Living in the Spirit

Over the past few months I have been hearing a lot of teaching based from Romans eight. In the whole chapter there is one thing that has really stuck in my mind because I feel that it holds a place of high importance. This one thing is living according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:5-11
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

The reason that I have found living according to the Spirit to be so crucial is that every time I'm not living as I should its because I'm living by the flesh. When my mind is on the things of the flesh, I start to have fleshly desires. Instead of desiring to live as God wants me to, I find myself living for myself and my own desires.

What is living according to the Spirit? I have asked myself that very question often. Let me explain it this way; There are two ways to live. The first way is to live as we are born and continue in that manner of living in the flesh. The second way to live is to die. You die to your own fleshly desires. The things of the flesh only rot, and disintegrate back to dirt. You die to live not your mortal life, but Christ's eternal life that is given to whom accept it.

Living according to the Spirit is much more than accepting Christ into your life, it is the release of all selfish and personal desires to then live as Christ leads you in His perfect plan. When you start to live according to the Spirit you start to realize how empty and worthless all fleshly things are. Life in the Spirit is profoundly giving up what is natural, to live not of the world, but God's will. 

Open Your Eyes

Over the past few weeks there has been a new song that I've been listening to. I really enjoy the music in the chorus, but when I finally listened to the lyrics I saw what the artist was trying to tell people.

NEEDTOBREATHE – Slumber
Days they force you
Back under those covers
Lazy mornings they multiply
But glory's waiting
Outside your window
So wake on up from your slumber
Baby, open up your eyes

All these victims
Stand in line for
The crumbs that fall from the table
Just enough to get by
All the while
Your invitation
Wake on up from your slumber
Baby, open up your eyes
Wake on up from your slumber
Baby, open up your eyes

This is a call to all who don't know what its like to have their eye's opened by the Gospel and power of the Holy Spirit. The Glory is waiting. Its waiting for you to see and taste of the Glory of God. 

When you don't know the love of Christ it is much like a slumber. You live your days unaware of any beginning of dawn. You don't know that there is a beginning to light and life. For me to be able to see, to be able to know that there is truth and real purpose in life is one of the greatest things ever. Do you want to wake up, do you want to see what you eyes can't see?                

If your tired of living with just enough to get by, if you wish for a life with hope, love, peace, and joy Christ is calling. He is calling with His arms wide open ready to show His great love for you. He wants to wake you up from the slumber you are in. He wants you to open up your eyes. All you must do is ask Jesus for a new life with Him.

There is a great profoundness accompanied with the opening of our eyes. You begin to see the beginning of wisdom, knowledge and truth. I pray that you would open your eyes. 

Self Image

As a whole I think that our society has become obsessed with creating our "perfect" self image. I feel like we are not really who we are, but who we want others to think we are. In the words of a gangster were just frontin', we are just putting on a show that we are better than we really are. We don't want others to know that we actually don't have it together, we are afraid to let others know that we are not perfect. We think that if they know we are not perfect, how can they ever like us and want to be our friends?

For example, what pictures do we post on Facebook, how much time do we spend making ourselves look good before we open that door? For some reason we have bought into the lie that if we pretend, if we act like we have the best life, the best friends, the best possessions, or the best looks we will become popular and loved. Love is not gained by being someone your not because they are loving who you are trying to be, not who you actually are.

As Christians we even do this. We think that if we confess our failures and sins to others that they will think less of us. The truth of the matter though is that they struggle with sin and mess up too. It may not be in the manner that you do, but sin is sin nonetheless.

We try to put our self image out there as perfect and nice as possible because we want to be like others who seam to have nearly perfect lives, clothes, bodies, or whatever. However, we are not perfect our lives are not perfect, sin was cast onto every single person who was and will ever be born. As Christians if we are trying to make our self image look good, how is that right? It is because of our sin and failures that we need Christ. If we are trying to fool people to think that we are perfect and righteous, we are lying to them. We are not righteous by anything that we do, it is only because of Christ's righteousness in us that we are made righteous.

Christ is glorified through our failures because people can easily see what Christ has done in and throughout us. If we are putting up our own "perfect" self image over those failures, how can people see that God has done amazing things inside of us. Besides what is our own self image worth? We are to be image bearers of Christ, not of ourself.

Our image is not to be perfect, but to be the profound image of Christ living in us.

The Art of Sacrifice

One day I was thinking about friendships. A good friend of mine and I were discussing the different qualities good friends and this got me thinking about myself. I started to wonder if I had those qualities and if I was exhibiting them. See one of the qualities I said that all really good friends have is the willingness to sacrifice themselves for the other person.

Now I don't mean that best friends must sacrifice their life for the other if need be, but the sacrifice of time, convenience, and comfort is exhibited by best friends. If you think about it the ultimate expression of love or caring for another is the art of sacrifice.

The art of sacrifice is an interesting thing because its really quite against our nature. We would rather live comfortably and for ourselves, why would we take on someone else's problems? As part of the fallen world and offspring of Adam it is not natural for us to deny ourselves, but to live with a selfishness. The art of sacrifice is really an act of selflessness and love.

Jesus Christ came to earth to sacrifice Himself for those He loved before they ever loved Him. Even though His immense love for His creation brought an extreme expression of love through sacrifice, Christ pleaded that the cup would be taken from Him. It wasn't easy to go through the pain, the suffering, or death.

Sacrifice isn't easy, that the very reason that its is a sacrifice. If to sacrifice your time, your comfort, or maybe even your life was easy or not really a big deal, would that be sacrifice? I think not.

Another great example of the necessity of sacrifice in any full and true relationship is in marriage. In marriage its not about you, its not about what the other person can do for you, but what you can offer and do for them. When you commit to living with someone for the rest of your life you have got to make a lot of sacrifices. Your sacrificing your abilities, your time, your comfort, and well pretty much everything for the sake of an amazing and beautiful relationship with an amazing person.

To try and put some sort of conclusion to the art of sacrifice the question I ask myself and you is; Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for your best friend. Do you love that person so much that will put their desires above yours? The profound art of sacrifice is, giving up so that you can then give.

Live BOLD

How do we live when we wake up in the morning? Are we living for Christ, are we boldly proclaiming His name to the world?

Jesus is the best example of boldness. Jesus did not live and talk as if He had nothing to say. He claimed to be the Son of God, the Bread of Life, Living water, and more. What He said was by no means any distance from the truth, but was truly the example of truth. As humans we will often rather live with the problems that arise than to put ourselves out there and state what we know to be truth. However, when Christ makes us new how can we, but profess the truth!

Zone Out - KB
I’ve seen the Lord, the same I’ll never be
Some say they’ve seen the Lord but live on casually
I don’t know what-what you saw but the Lord ain’t what you seen
Once you really seen the Lord, you’re obsessed with what you see

As Christians we are to be bold. We are to live boldly for Christ, shouting His name from the rooftops. Now, don't think that I have this down and figured out. Personally, I am not at all bold about showing Christ's love so I'm saying this to you and myself.

Christ suffered and died for us, there are no other bold attempts at expressing great love that come close to what Christ did. Shall we not in the same way attempt to express the great love of God for the world to those around us boldly?

Talking about Paul in - Acts 28:31

He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!

Are we living boldly for Christ? I know for myself it is not easy and am often scared to do so. It is not easy living like Christ, to be like Him is not out nature, but we have been changed by His grace and love. The boldest display of love. Do you profoundly live boldly for Christ? Do we profoundly proclaim boldly our Life in Christ, cause thats what its all about. Life in Christ.

Righteousness Through Christ

One day I was looking outside a window at the snow falling to the ground and started to realize something. Snow can be used as a picture of virginity coming down from the sky. Snow is formed from pure water and becomes a beautiful crystallized white structure as its formed.

Then again, falling snow can be used as an analogy for Christ. Christ came down from heaven as a virgin, He was without sin. He was blameless before God and men. Jesus came bringing the hope that we can through Him become new, that we can become pure and clean like fresh snow.

In this analogy, we are the ground. We were made out of the dirt, Christ is the one who came down from above, from heaven to defeat what we could not ourselves. Ever since the time when sin entered the world we have been unable to become pure. No matter how hard we tried we still were stuck playing with our dirt, our sin.

Since we are stuck in our sinful nature we don't really mind being sinful. We sometimes like getting more and more dirty by doing deeper in our sin. It is until we are shown the beauty and righteousness of Christ that we see how dirty and unclean we are. The problems is, we must be either cleaned up or thrown into the fire.

It is not in our power to clean ourselves up. You can't clean dirt by human attempts, soapy water only makes soapy mud. We may smell a tiny bit better, but in reality our attempts at cleanliness make no difference. That is the very reason we needed someone with supernatural power and complete righteousness to some down and make us new and clean. It was not because of anything that we could do that made us clean or loved by God.

Ephesian 2:8
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

When we are cleaned by Christ, it is like snow that falls and covers the bare, dirty, and ugly ground. However, unlike snow which just covers the dirt, Christ wipes away our sin forever. When Christ wipes away our sin we are made righteous and blameless before God. Instead of being like dirt, we become like fresh snow. There is nothing we can do to clean ourselves up, we should know it is by the profound power and work of Christ in us that makes us clean.

I Signed Up To Die

A few years ago when I first was getting into christian rap and was learning that it was actually full of solid content, I was introduced to Thi'sl's music. One song that I really liked was called I Signed Up To Die. The song talked about people who were persecuted for Christ and how they didn't disown Christ because they signed up for this, they signed up to die. Even though I don't really know what facing persecution for the faith is like its so cool hearing how these people stood up as they were being beaten and knew they were alive in Christ whether or not they were alive in their body. To be a martyr for Christ you have to be all for Him, because in reality what more can you lose than your life on earth if you know Christ?

Thi'sl -I Signed Up To Die
I signed up to die
Death don’t have a hold on me
So death don’t put no fear in me
I don’t think that you hearin’ me
I signed up to die
When I lay down on that bed
I’m gon’ open up my eyes
And my Lord gon’ be there
I signed up to die
Death don’t have a hold on me
So death don’t put no fear in me
I don’t think that you hearin’ me
I signed up to die

I know we are not living around religious persecution and don't have much perception of what that looks like, but I think we still have signed up to die. To live for Christ we must give up everything, we must die to ourselves to live for Him. We can't life for Christ and for ourself. Its either life with Christ or ... not.

As a martyr for Christ you know that when you choose your life you choose death, when you choose death you get life. In America we know that we don't literally sign up to die, but we must still die to our  flesh to live in Christ. Because we have signed up to die, death has no power over us and we shall see our Lord face to face. Profoundly, I have died to my own life and now instead live for Christ. Have you signed up to die?