Luke 9:23 (The Passion Translation)
Jesus said to all of his followers, âIf you truly desire to be my disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace my âcrossâ as your own, and surrender to my ways.
24 For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for my glory, you will embark on a discovery of more and more of true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep.
25 Even if you gained all the wealth and power of this world, everything it could offer you, yet lost your soul in the process, what good is that?
26. So why then are you ashamed of being my disciple? Are you ashamed of the revelation-truth I give to you? âI, the Son of Man, will one day return in my radiant brightness, with the holy angels and in the splendor and majesty of my Father, and I will be ashamed of all who are ashamed of me.
27. But I promise you this: there are some of you standing here right now who will not die until you have witnessed the presence and the power of Godâs kingdom realm.â
The habits we create determine the product we produce.
The Holy Spirit recently spoke in my inner man and said, âson, you have created some bad habits (during COVID) that you MUST break if you are going to experience a new fullness of the Spirit in your life.â
Habits create disciplines, disciplines create the atmosphere surrounding your life. The atmosphere you create or allow in your life determines the level of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodnessâŠ.all the other fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life.
So, the question is âhow do I break bad habits and create not just different habits, but Holy Spirit habits?â I donât want to just create habits just for the sake of having a habit; I only want those habits that produce the life of God within me!
I am convinced, this is what frustrates many of us as Spirit filled believers: we know in our inner man we are supposed to be living a different life! We are called to be different! But we find ourselves being pulled into the world, into the ways of the world and the thinking of the world mainly due to habits we have allowed to develop in our lives that are not true Holy Spirit inspired habits.
Many donât want to be so different they are not accepted by the mainstream of society; and many donât want to be so different they are not accepted by the mainstream of Christianity!
We are in a season in which we must recapture this truth:
We have not been put on this earth to please people, we have been put on this earth to please GOD and GOD alone!
I often think about the Moravian missionaries. Itâs been said when they felt called to go to another land to carry the Gospel, one of their responsibilities as they were preparing to leave was to build a coffin: their own coffin. They were allowed to pack that coffin with clothes and supplies they would need on the foreign land.
One group was said to be boarding a ship for the Caribbean Islands when one of the missionaries turned to their loved ones on the shore and cried out for all to hear,
âMay the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering!â
Changing the habits currently in your life so the Lamb of GOD will receive the reward of His suffering begins when you:
1.Change your mind.
A mindset, by definition, is a habitual way of thinking, a stronghold. A stronghold is defined as a mindset impregnated with hopelessness that causes us to accept as unchangeable situations that we know are contrary to the will of God.
You mind has developed a way of processing information and experiences it has encountered over the course of your life, or over the course of the past season of your life that may or may not be based on truth.
Your mindset is affected by your upbringing, the level of education you currently have, by your circle of family, friends, and even people you admire (show me your friends and I will show you your future). Itâs also effected by what you feed your mind with; specifically with information that may or may not be based on truth.
What are you feeding your mind with the Word of God? Or the world?
More to come in next monthâs newsletter.
