So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Change is as much a choice as a gift. But it is always a process that is meant to be protected by grace, mercy and faith. Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation puts it this way: change is a process that happens through out our life rather than overnight. We live in a culture today that starves for instant gratification rather than thankfulness in change and progression. Throughout this year God has opened my eyes to true thankfulness. I have gone through many different seasons of my young life and yesterday I witnessed, in almost an out of body kind of way, my own breakthrough of the last few years of my life. I stated in a previous post the idea of vicariously living through the faith, accomplishments and even sometimes down fall of others. Yet I was still captive even as I was speaking of a new found freedom. Freedom is a gift given through the surrender of our hearts and the acceptance of the significance of the blood of Christ. Here's the catch we can— through fear— THINK that we have lost that freedom and that is Satan's greatest tactic. Notice I very deliberately said THINK. It is a thought and a fear that Satan tries to magnify when we are discouraged and even more so when we are thriving and walking in the way of God. BUT here is the truth... we are not a purchase that can ever be returned because the price has been paid in a way that can never be recredited or returned. When Jesus died He died for every person: dead and alive, past, present and future, yesterday, today and tomorrow, the seemingly forgotten, the lost and broken, and the precious that have yet to breathe. EVERYONE... no matter what. Once we have accepted that love and fact of Christ's death there is nothing we can do to earn more or less of His love. We can not repay the debt. It has been done. Scripture talks about the high priests and how prior to Jesus there was a need for atonement and sacrifice. Jesus became the ULTIMATE sacrifice. It is finished and He was sufficient. The priests had to come back over and over and sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed His life. His blood was enough.
Hebrews 9:24-28: For Christ did not
enter into a holy place made with human hands, which was only a copy of
the true one in heaven. He entered into heaven itself to appear now
before God on our behalf. And
he did not enter heaven to offer himself again and again, like the high
priest here on earth who enters the Most Holy Place year after year
with the blood of an animal. If
that had been necessary, Christ would have had to die again and again,
ever since the world began. But now, once for all time, he has appeared
at the end of the age to remove sin by his own death as a sacrifice.
And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, so
also Christ died once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins
of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to
bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.
SO then where is the struggle? If the scripture is there, clear, precise, why then do we struggle with doubts, fears, insecurities? Why is change SUCH a process rather than instantaneous? My only revelation is fear. And through fear Satan feeds off our insecurities and failures. Shame and guilt tells us that we are unworthy to be loved BECAUSE of our inadequacies. He whispers and fuels the fire. And so many times the world reaffirms these fears. So we let ourselves settle into a life of worldly complacency rather than heavenly expectancy. Change is a process because just as it took time to believe the lies and fears placed on us and to become rooted within our heart and mind, it takes time to break and uproot those lies... but moreover it takes time to REPLACE those lies with truth. Sometimes what we hear and believe are two very different things. An ear that has become so accustomed to hearing lies eventually begins to believe them as truths in the heart. And if the heart isn't rooted in the truth prior to those lies they are what become rooted. So the same could be said when the ear begins to hear the truth which now contradicts EVERYTHING the heart is rooted in. It takes time to not only uproot those lies but to also plant and water the new seeds that have been sown. Change can not be an overnight process because through change and experiences our faith is deepened.
