God Inside Minded
God Inside Minded or Rooted In Christ Bad root bad fruit! Do you have a guilt mentality that expresses its self every time you try to approach the Lord in prayer, worship or any other type of service to him? Does it seem like you just can’t find that cosmic recipe that allows you to be confident that you have spent enough time and effort seeking him. You never pray enough. You never worship long enough or hard enough. You just can’t seem to get it right and every time to turn to God all you see is your inadequacy in the light of his holiness. Bad root bad fruit. The answer to your problem is not found in how many “religious tasks” you do in a day. It’s not a problem of sincerity, at least not if your really wanting to know him and not just going through the motions for some imagined audience that isn’t really paying attention to your acts of religiosity saying to them selves “oh he or she is so spiritual”. It is found in your determination to take hold of his abundance of Grace and the gift righteousness in Christ. Ephesians 4:22-24 tells us how we as Christians become this new creation in Christ. The first scripture is a portrait of the old man (the sinful nature). We’re told to put off the old and in verse 24 to put on the new man, to literally clothe ourselves in Christ. That’s all well and good you might be saying to yourself. Followed by well how do I do this? I try and I try and I try and nothing ever seems to truly change. Verse 22 holds the key to this process. In verse 22 Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost tells us how to go about this. He tells us to renew our minds. He wants us to become God inside minded. He wants us to become rooted and established IN CHRIST. This is a tough pill to swallow because it is going to take boldness and determination on your part to achieve what I’m about too say. You must choose after having confessed your sin and received Christ as Lord and savior to abandon you’re guilt at the cross. You will never see the fruit you desire to produce if you remain in a sin and guilt mentality. Jesus Christ God in flesh told us no bad tree can bare good fruit and know Good tree can bare the reverse. In you have a root of guilt if you have your mind set on how imperfect you are you will not be able to produce good fruit. You need to pull up that root and cast it into the sea of forgetfulness that consists of the blood of Christ. You must choose to view yourself according to what God has called you in Christ. Now the opposite is true about the God inside minded person. If you can view yourself in the light of God’s word framing your perception of yourself and the world through what he says, abandoning the guilt mentality you will begin to see the Holy spirit working in you to produce the fruit you long to bare as his loving child. The book of Isaiah says “You will keep in perfect peace him (or her) who’s mind is steadfast because (they) trust in you. Trust in the Lord FOREVER (emphasis add to drive home the point) for the Lord, The Lord is the rock eternal. Jeremiah chapter 17 talks about two men. One who relies on man or you could say his own strength, will and intellect and one who trusts in God rather than man. The one it says will have his name written in dust while the other has God himself to rely upon. It also talks about how the heart and mind are corrupt beyond understanding and that God searches them to reward us according to our deeds. I believe what this means is not that God is looking for reasons to punish us and he’s not looking at this one or that one and saying ok finally someone I can bless he or she is good in my estimation. No this means that God is looking for the difference between the person who doesn’t know him at all and the one who has abandoned everything they are to his mercy based on his promises. When you came to the cross of Calvary you didn’t come to a savior who was paying for the sins of your past and your present up to and including the last moments before you surrendered to Christ. Only to walk away and then have to try to hold on too this amazing gift tooth and nail crying out of desperation for mercy. Because God knows your incapable of walking perfectly before him. No you came to a God man who was paying for the ransom of your soul including ALL your sin past present and yes future as well. His mission wasn’t just to clean you up and then leave you to try and make the grade. He came to make you a God’s child, perfect in his sight by Grace through faith in the blood and body and cross of his eternally perfect son. So take your mind off of your humanity because God through Christ sees only Christ in you. And the Holy spirit will empower you and work in you to change anything god wants to change for you’re benefit. This is an exciting road we travel. Are there sometimes sacrifices to be made? Yes! But in his presence is fullness of joy! God Inside Minded.
Be Transformed
I heard once that true humility is agreeing with God.
It’s easy to get caught up in the goings on of every day life. To easy to get our eyes locked on the things of this world that bother us and tempt us to conform to the pattern of this world in our thinking and attitudes.
We get angry and upset and soon we begin to see ourselves performing in a way that is less than what we have come to expect of ourselves in the light of what Christ has done for us and in us.
However God has a different plan. He tells not to be confirmed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Ephesians 4:22 says; to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
We are stuck with this flesh of ours until Christ returns take us to be with him in glory our we pass from this life into the next through the death of our physical bodies, thats just the way it is. But and this is a really big BUT. We don’t have to be ruled by our sinful natures. We don’t have to conform to the whims of our flesh monsters or to the will of our enemy. We in Christ can clothe ourselves in him. Literally in the new nature of Christ deposited within us by his Grace through the power of his holy spirit that now lives in the hearts of every believer in Jesus Christ. And thus be renewed in the spirit of our mind and also our perception of ourselves.
The amazing thing about the new creation reality of being in Christ is that God did the work that we can’t do to make us what we can become in him!
Agape (Unconditional + God like) Love 