SPIRITUAL WAR BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF REALITY

After spending years in the world, it becomes natural to view life as it appears to the naked, unawakened spiritual eye: We only see the characteristics of a corporeal, empirical reality with nothing in-between that and the mystery of the unseen.

So we’re not alert. We’re unprepared. We’ve grown unwise; undisciplined to see and hear beyond the obvious. The reason we get stoic is because we’re bored of what we’ve learned to see from our limited perspective, but we feel safe and buoyant in disbelief over what is actually going on behind the curtain of reality. Regardless, the principalities of darkness are always scheming, always planning a spiritual attack strategically and personally to each individual, particularly those who believe in Jesus because they are the deadliest threat to the kingdom of darkness.

THE HOLY SPIRIT CHANGES OUR HEARTS

There’s no space in this life for us to just go to church, read the Bible and expect our souls to be saved. Jesus isn’t Lord until every single aspect of our lives is under the submission of our faith in Him. We can’t do that without denying ourselves, it’s impossible. That’s why seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is only authentic when the purpose of the pursuit is to have our misguided desires replaced altogether with the desire to please God in Heaven; a form of praising Him for His righteousness, mercy, and saving grace.

This doesn’t come naturally. It only comes as a gift from the Holy Spirit for the repentant heart and humbled ego. If we don’t desire to please God, then we won’t—no matter how religiously we show up to church on time and no matter how many days we consecutively read the Bible. The Bible doesn’t change us, the Holy Spirit does. That’s why atheists have read the Bible and consider God to be a bunch of terrible adjectives that denounce His holiness and misunderstand His character entirely.

VERY LITTLE FIRE FOR JESUS

Let’s think about that. If an atheist can read the Bible and blame the idea of God for all the horrors humans commit in the name of “freedom being a ‘gift’ from God,” then why can’t a so-called “Christian” attend church and read the Bible and never change the way they live, the way they love, or how obedient they are? Most Christians DO live that way, which is why there is so much feel-good warmth in the church today, but very little fire for Jesus.

The only way to change one’s life is to invite Jesus in by confessing our sin, repenting, and learning to understand the movement of the Holy Spirit. We can’t expect religious habits to do more than change up our schedule by a couple of hours per week, because let’s face it—habits don’t change hearts, only the Holy Spirit does. Church doesn’t make a person a believer, only God’s grace opens the eyes of the spiritually blind through the power of the Holy Spirit to show them the Truth that Jesus is the only way to God (John 14:6).

SURGERY ON OUR DEEPEST TRAUMA

We can’t have desires of the Holy Spirit and hold to the hedonistic tendencies of a worldly heart at the same time (Matthew 6:24). That leads to lukewarm faith, and the Holy Spirit can only do so much with someone who still wants to want the world, especially when they’re not even aware of a remnant desire lingering as a stronghold deep down. God doesn’t want to give us a bandaid for the wound of a sinful choice we made today; instead, He wants to perform spiritual surgery in our hearts to heal the trauma that happened long ago during our darkest hours that led to us making that decision today.

CONSIDERING OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD

How can the Holy Spirit shine through a soul that still wants to focus on everything about them? The Kingdom of God is centered on God alone. Here, in this world, we’re trained by the world to live for ourselves and to find others with the openness to compromise and complement our selfish desires, while learning we must also compromise to complement their selfish desires. There’s not even a consideration for God!

We’re so caught up in how we like our coffee, our next trip across the world, and how others will think about the way we’re dressed, that we don’t even think about how someone’s most fundamental beliefs could be influencing them to ignore any type of relationship to God as they slide through life towards the fires of hell.

A DAILY PROCESS TO DENY OURSELVES

Our sinful nature is opposite God’s righteousness, and our selfish desires are reflected wherever the main focus in our lives is finding worldly pleasure and happiness, rather than aiming to please God. 

We need to understand what we’re inviting inside when we talk about receiving the Holy Spirit. We need to re-visit what it means to deny ourselves; what picking up our cross looks like in our lives, and how those are a daily process. It is very difficult to do this when we’re not poring through Scripture and humbling ourselves in prayer—daily.

FOUNDED ON DYING TO OURSELVES

If we don’t want to be changed for the better (a form of “better” that is defined by God, not humans) by being refined into Christ-likeness, then we can continue to presuppose Christianity will not make any reasonable amount of sense. Understanding Christianity isn’t founded on using logic, it’s founded on dying to ourselves and submitting (through repentance and obedience) our brokenness to the healing grace of God through Christ.  

Scripture is esoteric for the spiritually blind and deaf, but not for the humble and contrite of heart. None of this will make any sense for anyone not looking for what God has for them.

DENYING INSIDE OURSELVES

If we’d prefer to live in naivety and assume there are no demonic spirits lurking around looking for a weak vessel to torment with spiritual attacks, then we will be the ones suffering from worldly invitations to give our lives away to idols, habits, and other people whose choices align with dying in themselves instead of dying to themselves.

There is no spirituality without God, and there is no spiritual relationship to God without believing in Jesus Christ first as Lord over all. If that’s not where we are, then we’re lost. We have to deny ourselves, throw away all the spiritual lies the world keeps making up by demonic influence, and get back to the Bible.

INTEGRITY OF THE GOOD NEWS

We must pick up our cross and trust in God to work through our faith and make our lives new in Christ. If we’re not seeing the integrity of the invitation to follow Jesus, it’s either because we’re not trusting God, or because we’re being witnessed to by believers who do not have the love of God, themselves.

When we meet “Christians” who evangelize but who don’t love those who they’re evangelizing to, the very people being evangelized to don’t experience God; instead, they experience a person who seems to be either reading from a script, or projecting condemnation they learned from another haunted soul who didn’t know Jesus, either.

FRUITS OF  DEMONS VS FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

This causes so many people to aim to be “spiritual” but prefer not to follow Jesus. Devastatingly, many of us end up listening to the deception of the devil trying to sway us away from fleshly-led “believers” and towards demon-led spiritualists who don’t understand the origin of the dark powers in our world, nor what demonic “fruit” looks like compared to the fruits of the Spirit (Matthew 7:15-20).

We’re playing with fire, and we’re not carrying our cross. That’s a spiritually lethal combination. There’s only hope when we follow Jesus, and in order to do that, we have to get rid of who the world keeps telling us we are and put on Christ (Romans 13:14). Only one of them is telling us the truth, and only one of them is Truth.

ALIVE IN CHRIST – FINAL THOUGHTS

How long will we be deceived before it’s too late? How many lies will we believe before we understand it’s the devil misleading us and not the Bible being mistranslated? How many wounds must remain unhealed before we learn that the only Healer is the One we’re resisting? How many burdens will we bear thinking ourselves brave before we realize the cross we would have to carry is the one Jesus already suffered through on our behalf? How many more days, months, and years of our lives will we sacrifice to victimhood mentalities before we accept freedom in the name of Jesus and learn that denying ourselves means denying the devil’s cunningness, and picking up our cross means rebuking beliefs that die with our flesh?

There’s only power in the name of Jesus, and there’s only true purpose found in the life given to us when we die to ourselves and come alive in Christ.

Deny yourself. Pick up your cross and follow Jesus to eternal life. There’s very little time. We don’t know how much. It’s urgent.

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