for growth, and blessings. This is dead wrong!

I remember when the light came on for me. I had just sinned a habitual sin that I was struggling with, and fighting against. Man, I was driving down the road feeling bad, I mean really, really bad. I was beating myself up. Asking myself how I could do such a thing again, and again, and again. It was horrible, and this was the 10,000th time I had suffered through these torturous feelings, and self-beatings.

I cried out to God, and asked Him why He wouldn’t help me change. Then, I heard a soft inner voice say, “I can’t help you, because you will not let me.” I asked God what He meant, and He said that I was putting myself under the law for righteousness, and cutting myself off from His grace. This hit me so hard that I thought I was going to have to pull over, and recompose myself on the side of the road.

Religion, and the law was cutting me off from Yeshua’s grace, and slowly killing me! The law provides a platform for the sin within us to stand upon, and it thereby stirs up the diseased emotions in us, which holds us in our sins. Grace connects us with the life of God, and stills our diseased emotions so that we can rise above them, and overcome our sins. Grace is the power to overcome sin!

What Paul said in Galatians 2:21 finally made sense to me. I was just like the foolish Galatians, who had let religion trick them into putting themselves under the law, even though Christ had freed them from it. The Galatians fell from grace, because they trusted religion and the law. Grace was’t helping them, and Jesus’ death for them was in vain. And I was in the same boat with them. Wow! Strong words.

Healed by Grace

When I realized what was going on, I changed my view on things. I then, fully embraced the Love of God. I realized that I needed grace everyday, in order to overcome sin. I realized that God loved me, and He wasn’t upset with me for struggling with sin. I realized that God wasn’t holding back on His blessings, until I overcame my sin. I realized that I didn’t have to do anything to be blessed.

God blessed me with everything He has to give me. God has wiped away my old sin record, and promised not to start a new one on me. Yeshua is praying for me everyday, and releasing God’s love unto me, in order to help me overcome sin, and live an abundant life. I now receive it, and refuse to let my attitude about sin block it.

I am being healed by grace, and I refuse to let anything block it again. Do I still sin? Of course I do! I, however, do not let the law condemn me, and I don’t beat myself up anymore. I know that Yeshua has made me righteous, so I now see myself as righteous, even if I sin.

It is your choice. You can let religion and the law cut you off from grace, and beat you up, and kill you. Or you can embrace grace.

Make no mistake. Grace heals: The law kills.

June 2, 2016

Follow the unseen

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is the foundation that we stand upon, in order to receive that which God has promised, and it is the proof that we are seeking a reality, which we can’t see with our physical eyes, within our current temporal frame of reference.

Paul said that if we would walk in the Spirit, then we would not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16) Paul also said that it was the standard operating procedure for a Christian to walk by faith, and not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

What Paul, and the writer of Hebrews, is telling us is that if we want to overcome our flesh, the devil, and the world, and receive what God has promised us, we must embrace the unseen reality that God says is real, based strictly on God’s promise that it is real, and live in that unseen reality, and let it guide us through this temporal realm.

God says that we can rise above the flesh, and live out our salvation, here on the earth, before we leave this corrupted flesh and enter into eternity in order to experience its fullness. (Philippians 2:12)

This is extremely important, because addiction occurs when we give ourselves completely over to the lust of our flesh. Our flesh craves comfort, and it is willing to sacrifice everything and everybody in our lives to get that comfort. Addicts are captives of their own flesh!

Consequently, the only real and lasting solution to addiction is to learn how to live and walk in the Spirit, and then live each day in the Spirit, so that the Spirit can direct each step in your earthly walk.

I know this seems like a nebulous statement, which is overwhelming. Just relax: Don’t worry, you will grow and learn how to live and walk in the Spirit, if you seek to live and walk in the Spirit. The more you study the Scriptures, and discover, who you really are, and exercise your spiritual senses to discern good and evil, the more proficient you will become at living and walking in the Spirit. (Hebrews 5:14)

Most people worry that they will mess up, and follow the flesh, while thinking they are following the Spirit. Let me assure you that you will, but that’s ok. Grace covers your sins and shortcomings. Just do the best you can, and exercise your spiritual senses. The results you get from your actions will let you know whether you are following the flesh, or the Spirit. Relax, God has you covered. (Romans 4:8)

Who are you?

It is imperative that we know, who we are, because knowing, who we are provides the framework that guides what we do. When I was an addict, I knew that I was an addict, so I did what addicts do. And for the most part, it didn’t bother me, because I was being who I was.

That all changed when I hit “rock-bottom”, and suddenly being an addict wasn’t fun, or comforting to my flesh anymore. It hadn’t been fun or comforting for a while, but rock bottom brought it to a head. I had to change in order to survive, and have any peace, or comfort.

What did I need to change? Did I simply need to put myself in a safe place where I couldn’t get drugs, until the chemical chains fell off my body? No, that was just the beginning. I had to become a new person with new desires. But how could I possibly become a new person?

Well, I stopped self-identifying as an addict, and self-identified as a born-again child of God. I embraced, with every fiber of my being, my new identity “in Christ”. That meant that I read the Scriptures, and chose to believe what God said I had become when His Spirit fused Himself with my spirit, which made me a totally new creature in Him.

Even though my physical eyes beheld the wreckage of my life, and “who” I had become, my spiritual eyes obtained momentary glimpses of who I really was in Christ, and the glorious future that He had planned for me. I felt a little psychotic, and people didn’t understand the goal that I was striving for, which was the high calling of God.

Accordingly, I could not afford to sit around in meetings and call myself an addict, and listen to people talk about drugs, and the carnage that comes with them. No, I had become a new person, so I had to forget those things that were in the past and press on towards the high calling of God in Christ. (Philippians 3:13-14)

The unseen reality

In my childhood, I suffered spiritual abuse, at the hand of institutionalized religion. The God they preached was angry with me, and the only way I could get on His good side was to “be good”, and do what He said to do. I thought that if I kept God’s laws, He would love me, and bless me. (This attitude is hard to shake, and it still rises up to torment me from time to time, and I have to cast it down.)

My spirit, the real me, lives in a corrupt flesh vessel (my body). My body was born into sin and corruption, so it has all kinds of diseased emotions, which move me towards sin, corruption, and death. The Bible calls these emotions, and the mindsets that correlate with them, “the flesh”. This is exactly what we need to overcome in the Spirit, so that we can live lives of peace, prosperity, and freedom.

Here’s the problem: God’s law actually strengthens the diseased emotions in our corrupt body, which increases sin’s control over our lives! (Romans 7:8) So, if we do not want sin to rule over us, we must not base our relationship with God on whether or not we keep His laws. (Romans 6:14) We must base our relationship with God on the grace that Jesus’ blood freely bestows upon us. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Yes, it is true. God loves and accepts us just the way we are, warts and all! (Romans 5:8) In Christ, you are holy, un-blamable, and un-reprovable. (Colossians 1:22) In Christ, you are the righteousness of God! (2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus redeemed us for all eternity. (Hebrews 9:12) Jesus has given us eternal life. (John 6:47)

Even though we can’t see these things with our physical eyes, or feel like they are true, they are true! And if you will believe them, and live as though they are true, you will enter into God’s rest. (Hebrews 4:9-10) Not only will you rest in God, but this restfulness will defuse the diseased emotions that move you towards sin, so that you can overcome it. This is how you escape from the trap of addiction.

So, you can try to “be good” and earn God’s approval, and blessings by focusing on your sin problem, and fighting against it, or you can simply focus on, who you are, and what you have “in Christ”. If you choose to focus on your sin, and trying to defeat it, you will sink further into despair. If you choose, however, to focus on, who you are in Christ, you will reframe your life, and then, over a period of time, your behavior will conform to that new framework, and your desires will change. That is the solution. (What then? Shall we sin, so that grace should abound. No, God forbid. More on this in the next post)

So, here is the fundamental choice: Do we walk by sight, and follow what we see, or do we walk by faith, and follow the unseen?

October 2, 2015

Walking in the Spirit

In the last post, we learned that life is a test. The Primary test is whether or not we will submit to Yahweh (God), and crown Him as Lord , by crowning Yeshua Messiah (Jesus Christ) as Lord of our life.

The most important thing that we can possibly do in life, is pass the Primary test. Passing the Primary test imparts life, and life eternal to us. The most tragic thing that can possibly happen to us, is for us to live our life for ourselves, and fail the Primary test. Failing the Primary test ensures that we remain dead, dead eternally.

It doesn’t make sense, to the natural mind, how we can live, and yet be dead, but nevertheless, this is the case when we fail the Primary test. Have you ever heard someone speak, and yet didn’t hear what they said? Have you ever looked at something without really seeing it? Sure you have. In the same way, you can live, without truly living.

Everyone of us is born, dead, dead in trespasses and sins, not our trespasses and sins, but Adam’s. We are all separated from God. We are all born onto the Serpent’s (the Devil’s) slave market, and he owns us. Hence, in our natural state, we serve Satan, and sin.

As we live in the world, in a body of flesh and blood, Satan shapes us. Satan equips us to do his bidding, and oppose Yahweh and His Kingdom. Satan uses the things of the world to satisfy the desires of our flesh, the desires of our eyes, and the pride of life. (1John 2:16)

As we walk (live) in the world, in a body of flesh and blood (in the flesh) satisfying the desires of the flesh, eyes and ego, we program (or train) our flesh, eyes, and ego. This programming is cognitive (in the mind), neurological (in the brain), and biological (in the body). Once we train ourselves, we operate on autopilot, and we are wide-open to the suggestions of our master, and we do his bidding.

In a sense, we are zombies. We are alive cognitively, neurologically, and biologically, but we are dead to God, and His insight and leading. We are without God, and without hope in the world. A sad state.

Once we pass the Primary test, this all changes. God unites Himself with our human spirit, and becomes one with our human spirit. Since, God is love, light, and life, we begin to live and embrace the light, and love one another. We are now truly alive forever.

Now we enter into the Secondary test.

The Secondary Test

The blood of Messiah has paid our sin debt, and ransomed us off of the Serpent’s slave market, and His Spirit has made us alive forever! The issue of Heaven and Hell is settled. We can rest assured that God is with us, and He will never leave or forsake us! (Hebrews 13:5)

Now we begin the Secondary test. This is a test to see how aggressively we will live out God’s purpose for our life. What purpose? Well, God has assigned each of us a task in His Kingdom, and foreordained some good works for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10) God tells us to take off the old man, and put on the new man, who He created in His own image, and likeness, in Christ Jesus. (Col 3:10)

So, the Secondary test is to live out God’s purpose for our lives, and conform ourselves to the image of Christ Jesus. There are rewards for passing this test, which are proportional to our performance. Our performance on this test determines our eternal rewards, and the degree to which we enjoy our salvation, here in this world.

It is very important to always keep in mind that we are striving to fulfill our purpose, and do good works, and conform to Yeshua’s image, in order to enjoy our salvation, and earn eternal rewards, not to earn our salvation, or even keep it. Salvation is a free gift that Yahweh gives us, and He will never take it back. (Rom 5:15, 11:29)

This may seem like a trivial point, but it is not. It is easy to forget that we are doing good works because of who we are, and not to become, who we are. That is, we do good works because God has saved us, not to get Him to save us or let us keep our salvation.

Some people conflate the concepts of salvation, and sanctification, and the Scriptures that describes these two distinct concepts. As they do, they confuse themselves, and then confuse others. These people teach others that “eternal life” is not eternal, and that if we do not measure up to God’s expectations, He will reject us.

This is the same error the Jews made in the “Old Testament”. Yahweh cut an unconditional unilateral covenant with Abraham, which was the covenant of redemption. The covenant of redemption was based on faith, and it brought salvation. Later, Yahweh cut a covenant through Moses, which was the covenant of sanctification. The covenant of sanctification was a conditional, bilateral covenant that related to blessings, and the enjoyment of salvation.

An “old testament” person was saved by believing Yahweh’s promises, and that person enjoyed the blessings of his salvation by doing good works, and conforming to Yahweh’s image (keeping the law). In time, however, the Jews conflated theses two covenants, and began to teach that salvation came through good works. This is what Yeshua came to demolish, He did not come to demolish the law.

The flesh loves to feel like it has earned salvation or somehow merits it (deserves to keep it). There is no greater boost to the ego! This is a constant danger that we must be on guard against, because it will steal your peace, energize the flesh, and destroy your witness.

In the next post, we will talk about how to score high on the Secondary test. That is, we will talk about how to keep the flesh under control, so we can enjoy our salvation, and accumulate eternal rewards. So, in the next post, we will talk about walking in the Spirit.