Bonnie
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A Vessel of Honor for His Glory
||October 28, 2007|879 reads
 

To add a comment to "A Vessel of Honor for His Glory"
Juarkena Dennis
April 10, 2008
These are very good questions we should have prior to committing the sin or questionable action.  Maybe if we understood the gravity of the consequences, we would be more hesistant to living a life of sin.  Very good.  God Bless you.
Bonnie
June 28, 2008

I believe if these questions are posed as part of a discussion on abstinence, it may provoke an individual to give up a lifestyle of casual sex, unprotected or not.

Craig
December 04, 2008

Hi Bonnie,

Having struggled in this area for years after becoming a Christian and for decades before, I'll say that the questions would not have helped me because all they did was make me feel more like the failure I thought I was.  It was both the previous verse and the next verse that helped lead to the deliverance.

11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen. 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice...that is worship.  We then renew our minds and are transformed.  Repentance is not a change of behavior it is a change of mind; the deeds will then follow as a natural consequence.  Trying to "keep doing" something that does not come from a renewed mind does not last.

The most two most important things that I had to change my thinking about was the fact that I was really dead to sin and alive to God in Christ (Romans 6) and that I was also dead to the Law (Romans 7).  It took a rather long time to get it into my heart that I really don't have to present my eyes to sin and lust after women that I had really died and was really set free from sin.  Sin was not dead...I was, and alive to God in Christ.  He is now the one I depend upon to be my goodness.  We are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake that the life of Christ may be manifested in our mortal flesh...His power made perfect in our weaknesses.  I have come to understand that if I look at "me" all I'll see is that there is nothing good that dwells in "me"...that is in my flesh; but, as Romans 8 says, I am no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit.  It is not about me trying to become like Jesus, it is about me letting Jesus himself be my life...his love, his joy, him living through me for God...not me living, with his help, for God.

These realities are not easily understood because they are not widely taught.  We look at the sin that dwells in our members and think "my flesh still needs to be crucified!"  We don't understand that we have already been crucified with Christ and have been immersed into His death and have been raised with Him.  It is something that we come to believe in our heart, not because the flesh tells us it is true, but because the scriptures and the Spirit tells us it is true.  When we come to believe it, not as a mental assent, but from our hearts we find: sure enough we are free and Christ really is our life...and He gets all the glory.  All "I" am is the container of the glory; the branch through which the life of the vine flows.  The fruit is His not mine; I merely bear it.  :-)

Blessings!
Craig

Bonnie
March 18, 2009
Craig, you are absolutely right ... a change of mind is conducive to repentance.  Taking in consideration the dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees in the eighth chapter of John, those listening to the exchange began to believe in Jesus. 

Jesus explains to the new believers in verse thirty-one, "If you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;"  So making up one's mind to refrain from sin is a start; however, it is the constant application of the scripture to (for instance) mortify the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit that dwells within us whenever the enemy presents opportunities to sin in thought or in behavior.

When I read, John, chapter fourteen, verse fifteen (for the umpteenth time in my early 20s), "If ye love me, keep my commandments," I remember my conscience quickened.  Today, it might be described as an "aha!" moment.  If I continued to allow sin to live through my actions, when I said "I love you, Lord," I knew I would have been lying to God, and I knew, that God knew, I was lying; even though others could hear my words, God knew my heart was far from Him. 

The mercy of God is misunderstood; taken for granted.  This is why many believers revert to some of their old ways because they have yet to learn that obedience to the commandments demonstrates their love for God.  This is another reason I do not condemn others who demonstrate they are still babes in Christ.