Possessing My Soul While There is Time
The biggest threat in my life to hearing and obeying God is my own emotional traffic.
Emotions mimic the experience of being in the presence of God. Something feeling powerful isn't the same as something being powerful.
This takes sobriety and a true desire to let God into the secret places of my heart.
I can discern between the lies my emotions tell me and the truth God tells me by the transformation of my will. It's only as I trade my will for God's that I am truly changing.
Believing change is necessary isn't the same as letting God change me.
Wanting God is very different from yielding to God.
Being sincere is often where I get stuck in the journey of becoming wholehearted. This is because if I believe I really "love God" I can easily pacify the requirement to obey Him. Sincerity often becomes the kill switch to embracing poverty. God is looking for me to embrace poverty, not my own sincerity. God judges sincerity by what it actually produced in me.
False leaders take advantage of emotionally lazy people to steer their sincerity into a program of men, not God. Beware.
A false spirit looks very promising, like a cloud about to burst, but the rain of Godliness never falls out of it:
Jude 1:11-13 NKJV — Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
How I feel about God, for real, turns up on my calendar, in my bank account, the dreams of my life, the way I see my own shame and pride and come clean, the way I forgive people who have wronged me and own my mistakes. It shows up in the way I trust God with my spouse, my kids, my identity, my ministry, my church, my city, my nation, and ESPECIALLY my righteousness and salvation.
A desire to win the world with love is almost always covering up a need to let God's love come in and win me. IYKYK...
The way of Cain is to prioritize my sincerity over God's instruction. Abel did well because he humbled himself before God. He didn't trust in his own righteousness. Cain was impressed by his own sincerity in a way that led Him into rebellion and murder while believing he offered a great sacrifice to God.
It's good to ask God regularly, "am I trusting in my own righteousness, or embracing my need for you to come and lead me out of my emotions?"
Ezekiel 33:13 NKJV — “When I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, but he trusts in his own righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous works shall be remembered; but because of the iniquity that he has committed, he shall die.
Right now, many will go in prayer and worship to feel something. I don't want to go that way. I want to go to God in prayer and worship to die. To get changed. I want to learn to truly believe I am not righteous without every word God speaks, not to go with a group in the momentum of their own righteousness.
I see it all around. Do you?
2 Timothy 3:1-9 NKJV — But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
We are in the season where God is exposing foolishness. The foolish bridesmaids are very sincere. They simply aren't humble and their shame covers their pride. The door will get shut on those who refuse to let God bring them out of their emotions and into the truth.
I want to trim my lamp, not just burn like crazy. This is what it means to "posses your soul" with patience. To get a handle on my wrong thinking, emotions, and will by getting before God for real, not before a group of people acting like God's gift to the world.
Luke 21:19 NKJV — “By your patience possess your souls.
Emotions mimic the experience of being in the presence of God. Something feeling powerful isn't the same as something being powerful.
This takes sobriety and a true desire to let God into the secret places of my heart.
I can discern between the lies my emotions tell me and the truth God tells me by the transformation of my will. It's only as I trade my will for God's that I am truly changing.
Believing change is necessary isn't the same as letting God change me.
Wanting God is very different from yielding to God.
Being sincere is often where I get stuck in the journey of becoming wholehearted. This is because if I believe I really "love God" I can easily pacify the requirement to obey Him. Sincerity often becomes the kill switch to embracing poverty. God is looking for me to embrace poverty, not my own sincerity. God judges sincerity by what it actually produced in me.
False leaders take advantage of emotionally lazy people to steer their sincerity into a program of men, not God. Beware.
A false spirit looks very promising, like a cloud about to burst, but the rain of Godliness never falls out of it:
Jude 1:11-13 NKJV — Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
How I feel about God, for real, turns up on my calendar, in my bank account, the dreams of my life, the way I see my own shame and pride and come clean, the way I forgive people who have wronged me and own my mistakes. It shows up in the way I trust God with my spouse, my kids, my identity, my ministry, my church, my city, my nation, and ESPECIALLY my righteousness and salvation.
A desire to win the world with love is almost always covering up a need to let God's love come in and win me. IYKYK...
The way of Cain is to prioritize my sincerity over God's instruction. Abel did well because he humbled himself before God. He didn't trust in his own righteousness. Cain was impressed by his own sincerity in a way that led Him into rebellion and murder while believing he offered a great sacrifice to God.
It's good to ask God regularly, "am I trusting in my own righteousness, or embracing my need for you to come and lead me out of my emotions?"
Ezekiel 33:13 NKJV — “When I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, but he trusts in his own righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous works shall be remembered; but because of the iniquity that he has committed, he shall die.
Right now, many will go in prayer and worship to feel something. I don't want to go that way. I want to go to God in prayer and worship to die. To get changed. I want to learn to truly believe I am not righteous without every word God speaks, not to go with a group in the momentum of their own righteousness.
I see it all around. Do you?
2 Timothy 3:1-9 NKJV — But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
We are in the season where God is exposing foolishness. The foolish bridesmaids are very sincere. They simply aren't humble and their shame covers their pride. The door will get shut on those who refuse to let God bring them out of their emotions and into the truth.
I want to trim my lamp, not just burn like crazy. This is what it means to "posses your soul" with patience. To get a handle on my wrong thinking, emotions, and will by getting before God for real, not before a group of people acting like God's gift to the world.
Luke 21:19 NKJV — “By your patience possess your souls.
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