Freedom in Christ Session 11: Relating to Others

Understanding Grace

In Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love you neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

As Christians are calling is to love others as we love ourselves. It’s a very challenging commandment. How can we love those who seem unlovable, how can we love those people who we find so difficult to get along with? The reality is that left to ourselves we cannot, but with God we can start to love others as we are meant.

Just as knowing who we are in Christ is the foundation for our Christian life, it also forms the basis for the way we relate to other people. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) We give freely because we have received freely (Matthew 10:8). We are merciful because He has been merciful to us (Luke 6:36), and we forgive in the same way that Jesus has forgiven us.

We have received God’s amazing grace, his undeserved forgiveness, love and mercy, and the more we experience this, then the more we begin to find that we want to give it away to others.

We are responsible for our own character and others’ needs.

So how should we treat others?

First of all, as Christians we are called not to judge others. And yet we live in a culture that loves to judge other people. Think about the column inches that are devoted in newspapers and magazines to people in the public eye, the way in which people are built up, only to be teared down, and we are invited us to do the same. Or think for a moment how easy it is when you are involved in a dispute with someone to start broadening the issue and attacking the person’s character. For example, imagine two people are having an argument because one of them forgot to put the washing on, and all of the sudden one of the people says, ‘You’re so selfish’, or ‘You’re completely useless’, they have suddenly attacked the character of the other person and this can be tremendously hurtful.
Paul says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interest of others. You attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” (Phillipians 2:3-5).

As Christians we have a responsibility for the way we behave, and the way we treat others. Imagine what life would be like if everyone assumed their responsibility to become like Christ in their character, and committed themselves to meet the needs of everyone around them. It would utterly transform our world!

I don’t think any of us would disagree with that. The big question is why we fail to live it out.

Being aware of our own sins

All too often we are very aware of the character failures of others while appearing blind to our own. We notice the speck of dust in our brother’s eye, whilst ignoring the whopping great plank that sticks out of our own eye.
In the Bible, whenever anyone has a powerful encounter with God, their response is to suddenly become aware of their own sinfulness, rather than the sinfulness of others. For example, when Isaiah has a vision of God in the Temple his immediate response is “Who to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” In Luke 5, when Jesus appropriated Peter’s boat to speak to the crowds that had gathered, Jesus orders Peter to put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch. Peter obeys, and starts pulling in fish after fish, and he suddenly realises that someone very special was in the boat with him, and his response is “Go away from me Lord, I am a sinful man.”

When we see God for who He is, we become much more aware of our own failings and short comings. But when our relationship with God is lukewarm, we tend to overlook our own sin and see the sin of others. And so when people don’t match up to our expectations, we have a tendency to say they are doing wrong and point it out.

Focus on responsibilities rather than rights

In every relationship we have both rights and responsibilities, the temptation we are often faced with, is to focus more on our rights rather than our responsibilities.

For example, do parents have a right to expect their children to be obedient? Or do they have a responsibility to bring them up lovingly and wisely? Do we have the right to criticise others, or do we have a responsibility to relate to one another with the same love and acceptance we have received from Christ?

The answer is that as Christians we need to focus on our responsibilities before our rights, which in today’s climate is very counter cultural.

Paul in Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up others according to their needs, that it might benefit those who listen.” As Christians we are to build one another up. One of the most destructive and damaging forces that we see at work in the world, and also within church is gossip. I have known many situations where tremendous harm has been caused by gossip, and there should be absolutely no place for it in the life of the church. But yet the temptation to gossip is very strong indeed.

There were four vicars who met for a friendly gathering. During the conversation one vicar said, "Our people come to us and pour out their hears, confess certain sins and needs. Let's do the same. Confession is good for the soul." In due time all agreed. One confessed he liked to go to movies and would sneak off when away from his church. The second confessed to liking to smoke cigars and the third one confessed to liking to play cards. When it came to the fourth one, he wouldn't confess. The others pressed him saying, "Come now, we confessed ours. What is your secret or vice?" Finally he answered, "It is gossiping and I can hardly wait to get out of here."

The evangelist Billy Graham once said, “A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip!”

As Christians the three essential rules we need to remember when speaking about others are:
1 Is it true?
2 Is it kind?
3 Is it necessary?

When we are attacked

How do we respond if someone attacks our character? Should we be defensive? The temptation certainly is to be. But how did Jesus react when it happened to him? “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)

When someone says something to attack us, the natural and immediate response is to try and defend ourselves, but sometimes this leads only to further conflict.

For example, a women called her pastor and made an appointment to see him. She had written a list of the good and bad points about him that she wanted to discuss. There were just two good points and a whole page of bad ones! As she read each point, the pastor was tempted to defend himself, but said nothing. When she had finished, he said to her, “it must have taken a lot of courage to share that list with me. What do you suggest I do?” At that point she started crying and said, “Oh, it’s not you, it’s me!” A helpful discussion followed which led her to a different ministry position which was more suited to her gifting. What if the pastor had defended himself against any one of her allegations, we can’t say for certain, but it is unlikely the matter would have been resolved so positively.

If you can learn not be defensive when someone exposes your character defects or attacks your performance you may have an opportunity to turn the situation around and minister to that person.

Acceptance & Love

As Christians we are accepted and loved unconditionally by our Heavenly Father. And as Christians we too should learn to accept and affirm others for who they are, rather than what we would like them to be.

For example, suppose a teenager comes home late and a parent responds in an overbearing way and asks angrily, “Where have you been?” The teenager will probably say just one word: “Out!” At which the parent asks, “What were you doing?” And the teenager will respond by saying “Nothing!” But if that parent had approached that teenager with an attitude of acceptance rather than rejection, of love rather than condemnation, the response may have been very different.

Our own needs

What about our own needs, how do we express these in a helpful and constructive and helpful manner?

If we have a particular need, we need to be very careful how we express it. The problem is that it can all too easily come out as a criticism rather than as a need. A need must be stated as a need, and not a judgement. Suppose a wife doesn’t feel loved; she might say to her husband “You don’t love me any more, do you?” And you can imagine the husband responding “Of course I do!” And that’s the end of that. It wasn’t stated as a need. It was judgement of her husband’s character. Suppose she said, “I just don’t feel loved right now, and I need to be.” By turning the ‘you’ judgement to an ‘I’ need, she has expressed her need without blaming anybody. Her husband now has the opportunity to meet that need.

We all need to feel loved, accepted and affirmed. In Galatians 6 Paul writes that we reap what we sow. Jesus said “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). It is one of life’s great compensations that we cannot sincerely help somebody else without helping ourselves in the process. If you want somebody to love you, love somebody. If you want to a friend, be a friend. You get out of life what you put into it. Jesus said in Luke 6:38 “Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” If we do just enough to “get by” the truth is we are robbing ourselves.

If you wanted to give someone a bushel of wheat, you could slowly fill the bushel basket and scrape off the top with a board. That would be a fair measure. The Lord is suggesting, however, that we fill it until it overflows, and even shake it so that it settles. Whatever we measure out to others comes measuring back to us. Whatever life asks of you, give just a little bit more. Do that with everything and you will be amazed at what life has to offer.

Freedom in Christ: Session 10 Growing in Maturity

Introduction

What are the signs that you have matured?
1. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
2. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
3. You and your teeth don't sleep together
4. Your back goes out, but you stay at home
5. When you are on holiday your energy runs out before your money does
6. You sit in a rocking chair but can't get it going
7. Your actions Creak louder than your words
8. You are warned to slow down by your doctor instead of the police
9. Getting lucky means you found your car in the multi storey car park

Over the last four months we’ve been thinking about how to grow and mature as Christians. Being a mature Christian has nothing to do with how old we are, or even how long we’ve been a Christian, it’s about the depth and quality of our relationship with God, it is about becoming more like Christ.

Made in God's image

When God originally created people He said, “Let us make human beings in our image and likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) God is not talking here about physical likeness, but a spiritual likeness. To be made in God’s image means to reflect God’s character. The evidence of a godly character is that we produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This includes growing in “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). This is what the image of God “looks” like, this is what as Christians we should be aiming for, because this is what it means to be a mature Christian.

The Apostle Paul encourages Christians to “grow in the Lord” (Colossians 2:7) and that God wants us to bear His likeness and character. But how do we grow?
Holy Spirit

It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that God helps us to develop character (Philippians 2:13). Paul in Colossians writes, “the mystery revealed to the saints…is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26-27). We do not develop Christ-likeness by imitation but by inhabitation. This means that our own efforts at becoming spiritually mature are useless unless it is Christ working in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Spiritual growth does not happen automatically. Although God initiates the desire to grow spiritually within us and gives us the power to grow, we must be willing to accept and cooperate with His work. To grow spiritually requires intentional commitment to change our lives in order to conform to the likeness of Christ. God gives us the resources and opportunities for growth, but we must work them out. We are encouraged: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13).

Changing thought patterns

What is the best way to grow spiritually? The first thing we need to know is that there are no short-cuts to spiritual growth. The most effective way to change your life is to change the way you think. Behind everything you do is a thought. Every behaviour is motivated by a belief, and every action is prompted by an attitude. Some people try to effect a change in their lives by sheer willpower. They will say, for example, “I’ll force myself to eat less…exercise more…quit being disorganized and late.” Whilst willpower can produce short-term change, it can also create internal stress because you haven’t dealt with the root cause of the problem. Eventually you will give up and revert to your old patterns.

There is a better and easier way to effect permanent change. The Bible says, “Let God transform you into a new person by the changing of the way you think” (Romans 12:2). Your first step in spiritual growth is to start changing the way you think. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel influences the way you act. Paul said, “There must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes” (Ephesians 4:23).

Becoming like Christ means to develop the mind of Christ, laying hold of the truth about what God says about ourselves, other people, life, our future, and everything else. Growing spiritually means to take on Christ’s outlook and perspective.

Reading, Meditating & Struggling

How then do our minds become transformed? Martin Luther expressed his method for spiritual transformation through reading, meditating and struggling. The first step is reading the Scriptures. Here we expose ourselves to the mind of God. Here in the Word of God we find truth (John 17:17) and this truth has the power to transform our lives. God’s truth uncovers the lies in our lives. Spiritual growth, then, is the process of replacing lies with truth. Jesus put it this way: “The Spirit gives life. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). God’s Word is living and active. It has power to generate life, create faith, produce change, cause miracles, heal hurts, build character, transform circumstances, impart joy, overcome adversity, defeat temptation, infuse hope, release power, cleanse our minds, bring things into being, and guarantee our future forever!

We cannot live without God’s Word. It is the spiritual nourishment you must have to fulfill your purpose in life. Therefore, your attitude towards God’s Word is the most important indicator for how you will grow spiritually. We must receive it, read it, study it, remember it, meditate it and apply it to our lives so it can change the way we think and act.

Essential to spiritual growth is reading and meditating on God’s Word. Another thing we need is to undergo struggles or temptations. The Bible says, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). God has a purpose behind every problem. Besides asking God to deliver us from our troubles, we are also to ask what spiritual lesson God wants us to learn from that circumstance. As any Christian can attest, no significant spiritual growth happens without struggles. God uses problems to draw you closer to Himself. The Bible says, “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; He rescues those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).

Problems don’t automatically produce what God intends. Many people become bitter, rather than better, and never grow up. Therefore, we must respond to troubles in the way God would have us. We must remember that God’s plan is good and that He knows what is best for us. Corrie ten Boom, who survived a Nazi concentration camp explains what helped her through her struggles: “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest!”

Maturing spiritually also involves growing through temptations. Every temptation is an opportunity to grow spiritually. Temptation can be a stumbling block or a stepping stone to spiritual maturity. While temptation the Devil’s primary weapon to destroy you, God uses it to develop you. Every time you choose not to give in to temptation, you grow in the character of Christ; you develop the fruit of the Spirit.

Just as fruit takes time to develop and ripen, spiritual growth only happens slowly over time. God develops the fruit of the Spirit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you’re tempted to express the exact opposite quality! Character development always involves a choice, and temptation provides that opportunity.

For instance, God teaches us to love by putting some unlovely people around us. It takes no character to love people who are lovely and loving to you. Likewise, God teaches us real joy in the midst of sorrow. Happiness depends on external circumstances, but joy is based on your relationship to God. God develops real peace within us, not by making things go the way we planned, but by allowing times of chaos and confusion. Anyone can be peaceful when things are under control and running smoothly. But we learn real peace by choosing to trust God in circumstances when we are tempted to worry or be afraid. God uses the opposite situation of each spiritual fruit to allow us a choice. Every time you overcome a temptation you become more like Jesus!

Spiritual growth takes time. It takes time for us to develop a character that reflects the character of God. It happens when you expose yourself to the truth of God’s word; when you read it and meditate on it. It happens when you allow the Holy Spirit to transform your life through repentance and conforming your mind to that of Christ’s. Spiritual growth happens as you struggle with temptations and difficulties which God uses to develop your character.

The good news about spiritual growth is that God is the one who gives you the motivation and the power to grow. God has poured out His Spirit on all of you and all you need to do is to allow Him to do His work in your life. Who better to direct your life than your Creator who made you and loves you, your Redeemer who gave His life for you, and the Spirit who gives you the joy and peace that surpass all understanding? May God then bless you on your journey towards Christ-like maturity. Amen.

Freedom in Christ: Session 9 Forgiving from the heart

Introduction

On July 7th 2005, Jenny Nicholson, got on the tube at Paddington Station, to travel to the publishing company where she worked. It was a journey she had taken many times, but it was to be her last. She was one of fifty two people killed that day, as terrorists attacked the transport network in London, Jenny Nicholson was only 24 years old.

Just over three weeks later, on the 30th July 2005, Anthony Walker, a young 18 year with a very promising future ahead of him, was brutally murdered by a gang of racist thugs in Merseyside.

The one thing linking these two stories, is that both Jenny Nicholson and Anthony Walker came from Christian families. But the families have responded to their deaths, has been quite different.

The mother of Jenny Nicholson, the Revd Julie Nicholson, found it impossible to forgive her daughter’s attackers, and resigned from her role as Parish Priest. In contrast however, the mother of Anthony Walker, Mrs Gee Walker, publicly forgive her sons killers. She went on to say that she felt no hate for her son’s killers, only sadness, she said, “Jesus commanded, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ So I try to stay focused and my message is peace, love and forgiveness.”
Both stories, illustrate the challenge of forgiveness. As Christians we are called to be prepared to forgive, yet as we see from these two stories, forgiveness can be costly, and difficult
What do we learn about forgiveness?

So why is forgiving people so important?

1 Forgiveness reaches out to the undeserving.

When Jesus was being nailed to the cry, he cried out Father forgive them. The people who had beat Jesus, mocked Him, and nailed Him to the cross did not deserve forgiveness. But Jesus offered it to them, and this shows how forgiveness reaches out to the undeserving.

We are the undeserving. Jesus’ words on the cross, reminds us that God’s forgiveness also extends out to each one of us, and that none of us are beyond the reach of God’s love or forgiveness, now matter what it is we have done. There is nothing that God cannot forgive.

2 We are to follow Jesus’ example

As Christians we are to follow the example of Jesus, we are to be people who are willing to forgive others, to extend the hand of forgiveness to the undeserving, just as we have been forgiven ourselves. But the reality is that, many people find this extremely difficult, like the mother of Jenny Nicholson. To forgive someone who has wronged you is not easy.

You yourself may have been hurt in the past, and you may feel that the person who wronged you doesn’t deserve to be forgiven, but then again did the people who put Jesus to death deserve to be forgiven? No. Do we deserve to be forgiven by God when we sin against him? No. But yet God still forgives us. And we too are called to forgive because God has forgiven us. Paul in Ephesians 4:31-32 writes, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

1. Forgiving is linked to being forgiven ourselves:

We are called to forgive other people, because being prepared to forgive other people is linked to being forgiven ourselves.

In the Lord’s prayer, there is only one petition that has any condition attached to it: it is the petition of forgiveness. Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”, and said “For if you do not forgive others from the heart, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your sins.”

Notice first of all, that Jesus assumed we would forgive others. Forgive us, AS WE forgive others… To forgive as Christians is not an optional extra, it is something we are meant to do. Notice also that our forgiveness in effect depends on our own willingness to forgive others. If we refuse to forgive those who have hurt us, it will have an impact upon our relationship with God. Jesus said, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

2 Because it is part of our spiritual growth

Another reason why we are to be prepared to forgive others, is that the more we learn and practice forgiveness, the more we become like God, who himself is merciful and forgiving. As Christians what enables us to forgive is the knowledge that we ourselves have been forgiven by God. God has forgiven us, not because we deserve it, but because he is full of grace and mercy. Those

3 Because it is in our own interest

An unwillingness to forgive people can have a detrimental effect upon us. If we hold on to resentment, anger or hatred, it can damage us, far more than the person we are unwilling to forgive. For example, I am sure we can all think of people, whose lives have been corrupted by the strong sense of bitterness and anger that they have felt towards a person or a situation. To refuse to forgive someone is a bit like walking past a fisherman and getting snagged by a fish hook in your cheek. How do get rid of the pain? By leaving the hook in place? No, by taking it out!

If we do not forgive, we shall not enter into the all the joy and freedom God wants for us. Unwillingness to forgive ties us to the past, so that we cannot move forward.

Reluctance to forgive

Sometimes we may be reluctant to forgive. It may be that we are afraid that if we do forgive, we will in effect by saying:
• That the offence didn’t really hurt me
• That I and my feelings don’t matter much
• That we believe the offender had a valid excuse to hurt us
• That the offender need not face any consequences for their actions
• That it is okay to hurt me again.

But forgiving someone doesn’t apply any of these things. Just as when Jesus said from the cross, Father forgive them, he wasn’t saying that our sin which took him to the cross wasn’t significant, it was, but he still forgave us.

What forgiving involves

So what does the process of forgiving involve?

Forgiveness doesn’t mean denying our feelings of hurt, anger, outrage, loss, but acknowledging them, and learning to let go of them so we can move forwards in freedom. And it means refusing to seek revenge, if you wrong me, and I forgive you, I shouldn’t then go and look for ways in which I can get my own back on you.

How can you forgive someone when you have been really hurt, especially when we have been hurt or let down by those who are closest to us?
But there are some things we can do which can help us.
• We can talk about it, especially to a wise and trusted friend.
• We can try to understand why the person who has upset us has acted in a certain way. For example, Professor Sheila Hollins, the mother of Abigail Witchalls, the young mother who was left paralysed after been attacked whilst walking with her young son, was able to forgive the attacker, Richard Cazaly, who later committed suicide. Professor Hollins said “His death is the real tragedy in this story because he lost his life and almost certainly this was the consequence of the mind-altering drugs he was using." She was able to forgive this man, in part because she understood the effect these drugs had upon him.
• We can pray:
1 Pray for ourselves, by sharing our feelings with God, and asking for his help and grace to lead us to a point where we feel we can forgive.
2 Pray for the person who has hurt us that God will bless them- this can be difficult but helpful. Jesus said pray for those who persecute you.
3 And we can pray that God will somehow use what has happened
for our good.

Forgiveness is not just a one off event, it is an ongoing thing. In Matthew 18:21 Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" To which Jesus replies, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. In other words, it is an ongoing thing, and for some people, the process of forgiveness may take many years.

Corrie Ten Boom

There may be some people here today, thinking I know I should forgive, but I don’t think I can. I want to finish by telling the story of Corrie Ten Boom, and how she had to face the challenge of forgiving someone who had hurt her. Corrie was sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp along with 9 members of her family, for sheltering Jews feeling from Nazi persecution in Holland. Although Corrie survived the camp, many of her family didn’t. In 1947 she came face to face with one of her former guards, and this is what she wrote about that encounter.

“Memories of the concentration camp came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment of skin.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: "A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!" It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

"You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard there. But since that time I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein--" again the hand came out--"will you forgive me?"

And I stood there--and could not. My sister Betsie had died in that place--could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it--I knew that.

Still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling." And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. "I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!"

For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.
Conclusion

Forgiveness is to set a captive free and then to realise that you were the captive. God commands us to forgive because he loves us. He knows how refusal to forgive leads to the corrosive and destructive influence of bitterness, and causes us to miss out on the abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

The greatest symbol we have for forgiveness is the cross of Jesus. The cross also reveals to us just how costly forgiveness can be, but also how necessary it is. Mother Teresa said, If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. In Christ’s suffering on the cross that not only do we see true love revealed, but also the power of forgiveness to bring healing & wholeness. This is what Corrie ten Boom discovered when she met her former capture, and this is what we too can discover if we are people who are prepared to forgive.

Freedom in Christ Session 8: Handling emotions well

Introduction

This morning we are continuing our Freedom in Christ study, looking at the important issue of how to handle our emotions well.

We can’t directly control how we feel

How do our emotions work?

If you think for a moment about the way in which you brain controls your body, there are some things you can and you cannot control. For example, when you choose to speak, or move part of your body, you are in control of that action. But the brain is also in control of things which you do not have direct control over, like for example causing your heart to beat or to regulate breathing. As you sit there listening to me, you do not have to consciously think about breathing, it just happens.

The same is true when it comes to our emotions, there are some things we can control and other things we cannot control. For example, if I told you to like someone you simply detest, you cannot simply change your emotions in an instance, it doesn’t happen that way.

So how do we handle our emotions well? Although we are not able to will ourselves to change how we feel, we can change our emotions over time, by choosing to change what we can control, by how we believe and behave.

Our feelings reveal what we really believe

Your emotions are to your soul what your ability to feel pain is to your body.

Suppose someone had the power to take away the sensation of pain. Would this be something you’d like?

It would be tempting wouldn’t it, especially if you suffer from chronic pain. But it would be dangerous. For instance, leprosy is not a disease of the flesh but a disease of the nervous system. People who suffer leprosy loose feeling, and so they don’t sense pain when they burn themselves or cut themselves, and this is why the damage is caused. Pain actually acts as a warning to us when we’ve hurt ourselves.

Our emotions can operate in the same way. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you never felt depressed, or anxious or angry? But these emotions give us important feedback to warn us that something is not right.

Feelings are a result of what we choose to believe

Although we can’t control our emotions directly, what we feel is in a general sense the result of what we believe or choose to think.

The trouble is that, if what you believe does not reflect truth, then what you feel will not reflect reality.

Suppose you work for a company that is ‘downsizing’, and people are being laid off. On your desk on Monday morning is a note from your boss. He wants to see you at 10.30 on Friday morning. If you think you are going to be laid off, you will probably get angry. If you are uncertain, you may feel anxious. By Thursday you are depressed because you have convinced yourself that you are going to lose your job. By Friday morning you are an emotional mess – all because of what you were thinking, and none of it was based on reality. At the meeting your boss surprises you by giving you a pay rise. Now how would you feel? You spent all week feeling bad because you did not know the truth.

Lamentations 3 illustrates well the relationship between beliefs and emotions. Jeremiah is having a bad day – he is utter despair because he believes, quite wrongly, that God is the cause of all his physical problems.

I am the man who has seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me… He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones.

Jeremiah’s conclusion in verse 18 is: So I say “My splendour is gone and all that I hoped from the Lord.”

What was Jeremiah’s problem? Simply that what he believed about God wasn’t actually true! God had not afflicted him.

Then Jeremiah has a change in perspective.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion therefore I will wait for him.” (Lamentations 3:19-24)

What changed for Jeremiah? Was it his circumstances? No! The only thing that changed was in his mind: how he looked at his circumstances.

Life’s events don’t determine who you are or what you feel – it’s your perception of those events.

If what you believe does not reflect the truth, then what you feel will not reflect reality.

The more we commit ourselves to the truth and choose to believe what God says is true, the more we will see our circumstances from God’s perspective and the less our feelings will run away with us.

Changing how we feel

So the big question: if we are overwhelmed by difficult circumstances from the past or the present, which cause us to be plagued by negative emotions, what can we do about it?

Let’s look at a situation in the Bible which appeared to be overwhelming: the Israelite army versus Goliath and the Philistine army (1 Samuel 17). For the Israelite army the situation seemed impossible, how could they defeat this army, particularly when they had Goliath.

But then David comes along, pulls out his sling and says, “How dare you challenge the armies of the living God?” and he kills Goliath.

Both David and the Israelite army were confronted by the same situation. One group saw the giant in relationship to themselves, but David saw the giant in relationship to God. Which saw the situation as it really was?

You are not affected so much by your environment and circumstances as by how you see your environment and circumstances.

Can faith in God make that kind of difference in our lives? Absolutely! And it’s not just blind faith – it’s simply recognising what is actually true.

When you are confronted with a situation and feel overwhelmed, where does the stress come from? From the stressful situation? No – not directly. The main cause of stress comes from the way in which your mind interprets what is happening.

The main cause of stress is that we have come to believe through past experiences or failures that we can’t do anything about the difficult situation – we have learned a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. But as a Christian we are not helpless or hopeless. Healing comes by changing that sense of helplessness and hopelessness, by changing the way we think, what the Bible calls renewing your mind, understanding what is really true about God rather than what you experiences have caused you to believe, and committing yourself to believe that what God says is true even if it doesn’t feel true.

The principle in the Bible is: believe the truth and live the truth by faith, and when we do this our emotions respond accordingly. Jesus said, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” (John 13:17). You don’t feel your way into good behaviour. You behave your way into good feelings.

We start by choosing to believe the truth, which works itself out in our behaviour, and this over time leads to a change in our feelings.

Learning to handle emotions well

Your emotions are like the red warning light on the dashboard of your car. They are there to alert you to a potentially serious problem under the bonnet.

There are essentially three ways to reacting when the light comes on. You could ignore the warning light – that is suppression, you could explode in anger & smash the light – this is indiscriminate expression, or you could look under the bonnet – that is acknowledgement

Cover it up (suppression)

Suppression is when we consciously ignore our feelings or choose not to deal with them. The trouble with this is that if we try to bottle up our feelings too long, they can come to dominate our life, and this is an unhealthy way to deal with our emotions.

Feelings don’t die when you bury them, they are buried alive and they surface in some unhealthy way. It’s like trying to bury a mole – it will just burrow it’s way up to the surface again. Suppressing our emotions is physically unhealthy.

Explode (indiscriminate expression)

Another unhealthy way of responding to emotions is thoughtlessly to express everything you feel.

The problem with indiscriminate expression is that it is not healthy for those around us. It may temporarily feel good to you to ‘get things off your chest’, but it could be hurtful to other people like you spouse, children or friends.

James teaches that “everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.” (James 1:19-20

Be Honest

So what should we do when the red light comes on? When we feel angry, anxious or depressed? The healthy response is to be honest and acknowledge how we feel, and this begins with acknowledging our emotions with God. God knows the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, and so we can be entirely open and honest with him, we can even express our anger with him, because nothing will take his love from us.

When we open up with God, just as when we open up with others, when we pour out our pain and feelings, it acts as an emotional catharsis.

Jesus was emotionally honest. He wept over the city of Jerusalem and at the grave of Lazarus. In the Garden of Gethsemane he said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Mark 14:34). Now if the Lord of the universe needs to be expressive and honest like that, what about you and me.

We need to be honest with God, if we are to have an open relationship with him.

Handing past traumas

We have been talking about managing day to day emotions, but what about major traumas from the past?

All of us have had traumatic experiences that have scarred us emotionally and left us with emotional baggage – a fearful experience, loss of a loved one, some form or abuse. These experiences are often deeply buried in our memories, but surface when triggered by some event in the present. People simply try to avoid present events that trigger those kinds of feeling. “I am not going there if so and so is there.” “I don’t want to talk about that subject right now.” But God doesn’t want emotional pain from our past to influence us negatively today.

When you suffered negative experiences – violence, abuse, rejection or whatever – you mentally processed it at the time it happened. It almost certainly caused you to believe some things about God and yourself. “I couldn’t resist the abuse – I’m powerless, I’m a victim.” “Those bullies told me I was rubbish – I guess I am.” “My dad never has time for me – I’m not important.”

Mental strongholds distort our understanding of who we are and who God is. We remain in bondage to the past, not because of the trauma itself, but because of the lies we believed at the time. It’s like a Land Rover driving across a muddy field day after day making deep ruts. Those lies become like deep ruts in our minds. If we don’t actively steer out of them by choosing truth, we will continue to live according to the same old patterns.

As children of God, we are not primarily products of our past. We are products of Christ’s work on the cross and his resurrection. Nobody can fix our past, but we can be free from it. We can re-evaluate our past from the perspective of who we are now in Christ. From this truth perspective, God sets us free as we forgive from our hearts those people who have offended us.

We all carry around within us emotions of hurt and pain, things in our lives that we would like to be rid off. And God speaks to us, saying, “I want to give you beauty for your ashes, oil for joy for your mourning, a garment of praise for your spirit of heaviness.” We can give God the ashes in our lives, and in exchange God gives us his beauty.

Freedom in Christ Session 7: The battle for our minds

The following sermon is taken from the Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course by Neil Anderson & Steve Goss.

Today the title for our talk is ‘The Battle For Our Minds’. And I want to look this morning at one particular aspect of the way our minds our thinking is challenged and influenced.

In Ephesians 6:10, Paul writes, Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

I suspect that all of us here want to be the best Christian possible; we want to live the best life possible. Paul says, if you want to be that person, if you want to be strong in the Lord, then you’ll need to understand what it means to put on the full armour of God. Why? Because in verse 11 Paul writes: “so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”

I don’t know how you react to that statement? I suspect if I was to ask you what are you struggling with at the moment, people would talk about financial issues they are having to face, or issues at work, health concerns, or difficulties in relationships. I don’t think many people would say, “Well Simon, I’m really struggling against the dark powers that are at work in the world.”

But Paul says behind the physical world that you can see, there is another world you cannot see, and that is a spiritual world. And this spiritual world which we cannot see, affects the physical world we do see.

The tendency of those of us brought up with a Western worldview is to dismiss the reality of the spiritual world. But running throughout the Bible, we read that there is a struggle going on, a spiritual battle. It is a battle between kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. A struggle between lies and the truth, it’s a struggle between what’s wrong and what is right. And it reaches its great climax in the book of Revelation when there is a big show down between the Christ and the Antichrist, between good and evil.

We may think that as Christian’s we are immune from this struggle, but we’re not. We’re in the very middle of it, this is why Paul says as Christians ‘we need to put on the armour of God’.

So we need to understand who it is we are struggling against, and what it means to put on the armour of God.

Satan the Deceiver

When we start talking about the Devil, it is one of those topics that make people very uneasy, after all it is not a topic we hear about much in church. But I believe that as Christians we need to take the Devil seriously, because Jesus did, referring to the Devil as the prince (ruler) of this world.” (John 12:31).

So, who is Satan and how does he work?

With our way of looking at the world, we tend to divide the world into “natural” and “supernatural”, with God and Satan being part of the “supernatural”. The Bible, however, divides it differently and makes the distinction between “Creator” and “created”. Like us, Satan is a created being, whereas God is the Creator. There is no comparison between the two. They are not equal and opposite powers or anything remotely like that, though Satan would like you to think that they are. In fact, it has been said to compare Satan to God is like comparing an ant to an atomic bomb.

Because of this Satan’s power and authority cannot even begin to compare to God’s. In fact Satan has been completely disarmed and defeated, through the cross of Christ.

How Satan Works

Jesus described the devil as a theif. He said, ‘The thief comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy.” The devil’s ultimate aim is to destroy our lives. “But” Jesus said, “I came that you might have life, and life in all its fullness.” Jesus wants therefore to protect us from going the wrong way.

One of the ways in which Satan works is by putting thoughts or doubts into our minds. For example, in Genesis 3, we see how the Devil tempts Adam and Eve. The first thing he does, is to plant seeds of doubt into Eve’s mind. In Genesis chapter 2, God gives permission to Adam and Eve to eat from any tree from the garden of Eden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the devil in the form of a serpent, says to Eve, ‘Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ Doubt is always the devil’s starting point, because the thing he doesn’t want us to have is faith. The devil is always trying to make us doubt God, and to undermine us. The Devil whispers to us, “If you are a Christian why did x, y or z just happen?” He attempts to sow seeds of doubt within us, because he want us to doubt who we are in Christ, because then it is so much easier to accuse us and tempt us. And when we are full of doubt, and uncertainty, it becomes much easier for us to give in, to throw in the towel, we pray less, we drop out of home groups, and we don’t go to church as often.

What Satan is trying to do, is to take our focus away from God. For example, in 1 Chronicles 21:1 we read “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” You may ask, well what is wrong with that? But what the Devil was doing, was tempting David to take his confidence away from God and put it in his own resources, counting how many troops he had. What the Devil was doing was drawing David’s focus away from God. So David’s decision about going to war, would be based on how many people he had in his army, not on whether God was going to give him the victory or not. Satan encourages David to take his eyes off God, “Go on David, stop trusting in God, count your army to make sure you’ve got enough men to win the battle.” And so David’s gaze began to slip from the Creator down. And did David realise that it was Satan who was playing a trick on him? No! Because if he had, he would have been wise to his schemes and told him to get lost, because David was a godly man most of the time. David thought the idea was his own, and that is why he embraced it. And we need to be careful that some of the ideas that come into our mind, that we harbour as our own are in line with the truth.

When it comes to temptation, the Devil is again very subtle, he knows where the areas of weakness are in our lives, and that is where he attacks us. For example, think about one of the ways the Devil tempted Jesus whilst in the wildness. After a long fast, lasting forty days, when Jesus was weak and hungry, the Devil tempts him to turn stones into bread. The Devil knew that Jesus was hungry, and at that tempts him with that very basic physical need. The Devil will try and tempt us with the things that we struggle with the most. It might be with food, or drink, unhealthy or inapproriate relationships, the opposite sex, money, etc., etc. He whispers things into our mind, saying “Go on, no one will know, you deserve it, it will make you feel good, it doesn’t matter.” But as soon as we give into these temptations, Satan accuses us, because he is also the accuser. “How can you call yourself a Christian, and do that” And he can plant thoughts into our minds like “I’m stupid”, “I’m no good”, “I’ll never change”, “God doesn’t love me”.

And what he is attempting is to get us caught in a spiral of temptation and accusation. The Devil is trying to do, is get a foot hold in our lives. The Greek word for “foothold” is topos, which literally means “place.” So for example, in Ephesians 4:26 Paul writes, In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Anger itself is not sinful – it’s just an emotion, but if we don’t deal with it properly it can turn to bitterness and we give the Devil a “place” a “foothold” in our lives.

What the Devil seeks to do, is to lead us into sin, so he can gain a point of influence in our lives.

The good news is that these footholds can be overcome in Christ. So how do we stand up against the Devil.

Our Defence

Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan, he has defeated Satan at the cross and disarmed him. Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension ensure that all authority on earth and heaven has been given to Him.

What is Jesus’ position now?

Ephesians 1:19-22 tells us that Jesus is seated at God’s right hand, the ultimate seat of power and authority, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion.” God has placed all things under His feet and we are told that Jesus is now “head over everything.” Why, because he is part of the Creator, not the created. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-3, 14)

So what is our position?

Ephesians 2:6 “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

We are seated with Jesus, far above Satan, and as Christians we have been given authority over the kingdom of darkness, because of our position in Christ. Jesus says, “All authority, in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:18-19)

We have God’s power as long as we are filled (controlled) by the Holy Spirit, which is why Paul wrote, “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” (Ephesians 6:10). When we live in God’s power, and rely upon his resources, Satan has no control over us, he cannot touch us, but if we rely upon our own resources or power then we open a door to allow him to attack us.

Even though Satan is defated, he still “prowls around, like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” as 1 Peter 5:8 puts it. Therefore Paul tells us to put on the armour of God and stand firm. You put on armour when you go into battle, to protect yourself. We are to put on the belt of truth, that is to know that we are in Christ. We’re not to listen to the Devil’s lies or deception, we listen to God’s word. We are to put on the breastplate of rightousness, so that when Satan flings accusations at us, they do not stick, because we are in a right relationship with God. We put on the shield of faith, so that we can stand against Satan’s assualt on our minds.

James 4:7 says, “Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” As long as you are submitting to God, then the devil will have no choice but to flee. This applies to every Christian no matter how weak and feeble you feel or how short a time you have been a Christian. Every believer has the same authority and power in Christ over the spiritual world, because we have been raised up with Christ to the heavenly realms.

Do not be frightened

Therefore we are not to be frightened. Satan wants you to be frightened of him because he wants to be worshipped above God. But the truth is that as Christians we have absolutely no cause to fear him, because we’re in Christ, and nothing can separate us from him.

On the contrary, the reason Satan flees from us when we resist him, is because he knows that the extent of the power and authority that we have in Christ.

Turn on the Light

Satan has no power over us, unless he can deceive us into believing that he does – and we only give him that power when we fail to believe the truth.

We are to set our minds on Christ, because when we do this, we expose Satan’s lies and deceipts. Satan’s lies cannot withstand God’s truth any more than night can withstand the rising sun. When you go into a dark room, and you don’t want it to be dark anymore, you don’t shoo the darkness away, you put the light on. And in our minds, we ask God to turn on the light, so that we can know the truth and see the truth, so that my heart and mind can be set free, and focused on Jesus.

Jesus says. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31) “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) When you put on the armour of God, the first thing you do is put on the belt of truth.

Knowing the truth of who we are in Christ, enables us know the difference between God’s truth and the Devil’s lies.

The way bank tellers are trained to recognise counterfeit currency is by carefully studying over and over again the real thing. They get to know what genuine notes are like so intimately that they are able to spot fakes when they come along. In the same way, our defenence against the Devil’s lies and deceptions is to acquiant ourselves intimately with the truth. To turn on the light in our minds, to focus on what is good, trustworthy and true.

I want to finish with Paul’s words to the Philippians (4:6-8).
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Freedom in Christ Session 6: Demolishing strongholds

The following sermon is taken from the Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course by Neil Anderson & Steve Goss.

Introduction

Over the past couple of months, as part of our Freedom in Christ preaching series, we have been thinking about the important question of who we are in Christ.

Get Volunteer and put on t-shirt

This is who we are in Christ. You probably can’t read what’s on the t-shirt so I’ll read it to you.

o We are God’s child, we belong to God, we are his family
o We are loved
o We are God’s masterpiece
o We are Significant
o We are Holy
o We are Beautiful
o We are Forgiven
o We are Unique
o We are Accepted
o We are Free

We are all of these things. Isn’t this incredible!

But I have a question for you when you woke up this morning and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, did you feel like God’s masterpiece?

Ladies, when you go shopping, and try on a pair of trousers or a new dress, and turn round and look in the mirror, do you think ‘beautiful!’

Men, when you are passed over for a promotion again, perhaps again, do you feel significant? These are all the things that the Bible says we are in Christ. But today we are going to think about something a bit different.

I have another t-shirt that ?????? will probably not enjoy wearing quite as much.

This is a different t-shirt, and I wonder if you can relate to some of the words written on here.

o Alone
o Rejected
o Useless
o Smelly
o A waste of space
o Unlovable
o Too quiet
o Too loud
o Ugly
o Stupid
o Worthless
o Fat

These are all things that perhaps you can relate to. They do something that the t-shirt illustrates quite well, they cover up all of the things that God says about us. Can you for example see that ????? is loved? No, because it’s covered by the word ‘Unlovable’. The Bible says that we’re all beautiful, but that is covered up, because some how, by some way we can think that we’re not beautiful.

Thank volunteer, ask them to sit down, but keep the t-shirt on.

Just think for a moment what is the most horrible thing someone has ever said to you? There are all kinds of things in our lives that have been said about us, most of which is untrue. We are all that first t-shirt, that’s what the Bible says: we are loved, fearfully and wonderfully made, God’s masterpiece, we are not what the second t-shirt says. But most of our lives we walk around believing what the second t-shirt says rather than what the first t-shirt says. And in fact that covers up everything that we are in Christ. So rather than believing we’re loved, we believe we’re unlovable. And that is what the first reading from Corinthians was about, it says that these things are strongholds.

This is a definition of a stronghold: “A mind-set impregnated with hopelessness that causes us to accept as unchangeable situations that we know are contrary to the will of God.” That is what that t-shirt illustration demonstrates. We believe the things that are on the outside t-shirt rather than the things on the inside t-shirt.

One of the reasons this happens, is that rather than believing what God says about us, we believe what others say about us. So for example, maybe as children someone said something negative about us, like “You’re useless”, “You’re a failure”, “You’re ugly”, and we go about believing that untruth.

Neil Anderson puts it like this: Strongholds are mental habit patterns of thought that are not consistent with God’s word. They are all the things we believe that just don’t match with the things God says about us. What God wants is for us to believe who we really are, he wants us to believe in the truth, and walk in the freedom he has given us. But all these strongholds, the things written on the outside t-shirt hide the truth.

I think for many of us, our self image of who we are, has been shaped by wrong information. These things the Bible calls strongholds.

How Strongholds Are Established

Our Environment

We can develop ways of thinking from our environment, our family, community, schools and friends, all have an effect upon us. In our early years of life, we learn all sorts of things. I find it fascinating watching Tomek & Adam growing up as they explore the world, and learn about who they are and the environment in which they live. The people we meet, the friends we make, our first job, all these things shape who we are and teach us things, but not always positive things. Our families and communities can make a huge difference in our patterns of behaviour.

Just to give you an example, I want to tell you the story of a family of three boys, whose father is an alcoholic and is violent towards them. When their father comes home drunk these three children develop different ways of coping. The eldest one feels he can stand up to his dad: “lay one hand on me and you’ll regret it!” The middle one accommodates: “Hi dad, can I get you something?” The third runs away and hides in the wardrobe. Twenty years later, their father is long gone and these three children are adults. When they are confronted by a hostile situation, how do they respond? The chances are that the eldest one will fight, the middle one will accommodate and the youngest one will run away.

The environment will live in and grow up in can create the strongholds in our lives.

Traumatic Experiences

Traumatic experiences can also set up strongholds because of their intensity: for example death in a home or a divorce, and so forth.

These traumatic experiences in themselves don’t produce strongholds, but the lies we believe as a result of it.

These traumatic experiences can really make these strongholds take hold of our lives.

For example, if someone is in an abusive relationship, they can end up believing the lies that they are helpless, useless, and always the victim. None of these things are true about that person, but they believe that they are, and they shape not only the present but also the future, their personality, how they cope with life.

A mental stronghold is a lie based on past experiences that can be torn down in Christ.

The problem with strongholds is that if what you believe does not reflect truth, then what you feel will not reflect reality. You may feel rejection when you are not rejected. You may feel helpless to change when actually you’re not.

Temptation

Strongholds are also formed or reinforced when we repeatedly give into temptation. Every temptation is an attempt to get you to live your life that is not relying on God. Temptations come from different kinds of places, but ultimately the Bible tells us very clearly that Satan is a tempter. The thing about Satan is that he has observed us, and he knows those weak areas of our lives where we are most tempted, whatever that may be. We are all vulnerable in different places. But the Bible says this, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

So where is that way of escape when we are tempted? The answer is right at the beginning.- when the tempting thought first comes into your mind, that is when we should say no to it. In our reading from 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul writes that we are to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” in other words, to ask God when thoughts come into our head, Lord is this true?

To give an example, suppose you area of weakness was pornography. And as you are sitting at home at night, you remember you don’t have any milk for your cereal tomorrow morning. There are two places you could go: a corner shop or a petrol station that sells milk and pornography. Which one are you going to go to? Your chance to make the right choice comes right at the beginning. As soon as you decide to go to the garage rather than the corner shop, you are on a slippery slope. Take every thought captive, that’s what the Bible says. But if you start not doing that, it becomes much harder to break the temptation, God always gives us a way of escape.

You mind is like an airport and you are the air traffic controller. A lot of thoughts ask for permission to land. But you have complete control over which will land and which will be turned away. You have to decide right at the outset. The moment you give a tempting thought permission to land, the chances of your being able to turn it away reduce significantly. Take every thought captive and turn it over to God.

Tempting thoughts that are not dealt with straight away lead on to actions. Repeating the action will result in a habit. Exercising the habit long enough produces a stronghold.

Effects of strongholds

Faulty view of reality

Strongholds affect the way we view the world. Things become not what we know to be true but how we feel they should be. But that’s not what the Bible wants us to do. For example in Isaiah 55:9 the Lord declares, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than you ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

God really knows better than we do, he knows infinitely more than we do. And his view on reality is much clearer than our view on reality. And therefore we need to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5) We don’t lean on our own understanding because it is false, we are always tempted to do this, and try and live life the way we think God wants us to. But actually we need to know the reality God wants us to live.

Bad Choices

Strongholds also affect the choices we make. How we live. If we are trying to make decisions, how do we make them? Do we make them in the light of what God says about who we are and the way we should live, or do we make them in the light of the way we perceive life?

Strongholds often push us to make bad choices, because they are always based on false information. A stronghold will predispose us to ignore the “Danger” signs that God has posted, making us think that we know best what choices to make.

Every day we have an opportunity to live the way God wants us to, but often we ignore than because of the affect strongholds have on our lives.

So what do we do about these strongholds? If they are affecting our view of reality and our choices what can we do about them?

Demolishing Strongholds

The truth is that we don’t have to put up with strongholds in our lives. Paul writes, “For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

The world we are living in is waging war at us, and usually it is our own strongholds that are waging war at us. The Bible gives us a few clear ways we can sort this out.

If you have a computer, chances are you also have a virus checker on the computer. One of the first things my computer does when I start it up, is that it checks for viruses. We need to do that too – we need to uncover and deal with any footholds the enemy may have in our lives. We need to open up ourselves to the Lord, and ask him to show us what strongholds there are in our lives, and to ask for the Holy Spirit to bring these things before God, so that he can deal with these corrupting influences in our lives, and so we can see life his way.

The Holy Spirit helps us to realise that the things that have happened to us in our lives, do not have to shape us in the way that they have been. The Holy Spirit helps us to check these viruses, to realise why these strongholds exist, and what they are.

The next thing we need to do is re-programme our mind. Once we have checked for viruses, we need to live in the way that we know is true, rather than the way we often feel. So instead of believing that we are useless, we have to believe that we are God’s workmanship, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Re-programming our minds may mean dealing with some habits, having to face things that have always been temptations for us.

Finally, we need to take every thought captive. When we are tempted to believe a lie, we need to confront it with the truth. When we are tempted to believe I am unloved, we need to believe that we are loved. When we are tempted to feel angry, we need to ask, “God fill me with peace.” When we are tempted to do something that we know is wrong, we need to ask for God’s help in that moment.

The reality is that we all have strongholds in our lives. Invite person with t-shirt to front of church.

What God wants us to do, through checking for viruses, reprogramming our minds, and taking every thought captive, is he wants us to get rid of the outside t-shirt, and he wants us to believe the things on the first t-shirt. This is the way you were created, this is who you really are. Are we going to believe those things, or the other things, because if we believe the truth of God our lives become very, very different.

Freedom in Christ Session 5: Our daily choice

The following sermon is taken from the Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course by Neil Anderson & Steve Goss.

Introduction

How often have you heard someone describe a Christian as a ‘good person’. But as I hope we all realise, there is much more to being a Christian than simply being a good person, after all as Christians we don’t have the monopoly on being good! But there is a perception that many people have, that once you become a Christian you automatically become a much better person, and do everything right. But, as I am sure we all know, it doesn’t work like that. We want to please God, but we often fail to live the Christian life as we want to, and often when we become Christians we don’t necessarily feel that different. For example, some of our bad habits don’t instantly disappear. In fact our struggle with sin may even seem to intensify. Why?

We need to understand what happened when we become Christians, what did not happen, and how to live by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.

What did happen

The moment we become Christians, some dramatic changes take place.

We have a new heart and a new Spirit within us

We have a new heart whose desires are oriented towards God, rather than self or sin. Of course, this doesn’t automatically stop us from sinning, but when we do sin we become much more aware of it because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

We have new life “in Christ”

When we become a Christian, we become a new creation, we become alive in Christ.

We have a new master

Our new spiritual authority becomes God, he is the one who now guides and directs our life.

What Did Not Happen

Our “flesh” was not taken away

When we become Christians how we think and react to situations doesn’t change straight away, it takes time, as we train ourselves to think in a way that is in line with what God would want us to think and do. This is a process that the Bible calls “renewing our minds” (Romans 12:2), choosing to throw out the old ways of thinking and behaving, which have no reference to God, and replacing them with God’s ways.

Sin did not die

As Christians we are still faced with the temptation of sin. When we become a Christian, sin does not die – far from it. In fact, it is still enormously appealing, and it tempts us every day to meet our legitimate needs for significance, security and acceptance through things other than God.

So how do we defeat the power of sin? The bad news is that we ourselves can do nothing to defeat sin. BUT, the good news is that Christ has already done it for us! The key to freedom, is knowing the truth about sin.

Paul in Romans, makes the point before we became Christians we were slaves to sin, but now as Christians, sin has no power over us any more. We therefore are to consider ourselves to be alive to God and dead to sin (Romans 6:11). Paul is helping us to grasp the truth that we died with Christ and that His death ended our relationship with sin.

But, just like Paul, we find that whenever we want to do good, evil rears its ugly head and tries to throw us off course – Paul describes this as the “law of sin” (Romans 7:23).

So, if the law of sin is still effective, how do we overcome it? By a greater law: “Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2)

For example, there’s no way I can fly because every time I try, the law of gravity keeps me stuck to the earth and I haven’t found a way to stop it working. What can I do? Well, I can get into an aeroplane and I can fly! I overcome the law of gravity by the laws of aerodynamics and the power of the engine. It’s not as if the law of gravity has stopped working but simply that I have taken advantage of a more powerful law to overcome it.

The law that is now at work in you as a child of God is the law of the Spirit of life and it is far greater than the law of sin and death. Whereas before we had no choice but to stay on the ground in my sin, now we can choose to fly above the law of sin and death!

Our Choices

It’s becoming clear that we face some very real choices:
Even though we no longer have to think and react according to our flesh, we can choose to do so
Even though sin has no power over us, we can choose to give in to it

So, although nothing can change the fact of who we now are, and God’s love for us, the outcome of that in our day to day lives is very much down to our individual choice.

Although, through God’s grace and mercy, when we become Christians we become new people, we can very often continue to live in a way more akin to a non Christian. In other words, through the choices we make we try to live independently from God following the prompting of our own hearts desires, rather than of God’s Spirit. But when we do this, rather than experience the peace, joy and love knowing that we are accepted and loved by God, and realising our worth in Christ, we can be plagued by feelings of inferiority, insecurity, inadequacy, guilt, worry and doubt.

Barriers to Growth

But the wonderful truth is that God has given us everything we need to live a life that pleases Him (2 Peter 1:3). Therefore we simply need to learn to use what we already have to deal with the barriers to growth in our lives. Here are some of those barriers:

Ignorance
Very often Christians are not aware of who they are in Christ.

Deception
In order to grow we need to be firmly rooted in Christ. As Paul writes in Colossians 2:6-7, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

Paul goes on to warn us saying: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

It is easy for us to be led astray by deceptive ways of thinking. Common areas of deception include thoughts like:
- “this might work for others, but my case is different and it won’t work for me.”
- “I could never have faith like so and so.”
- “God could never use me”

Unresolved personal and spiritual conflicts
For many, the reason that we do not move on is that we simply have too many unresolved personal and spiritual conflicts in our lives. May be something has happened in our lives, for example we’ve been hurt or let down by others, and if not dealt with, this can hold us back from growing and maturing as Christians.

Choosing to Walk by the Spirit Every Day

Once we have committed ourselves to believe truth no matter what we feel, and we have dealt with any unresolved spiritual conflicts, we are genuinely free to make a choice every day. We can choose to obey either the promptings of the flesh or the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The two are in direct opposition to each other.

There was a man who had a very difficult childhood in which he was largely ignored by his parents and sometimes abused by them. He became a Christian and later a church leader, but the pain from his past did not go away and he turned to alcohol to try to escape from it. It destroyed his marriage and his ministry. After years of alcoholism he got hold of the truth that the power of sin was broken in his life because of who he is as a child of God, and he walked away from the alcoholism, resolved his spiritual conflicts and found his freedom in Christ. Yet, he says that there is not a day in his life when his flesh does not tell him that he is “a useless waste of space.” His fleshy thought patterns have not gone away. But he has learned to make a choice every day simply not to listen to them – no matter how strongly they might come over – because they are based on lies. Instead he makes a daily choice to listen to the promptings of the Spirit, and walk according to what is actually true.

So What Does Walking By The Spirit Actually Mean?

Walking by the Spirit is Not:

Just a good feeling
Sometimes the Holy Spirit comes upon us in such a way that we feel full of joy. That’s a lovely gift from God when it happens, but being filled with the Spirit day by day is much more than that. If we base our life on having a good feeling, we’ll be continually looking for “the key” to feel better and we’ll be chasing God continually for a new experience – whereas He wants us to take hold of what He has already done and live accordingly.

A licence to do whatever we want
Some think that freedom means being able to do whatever we want, as if we can cast off all the guidelines God has given to help us lead responsible lives. But actually that leads to bondage. Walking by the Spirit prevents you from doing whatever you please: “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other.” (Galatians 5:17)

Legalism (slavishly obeying a set of rules)
The Old Testament law revealed the moral nature of God but nobody could live up to it. The point of the law was to lead us to Christ by teaching us our need for Him (Galatians 3:24). Yet so many of us, even as Christians, tend to live as if we still have to obey certain rules in order to be accepted by God or to be a “good Christian”. But Paul writes in Galatians (5:18) “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Walking by the Spirit enables us to live a righteous life by faith.

Walking By The Spirit Is:

True freedom
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17)

We have the freedom to be the people God created us to be and to make the choice to live by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Being led
In the West we drive our sheep or use sheep dogs to chase them. In Israel the shepherd leads from the front. The sheep recognise his voice and follow him. Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)

Walking at God’s pace in the right direction
“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Nothing will get done if we expect God to do it all, and neither can we accomplish anything lasting for eternity by ourselves. Being yoked to Jesus doesn’t work if only one is pulling. Only Jesus knows the right pace and the right direction to walk. When we walk with Him we learn that His ways are not hard and we will find rest for our souls.

How Can We Tell If We Are Walking By The Spirit

Just as you can tell a tree by its fruit, you can tell whether you are walking by the Spirit by the fruit of your life. If you’re being led by the Spirit, your life will be increasingly marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

If you are living according to your flesh, that too will become evident in your life.

If you have become aware that you are living by the flesh, what is the appropriate response? Simply to confess it and to invite the Holy Spirit to fill you, and to start living according to your new identity in Christ.

Walking by the Spirit is a moment by moment, day by day, experience, you can choose every moment of every day either to walk by the Spirit or walk by the flesh.

But once you’ve understood the truth of who God is and who you are, why ever would you want to walk by the flesh any more?

Freedom in Christ Session 3: Choosing to believe the truth

The following sermon is taken from the Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course by Neil Anderson & Steve Goss.

Without Faith We Cannot Please God

A man fell off a cliff, but managed to grab a tree limb on the way down. The following conversation ensued:
"Is anyone up there?" "I am here. I am the Lord. Do you believe me?" "Yes, Lord, I believe. I really believe, but I can't hang on much longer." "That's all right, if you really believe you have nothing to worry about. I will save you. Just let go of the branch." A moment of pause, then: "Is anyone else up there?"
This man, was being challenged to put his faith in God, and it is this theme of faith which is the focus of our sermon today. Because if we are to grow and mature as Christians, we need to have faith in God.

“Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

Faith is the crucial issue. The Bible is clear that as Christians we are to walk by faith. But what is faith?

Faith Is Simply Believing What Is Already True

One little boy put it like this: “Faith is trying hard to believe what you know isn’t true!” Actually he’s wrong, it’s the very opposite. Faith is believing what is already true. Our responsibility is to believe in God’s truth, whether it feels true or not.

But it is not always that easy, as highlighted in The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass:

Monday January 6
Bought a really good book about faith. It’s called “Goodness Gracious – in God’s Name, what on Earth are we Doing for Heaven’s Sake?” A very witty title I feel. It’s all about how Christians should be able to move mountains by faith, if they are really tuned into God. Very inspiring.

Waited until there was no one around, then practised with a paper clip. Put it on my desk and stared at it, willing it to move. Nothing! Tried commanding it in a loud voice.

Tuesday January 7
Hand another go with the paper clip tonight. Really took authority over it. Couldn’t get it to budge. Told God I’d give up anything He wanted, if He would just make it move half an inch. Nothing! All rather worrying really. If you only need faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain, what hope is there for me when I can’t even get a paper clip to do what it’s told!

Saturday January 11
Got up early today to have a last go at that blasted paper clip. Ended up hissing viciously at it, trying not to wake everybody up. When I gave up and opened the door, I found Anne and Gerald listening outside in their night clothes looking quite anxious. Anne said, “Darling, why did you tell that paper clip you’d straighten it out if it didn’t soon get its damned act together?”

If as Christians we choose to believe the truth, to put our complete faith in God, it will transform our lives.

Whether Faith is Effective Depends On What Or Whom You Believe In

Everyone Lives and Operates By Faith

Everyone believes in something or someone – we all have a way of looking at reality that we believe is true and we make decisions accordingly. Every decision you make and practically every action you do demonstrate your faith in something.

Last time you were driving your car and you came to a junction and saw a green traffic light, what did you do? You probably drove right on through. By faith! You couldn’t even see that the traffic in the other direction had a red light. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) If you didn’t believe that there was a red light, that the drivers saw the red light and that they would stop, what would you do? You would probably stop, look around very carefully and creep across the junction. But you believed that there was a red light, that they saw it and that they would stop.

The Only Difference Between Christian & Non Christian Faith is What We Believe In

It’s what or whom we believe in (the object of our faith) that determines whether our faith will be effective. It’s not so much that we believe but what we believe.

Take Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). Both set up a pyre with bulls on it to be sacrificed and both believed that their god would send down fire from heaven to burn it up. But only Elijah had a valid faith object – Baal did not exist but the living God was real – so his was the only one that was burned up.

That’s why Jesus said we only need faith as small as a tiny mustard seed to move a mountain (Matthew 17:20) – it doesn’t depend so much on the amount of faith but on whom we put our faith in. It’s not our power that moves the mountain – it’s God’s.

Jesus Christ Is The Ultimate Faith Object

Traffic lights can malfunction of course. Other faith objects can let us down, parents, the church, friends. There is just one faith object that will never fail us: Jesus Christ. Why? Because He never changes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He cannot change, and He is truth. He has never yet failed to be and do all He said He would be and do. He is eternally faithful.

Everyone Can Grow In Faith

How Much Faith We Have Is Determined By How Well We Know The One We Put Our Faith In

Christian faith is about making the choice to believe what God says is true and living our lives accordingly.

The depth of our faith is determined by one thing: how well you know the one you put your faith in.

So there is a limit to your faith. But God’s not controlling it - you are! Our faith particularly grows when we act on what God says is true.

To give an example, imagine you have a two year old, and you put her on a table, stand back a little bit and say, “Come on, jump into my arms.” She may waver a little bit but then jump and you would catch her. What do you do next? Go a little further back and say, “Come on, jump into my arms.” Let’s say she does and you catch her and you go even further back. She will continue to jump provided you continue to catch her.

As you get to know the object of your faith really can be trusted with absolutely anything, you will trust Him for bigger and bigger steps.

Have you ever wondered how Abraham could contemplate sacrificing his son Isaac? He had come to learn through experience that God was loving and could be trusted.

Belief is a choice that we can all make. You start with what God has said is true and you choose to believe it. This then works out into your behaviour and finally into your feelings.

George Muller ran an orphanage at Ashley Down in Bristol. One day, the orphanage ran out of food. A small girl whose father was a close friend of Muller was visiting the home. Muller took her hand and said, “Come and see what our Heavenly Father will do.”

In the dining room, long tables were set with empty plates and empty mugs. Not only was there no food in the kitchen, but there was no money in the home’s account. Muller prayed, “Dear Father, we thank you for what you are going to give us to eat.” Immediately, they heard a knock at the door. When they opened it, there stood the local baker. “Mr Muller,” he said, “I couldn’t sleep last night. Somehow I felt you had no bread for breakfast, so I got up at two o’clock and baked fresh bread. Here it is.”

Muller thanked him and gave praise to God. Soon, a second knock was heard. It was the milkman. His cart had broken down in front of the orphanage. He said he would like to give the children the milk so he could empty the cart and repair it. What this story illustrates is faith in action.

Faith Grows in Difficult Times

Most of us can probably think of times when God did not do what we wanted him to do. Sometimes we simply have to admit that our understanding of God and what we expect Him to do is simply too limited for us to know whether we are praying in accordance with his character or His will.

Because the question of faith is so crucial, one of God’s prime focuses in your life is to help you develop a real living faith that gets deeper and deeper. He will, therefore often put you in a situation where you can choose whether to put your faith in Him or something else.

A health scare, financial concerns, an uncertain future.

God’s role is to be truth, to declare what is true. Our responsibility is to believe and living according to what is true.

Faith Leads To Action

The words “faith”, “trust” and “believe” in the Bible are all the same word in the original Greek. That’s important to know because in English when you say that you believe something, it doesn’t carry the same connotation as to trust in something. But faith is not simply agreeing with something. It’s a reliance that you demonstrate by actions. No matter what we say, it’s what we do that shows what we really believe. If you want to know what you really believe, look at your actions.

“Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith: I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I’ll show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:17-18) In other words, what you believe in will affect what you do and what you say.

People don’t always live according to what they say they believe, but they will always live according to what they actually believe.

The good news is that there’s no one here who could not become a mature and fruitful Christian. There is no one here who cannot resist temptation, get out of hopelessness, leave behind negative behaviour and past influences and move on. You don’t need some special anointing from God or others. You just need to know what is already true, choose to believe it and act on it.

Freedom in Christ: Session 2 Who am I now?

The following sermon is taken from the Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course by Neil Anderson & Steve Goss.

Last week, I began this series on Freedom in Christ with the question: who are you deep down inside? I want to continue to think about this question today.

The moment you became a Christian was the defining moment of your life. Everything changed for you. The language the Bible uses is very dramatic.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Can you be partly old creation and partly new?

“For you were once darkness, but now you a light in the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:8)
Can you be both light and darkness?

“He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves.” (Colossians 1:13)
Can you still be in both kingdoms?

A Saint- Not a Sinner

In Romans 5:8 Paul writes, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This verse seems to imply that we are no longer sinners.

We certainly were sinners, and we were saved by God’s grace. So if we’re no longer a sinner, who or what are we?

In the New Testament, unbelievers are identified as “sinners”. Believers on the other hand are identified as “holy ones” or “righteous ones” or “saints” – and never the other way round. If you have received Jesus as your Lord, you are not a forgiven sinner, but a redeemed saint!

You are a saint! That’s not just a title. It reflects the fact that at the moment you became a Christian – even if you’re not absolutely sure when that moment was – you became a new creation in Christ. Your very nature – who you really are deep down inside – changed to become someone who is accepted, sure and significant in Christ.

In Christ

We are saints because of our new identity and position “in Christ”. In the book of Ephesians alone, in just six chapters we find this phrase “in Christ” no fewer than 40 times. It means that we have a completely new identity –we now share in God’s nature (2 Peter 1:4)

Not Just Forgiven But A Whole New Person

Changed Behaviour Comes from Realising You Are A Whole New Person

Realising that we are a completely new person, brings changes to our behaviour. Very often in our understanding of the gospel we have tended to focus on the fact that Christ died for our sins. But the trouble with that is it leaves us believing that we’re not very different from who we were before. We’re forgiven, but we’re still sinners. But the truth is more wonderful than that.

Last week we saw that we were born spiritually dead because of sin. (SLIDE) Suppose you came across a dead man and you wanted to save him. What would you have to do? Two things:

1. Find a cure for the disease that caused him to die. Paul says: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) In our case the disease was sin. To cure it Jesus went to the cross. He died for our sins.
2. But there’s more. It’s all very well finding a cure for, say, AIDS, but that does not help those who have died of it already. To save them, we need to give them life again. If we finish that verse we see that Jesus not only cured the disease that caused us to die (sin): “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If we only knew the truth that Jesus died to cure the problem of sin that would make us forgiven sinners. But because we have also received back the life that Adam lost, means we have become saints.

That fact that you and I are saints doesn’t, of course, give us any right to boast – we didn’t earn this, it was a free gift.

Defeat Comes From Not Realising You Are A Whole New Person

Many of us have never fully got hold of the fact that we are forgiven once and for all and that God will never, ever condemn us. He welcomes us into His presence because he loves us.

Some might say:
“You don’t know what’s been done to me.”
It doesn’t change who you are in Christ.

“You don’t know how bad I’ve been.”
It doesn’t change who you are in Christ.

“You don’t know what failures I’ve had as a Christian.”
It doesn’t change who you are in Christ. Christ loved you when you were still a sinner. That hasn’t stopped now that you’re a saint.

Our new identity in Christ is not something we’ve earned. It’s a free gift. It’s by the grace of God alone.

You are not saved by how you behave, but by how you believe.

Being Pleasing to God

What happens when I sin?

The problem we have with seeing ourselves as saints rather than sinners, is that we are painfully aware that we do sometimes sin. We therefore conclude that we must be sinners. The issue is who we are deep down inside and, if you are a Christian, it’s a settled matter. At the very core of your being you now share God’s divine nature. You have become someone completely new.

It’s not inevitable – but we do sometimes go wrong.

Being a saint means that we have the capacity to choose not to sin. Indeed we have ended our relationship with sin because we have died to sin (Romans 6:2) and its power over us.

Being a saint does not mean, however that we are living in a state of sinless perfection. “If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8) We are fooling ourselves if we claim that we never go wrong – the truth is that we are saints who sometimes sin.

We no longer have to live in constant fear of God’s judgement, because Jesus has already dealt with it on the cross. You are not a sinner in the hands of an angry God. You are a saint in the hands of a loving God. He’s called you to come into His presence with your heart sprinkled clean with confidence, with boldness.

Our fundamental relationship with our heavenly Father does not change when we sin

Going wrong changes nothing in terms of our fundamental relationship with God: 1 John 2:1 says “If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” (1 John 2:1) Your eternal destiny is secure – Jesus has paid the penalty for your sin.

Can anything change the fact that you are your parents’ child? No – nothing you can do can alter your DNA. You can disown your parents, or do all sorts of things that displease them. But whether they are alive or not, nothing can change the fact that you are their child.

When you become a Christian, you become God’s child. In a way you received his DNA – God’s own Spirit lives in you (Romans 8:9) and you now share his very nature (2 Peter 1:4) Nothing can separate you from God’s love (Romans 8:39). No one can snatch you out of His hand (John 10:28).
We restore harmony by turning back to him and away from our sin

But you can disrupt the harmony of that relationship by doing something that does not please God. A harmonious relationship is based on trust and obedience – when either is lacking it affects the quality of the relationship.

So what happens when we do something that we’re ashamed of, that we know is wrong? What is the appropriate thing to do?

We simply need to come to our loving Father, agree with Him that we are wrong (confess) and then turn away from our sin (repent), knowing that it is already forgiven because of Christ’s death.

God does not condemn us

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) We can always be honest with God because we are already forgiven and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

God is not a finger wagging, “inspecting” kind of God. We don’t have to earn our way into his good books, we’re already in them because of what Jesus has done. Realising that you can come straight back to God in repentance when you have done wrong and know that you are forgiven is a key to becoming a mature Christian.

We don’t have to try to become what we already are

So now, let’s come to a crucial question: “what can I do to be accepted by God?”

The short answer is: “nothing at all!” The truth is that you are already completely accepted by God simply because what Christ has done.

If we don’t understand the grace of God and our spiritual inheritance we will keep trying to becoming somebody we already are!

It is not what we do that determines who we are. It’s who we are that determines what we do.

The gospel is not about becoming someone different – it starts with recognising that you actually became someone different the moment you received Christ, you are a child of God.

You are already accepted by God! He delights in you. He is the Good Shepherd. He is intimately concerned with every details of your life. Nothing can change that.

He is love – which means that He couldn’t not love you, not matter what you did. Nothing you could do could make God love you more – more love you less. If you had been the only person in the whole history that needed Christ to die, He would have done it just for you. That’s how special you are!

The key to your growth in Christ in your understanding of whom you are now, recognising your status before God.

A lot of confusion in this area comes from not understanding who God is and what He is like, and so as you came into church you will have received a sheet of paper, which I invite you later to read, and take on board the truths of who you are and what God has done for you.