April | 2013 | Done with Religion

Archive for April, 2013

Spiritual Man

Posted in christian living, tagged Christ, curse, grace, repent, righteousness, Spirit, spiritual on April 30, 2013|

Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

We are made in the likeness of God, that is, three in one. We are spirit, soul (mind) and body.

We were born under the curse of the law because of the fall of man through Adam. Our spirit man, soul and body were subject to trying to earn our salvation by following the law, which we could not do, eventually leading to death.

Through Christ and the grace He provided through His perfect life, death and resurrection, we were made new creatures in Him. Our old sinful spirit man was crucified and buried with Christ. He took our sins and nailed them to His cross.

We now have a new righteous spirit man within us. We still have a soul (mind) that needs renewed and an earthly body that will one day be changed into a spiritual body, but for now, God sees us as the righteousness of Christ, who lives within us by His Spirit.

Naturally speaking we will never be perfect on this earth, but because of the grace of Christ, God sees us spiritually as perfect already.

This doesn’t give us permission to live as we want and do whatever, but now we live for God and do what pleases Him out of love and not out of obligation. We now take up our cross daily and follow Him, allowing Him to increase as we decrease.

When you make a mistake, it is covered. We don’t have to repent each time, but we do acknowledge we made a mistake and thank God for His Grace that covers it.

A good thing to confess out loud after allowing our mind or body to take control is ‘I am the righteousness of God’. This will help us to remember God’s gift of grace and get us focused on our spiritual position in Christ.

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To Who Do We Talk

Posted in christian living, tagged believers, Christian, church, conversation, fellowship, talk on April 15, 2013| 1 Comment »

What would it be like to sit down and have a one-on-one talk with your favorite pastor or evangelist? How would you feel having some time of personal fellowship with Billy Graham or any one of thousands of leaders you could think of who you feel is really on fire and in touch with God.

First off, this is never going to happen. These big name pastors and teachers are so unapproachable that most people will never even speak to them. The thought of having true fellowship is basically an impossibility. By true fellowship, I’m not talking about sitting in their service for an hour looking at the back of someone’s head and listening to what this person is telling you they think God is saying. No, I mean actually spending time together, talking together, discussing, and getting to know one another.

I guess the main point is why do we Christians think like this? Why do we think it would be so great if we could talk to these religious superstars.

Jesus is building His Church out of living stones, namely us, who are saved by His grace. We are His Church, and we are told we are all kings and priests. There is no one who should be over us other than Christ, who is the Head of the body, His Church.

Why is it we think so much about talking with people who are really no different than us, no higher in the Kingdom, no better in God’s eyes, when we can talk directly to our Father Himself. Anytime, anywhere, we can speak to and have fellowship with our Father.

Why is it we are more impressed talking with another human being when we can talk with Him?

Obviously, we need fellowship with one another, and fellowship is talking and spending time getting to know one another, caring for one another and encouraging one another. But we need to get past this idea of looking up to fellow believers. We need to look to Christ, who is our head. Don’t look so much to people when we can go directly to our Father.

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Who to Follow

Posted in christian living, tagged Christ follower, interpretation, opinion, Spirit on April 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

It’s amazing to me how many different voices there are in the ‘Christian’ world vying for our attention.

Everyone has their own thoughts and interpretations. I think we can learn something from everyone. Whether it is something new, a better way of doing things, a different way of thinking, or just realizing we don’t agree with what we heard and it bolsters our own view.

The problem is that everyone has an opinion. That doesn’t mean everyone is right or wrong. God works in each of us in different ways, and what may be right for one person isn’t right for another.

We need to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit each day, and ask that He leads us into truth.

Our relationship with the Father is a day by day lifestyle. What we know and understand today may be completely different from what we believed when we were younger. What we believe today will probably change in the future. God leads us into His truth in His timing, as we are ready and open to it.

Our goal is to daily seek God’s guidance through the Spirit, and seek His truth. We need to focus on Christ. To many of us want to put our focus on a man, a popular evangelist or pastor. Obviously we can learn from listening to others views and opinions, but when we focus on people we can get off track and confused very easily.

Everyone has a different opinion. You can listen to one person or group and hear what they think is the truth, then find another person or group who has a completely different take on the same subject.

The only way to get past all the different views and opinions is to focus on Christ. He will teach us and lead us into the truth. That isn’t to say we are all going to think and feel the same way on everything. God deals with us personally and in different ways. The problem is when we are shown something or lead in a particular way, we expect everyone to see it our way and believe the same thing.

It’s time we become what we say we are, followers of Christ. Stop being followers of men. Nothing wrong with listening and hearing others views, but take it as that. It is their view, it is not Gospel. Only Christ is the one to follow. Only Christ is to be our everything.