The Daniel Fast

The Rainbow Pen!

 

Living in Obedience

 

 

You cannot be my disciple, unless you love me more than you love your father and mother, your wife and children, and your brothers and sisters. You cannot come with me unless you love me more than you love your own life. You cannot be my disciple unless you carry your own cross and come with me.… you cannot be my disciple unless you give away everything you own. (Luke 14:26-33 CEV).Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Clean up your lives, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you people who can’t make up your mind. Be sad and sorry and weep. Stop laughing and start crying. Be gloomy instead of glad. Be humble in the Lord’s presence, and he will honor you. My friend, don’t say cruel things about others! If you do, or if you condemn others, you are condemning God’s Law. And if you condemn the Law, you put yourself above the Law and refuse to obey either it or God who gave it. God is our judge, and he can save or destroy us. What right do you have to condemn anyone? (James 4:7-12 CEV).

 

 

There are enemy attitudes to be conquered before the children of God would be able to experience the lifestyle that He intended us to have. We are confronted with our bad attitudes as we enter and take possession of the promised land of an eternal relationship with God. Jesus Christ is leading the children of God into a land flowing with an abundance of everything they ever wanted or needed. Even though God is fighting our battles for a new lifestyle, there has to be participation on our part. In our walk with God into the eternal life God intended for us we are surprised to learn of these enemies and equally surprised at the realization that we play a role in the personal defeat of them. Jesus Christ has gone before us and defeated our foes. But we have a good fight of faith to fight in seeing this victory come to completion in us personally. Just as the children of Israel had to stand, fight, and resist their physical enemies. God invites us to engage in this battle of removing the fleshly elements that don't belong in our relationship with Him - the ultimate Promised Land. These enemies represent the fleshly occupants of the territories of our soul that must be conquered through faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross so we can take possession of the land of our lives and lifestyles.

 

 

The names of these enemy attitudes show a progression and downward spiral of allowing these fleshly enemies, empowered by our sin and rebellion, to dwell in the land of our lives. Let’s take a brief look at each one and then we will see how they operate and function in us that we would not be ignorant of the devil’s devices. The fleshly enemies are shame, fear, depression, passivity, deception, pride, and oppression. We can see what happens when sin operating through our flesh is the ruling force in our souls, there is a progressive downward spiral of its destroying forces. It begins with humiliation and shame, the direct result of sin. It can be the result of something experienced or an act committed ourselves. Shame can then lead us to fearful thoughts and behaviors. Fearful and anxious thoughts tend to a life of depression (internal pressure) and hopelessness. This often leads to a fragmentation in the soul and casting off restraint and leading a life of no boundaries - don't care attitude or passivity. We allow ourselves to be taken advantage of and we take advantage of others to satisfy the abyss of shame, fear, and depression, living life with no rules, boundaries or standard of living.

 

 

We then become deceived and disillusioned about God, ourselves, and life in general and our perceptions become distorted. This deception quickly turns to pride which is the flesh’s most feeble attempt at masking all of the above. The deception element of pride is the thought that we can either cover our own shame or minimize our own sin to compensate. This works the same whether we experience shame inflicted by someone or brought on by our own selfish choices. God makes it clear that our own fleshly methods of covering it up simply won't do. The temporary solutions we create are insufficient. The permanent solutions to eternal problems that need to be faced and confronted in forgiving and being forgiven are all made possible by the only sufficient covering - the blood of Jesus. The deceptive type of thinking is what leads us to believe that eliminating our enemy would solve our problem instead of facing the truth about ourselves. Blame is a great indicator of pride in action. Anger and defensiveness are common evidences of pride. Pride ultimately ends up in oppression or external pressure.

 

 

The first step to defeating these fleshly enemies is to acknowledge their existence and the problems they are causing, acknowledging that we have either made a god of ourselves, others, or things to remedy it. It is important to look at how we take life into our own hands without considering what God might do for us. When God is not on the throne of our hearts our flesh is. The second phase after discovery is to forgive and be forgiven. Both our sin and the sins committed against us were borne by and suffered for by Jesus who hung on a cross bearing it all in His body. His blood covered it all. Third, we must repent and turn away from our old ways, attitudes, behaviors, and fleshly reactions as we discover each unconquered territory of our soul. We need put our faith in God for every insecurity and need we have and consciously choose not to worship ourselves by doing what we want nor do we worship others by doing what we think they want us to be and do. We use the weapons of truth about ourselves and the God we serve to combat these enemies and temptations just as Jesus did.

 

 

Freedom and rebellion sound a bit alike except freedom is a state of being through submission to authority and rebellion is a behavior that is chosen of open resistance which eventually leads to the exact opposite of the definition of freedom. Freedom comes with a fence of protection. Rebellion is a city without walls. We may mistake the fence of protection as confinement when it was never meant to keep us in as much as keep the enemy out. We associate humility with humiliation. Humility is actually being confident enough in God and having enough faith in His love for us that we are able to bow to His requests. Humiliation is more like a shameful weak and lonely state. Sometimes we are afraid that if we humble ourselves that we will experience humiliation, the painful.

 

Strongholds are the fortresses we and the enemy of our soul have built to keep us in bondage. Some of them are in self-defensive, others are simply protecting our own rationale. People are not our problem nor our enemies. Our spiritual condition is more consequential than our human relationships. It is in those relationships that we exhibit our true spiritual position with God. We can live in the awful patterns of sin and addiction or maybe the patterns of relationship troubles and issues for the rest of our lives which the cycles these enemies create show us, because our flesh always seems to overrule our faith, or we can break out of their grips through acknowledgment, repentance, forgiveness, and faith in our Mighty Conqueror. The Scriptures state that those who call God Father are His children. If God is your Father, you will love Jesus His Son, because He came from God. Those who make peace will be called the children of God.