Positioned in and Carried

   The problem of fear and anxiety are of the “old man”. When fear is experienced it quickly compiles upon itself and it is no easy task to relieve. When fear is experienced it also easily activates self defense, self reliance, and unbelief within the individual.Fear activates character defects and short comings. Fear kills us! When we live in fear, we are living in sin, no matter how it manifests. And that which is not of faith is sin. But we are instructed to “cast all our cares upon the Lord”.  So  we  learn  to  cast  our  unbelief, onto the Lords cross, where He has in fact taken it upon His body crucified. Taking your fears to the Lord and His cross is something you practice over a lifetime.

  The good news is you are an overcomer! This happens when you accept your position in Christ’s body. This can only be done because He established your position on the cross. And because He did you are a new and fearless creation! So casting our cares upon the Lord is obviously something we need to practice.  We do this by placing our belief in the work of the cross, and honoring the decision we once made for Christ, which in turn leads to our surrender. Placing your belief in, along with the decision you once made, and surrendering to the work of Christ’s cross, is the fight of faith you are called to. We practice turning our life over to the truth by faith. Faith is the opposite of fear. Here is the clincher, Christ orchestrates the whole process and provides you with the faith needed. You are a new creation and that new creation is Christ’s body here on this earth while at the same time in the heavenly places. The work that was done for you can not be overstated. There is a height and depth to it. God chose you and then recreated you through His cross. When we place our belief along side of our decision for Him we experience this new creation. It’s that simple. Praise God!

   We all desperately need God. God has met our needs by making a complete change in us. It was at the cross that He met all your spiritual, psychological, and social needs. It is through His shed blood and crucified body that your will is properly exchanged for His will. It is through Him that you say “Your will be done God”. All of this is possible for you!

  It is at the cross that we come into union with God. The truth of the new creation is that we are “in Christ”. This truth is inexhaustible and you have unlimited access to the Father. I am increasing the redundancy of writing about the truth of believing, a decision once made, and surrender, because they are too important to gloss over especially in regards to our death, burial, resurrection, and the shed blood of Christ. These truths can’t be overstated.

   The Christian has made a decision for Christ. Your decision to trust in what God has done for you through Christ’s death was a one time event. Now you back up that decision with a belief in what Christ has done for you and what He is doing. Seeing yourself as dead and the surrendering of your defects and shortcomings will be ongoing.(seeing yourself as perfect in him will be  as well)

  This belief, decision, and daily surrender, are not merely techniques for they are based on fact. They are based in the fact that our life has been exchanged for His life. Again, WE consider our “self” as dead.  We need a daily awareness of this so that we can surrender to the facts regarding Christ crucified for us. And let us never forget that it is Gods love is responsible for that surrender.

  It is God alone that chooses and changes you! Your decision once made, and your belief is necessary but they are not exactly what change you. Our belief, and our past decision for Christ, were and are used to accept what God has done for us. Because we have made this decision of heart surrender we find that God has already met our needs. He chooses to take care of us. This truth precedes our reaction of belief and our (one time) decision to be married to Christ.   

Admitting to powerlessness over our reality

The thinking that one creates his own reality is a lie. We are instructed in the book of Proverbs not to lean on our own understanding and to trust in the Lord. The truth is we are either going to acknowledge God's way or we not.

We don’t just acknowledge God. We acknowledge God the way He wants us to. We must go beyond the edge of our own thinking into the mystery of God. Where is that mystery found? It is found in the blood.

Through the blood of Christ we understand God's mercy and power. Why blood? Do the math. It has to do with the history of God and man found in scripture. Yes! We must look beyond ourselves to God’s revelation.

To improve our life does not require us to do more thinking. The truth is we do not create our reality. All things are created by God. Jesus Christ said “I am the way the truth and the life”. We do not create “the way”

Jesus is a person that changed our life by giving us His. Don't be fooled by this evil world. It is not thought that changes our lives. Secular psychology has taken that notion just a bit too far.

It is Jesus Christ and His work that changes our life. We respond to the reality of His shed blood and resurrection with acknowledgement. Knowledge is the result of the reality. Reality is NOT the result of knowledge.

We may create our own experience but that does not necessarily mean that it is reality. The truth is that the closer we get to God's perspective of ourselves, God's perspective of others, and God's perspective of this world the closer we are to reality. We need to get outside of our own heads.

Satan is real but his whole world is built on a lie. The lie he created for himself was that He could create his own reality. That’s pride. Pride comes before a fall. Satan is going down!

No sweat at being perfect

The grace of the Christian is in grave danger if he can not differentiate between independent self effort and Spirit led obedience. Spirit led obedience can only come through ones surrender to Christ crucified. It is from this surrender to the precise action that took place at the cross that Christian principles are manifested. Going around the finished work of Christ will result in independent self effort and legalism

The problem is in our choice to even for a second hear the lie of the enemy. Satan points to our character defects when we should know without a shadow of the doubt that all sin was destroyed at the cross of Christ. So we have a choice to make! Claim the blood of Christ or believe the lies of the enemy!

Christ created in us His perfection. It has nothing to do with our own making. We just accept the fact of the finished work of Christ which was done for us. His shed blood purifies us. So we must believe in this. But here is the twist where some of us need some guidance. We do not lavish in our own purity even though it is truth. We must move on to serve others. We must grow beyond a focus on self.

When our faith is clear on how our change occurs, then and only then, will we find it easy to move according to the dictates of Scripture. We will have Spirit led obedience in our lives. This Spirit led obedience is vastly different than independent self effort. Can we see the difference between the two?  Do we have this revelation?

Inventory through the gateway of the cross

As we inventory our life we need to keep in mind the promise made by God that sin will not dominate our lives. The gateway to freedom from sin is through Christ crucified. We must never forget this gateway. It is only through this gateway that we will have “joy unspeakable and full of glory” It is only through this gateway that we will “abound unto every good work”. It is through this gateway that God reaches us.

In God’s world there is no space or time. The crucifixion and resurrection are simultaneous and happened before the world was created. But Christ came and walked the earth and did what He did at Calvary as a manifestation to man. He was already the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. It is through that slaying that we draw our life! However, the influence of evil has a previously influenced mind in us and it thinks that it can divert us from the truth.
 
Take a look at 1 Peter 1:20 “It is true that He was chosen and foreordained (destined and foreknown for it) before the foundation of the world, but He was brought out to public view (made manifest) in these last days(at the end of the times) for the sake of you.” The interest of evil is to severe our connection to God by diverting our will and causing us to make bad choices regarding our needs. He uses deception to cause us to act out in unbelief against these great truths of God. Once we act out in unbelief satan condemns, condemns, and condemns.

When we consent to fear and act out in unbelief we have allowed sin to come into our life and then sin corrupts our functioning. This is no longer normal functioning for us and this is very uncomfortable. We find ourselves in a rebellion that is not of God. We are most comfortable when our will is not diverted and our choices are stayed on what Christ accomplished at the cross.

Christ has made all men new before they were even born but they need to accept by faith the born again experience for it to become a reality for them. All our sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ and the old man we were died with Christ. We are already more than conquers. We are already complete. God has taken the responsibility of caring for us. If we don’t trust Him he will allow us to have this distrust. He will also work on persuading us to trust in Him again