Death Of My Will Must Precede Resurrection

My thinking, emotions, and will don't need to be adjusted, they need to be crucified.

The flesh is slippery in how it tries to stay it's execution. It wants to offer something less than itself in an attempt to live a little longer while still in the presence of the king. The less is always self effort.

God will not resurrect what refuses to die.

Matthew 15:15-20 NKJV — Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.” So Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? “Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. “These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”

The flesh wrongly believes it's good, it just needs to be "tweaked." This is the subtlety of it's rebellion. If it was good... If it was salvageable... it would WANT to fully yield to God. If it was actually, at its core, good, it would rather die than resist God's good leadership. It doesn't. It wants to live in its own and just be polished up by God. This is how it decieves.

Romans 7:18-25 NKJV — For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Jesus shows us how to die to our own flesh and then be resurrected in the leadership of God. Not His will, but His Father's put Jesus on the cross. Until we find this way, we are wretched.

Can you see the death and resurrection that happened in Gethsemane well before the one on the cross?

The cross would have never happened if Jesus hadn't died to himself already in Gethsemane.

Matthew 26:39 NKJV — He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

When I open my heart in humility to be executed, not adjusted, God immediately begins giving me new thoughts, emotions, and directing me into new paths of refreshing. This is the sanctification Jesus taught. The flesh teaches a different sort of sanctification... One that means you work harder, not die more. That false sanctification is filthy rags. God doesn't believe it is clean.

When I come to God with a closed heart and ask Him to adjust my thinking, it doesn't carry the same power. God enjoys my sincere desire to be good, but He works with my humility.

Deuteronomy 8:16 NKJV — “who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end

What is God trying to crucify that we are trying to salvage? Finding out is the door to the next expression of who you are becoming in God.

2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV — Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.