“Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what please Him.”
Philippians 2:12-13 NLT
Another translation of the above verse reads this way;
“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”
Philippians 2:12-13 KJV
Have you been making progress in your walk with Jesus, or are you at a standstill? Have you lost your enthusiasm for His Word and His church? Can you take it or leave it? Is it just something you feel obligated to do to keep you from going to hell? Do you need your joy back? There’s good news, the fire may be out but the embers are still warm. Fan the flame. Paul had to encourage his spiritual son Timothy in the same way. He was struggling with his responsibility as a young pastor. We all need encouragement at times. This walk with Jesus isn’t a sprint, it's a marathon. God by His Spirit has worked something on the inside of us, that must be worked out by us. He’s always at work in us, we just need to cooperate with Him.
Listen to Paul’s words to Timothy as well as to us in the following scriptures;
“I am writing to Timothy, my dear son. May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace. Timothy, I thank God for you—the God I serve with a clear conscience, just as my ancestors did. Night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. I long to see you again, for I remember your tears as we parted. And I will be filled with joy when we are together again. I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lois and your mother, Eunice. And I know that same faith continues strong in you. This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me—a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you.”
2 Timothy 1:2-7, 13-14 NLT
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
Romans 12:1-2 NLT
In order for us to work out what has been worked in, we must give ourselves completely to God through His Son Jesus. We are incapable of doing spiritual things with unsubmitted flesh. Galatians 5:17. They are polar opposites. One has to submit to the other, the lesser to the Greater. It’s a lifetime assignment. The flesh did not get saved at our conversion, so we have to work at taking what the Spirit has done in our souls and training our flesh to conform to its new reality. We are literally teaching an old dog new tricks which they say is hard to do. But since the flesh is subject to our recreated spirit, we need to work at it daily. Confessing the words of our new vocabulary. It’s no longer I who liveth but Christ. Galatians 2:20; I am the righteousness of God in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21; I submit myself to God and resist the devil. James 4:7; I have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:16; Greater is He who is in me, than he that is in the world. 1 John 4:4; I can do all things through Christ. Philippians 4:13; Christ in me the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27; I glorify God with my body. 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.
These verses are a great start to bringing our bodies/flesh in line with the Holy Spirit’s work in us. We use the scriptures to help us daily work out what is being worked in. The work of Jesus is complete, everything that needed to be done to reconcile us to God’s original plan has been perfected in Christ Jesus. We must continually do our part until we depart from this life. It’s active, not passive. Passivity makes us lukewarm Christians. The renewed mind is a work in progress. It’s a constant washing away of the old nature.
That’s why it’s important as Christian parents to begin the transition early on in our children’s lives. I see the results in my own daughter. All she ever knew was what was related to the Kingdom of God. Every life lesson was contrasted by biblical standards. The Bible was the first thing we turned to for answers. What does Jesus say about that? Every decision was handled through prayer. By the time she was being exposed to other points of view, the framework was already established. She had a point of reference that remained unchanged. Even when it was challenged, because the foundation was strong she was not shaken. Give the Word relevance and it will become relevant in every situation.
The mind is our greatest struggle as Christians and non believers alike. Most every decision, good or bad, can be traced back to a thought. I believe we have covered this in another message. We are what we think. Proverbs 23:7. Change your mind, change your life. God knew this. This is why He told us to renew it. He didn’t give us a brain transplant when we got born again, He gave us a new, not patched up, spirit. 2 Corinthians 5:17. The new spirit teaches us through the Word/Bible, with the help of the Holy Spirit how to train an old system to conform to a new way of thinking and living. It’s a spiritual process, we use the Word like soap and water. Let’s look at what Paul wrote to the Ephesians.
“But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Ephesians 4:20-24 KJV
I prefer the King James version for these verses because it has more weight to the words than the newer translations. Be renewed in the “spirit “ of your mind. He’s saying here that the war for our minds is spiritual, so it requires another Spirit “the Word” who’s the Word? That’s right! Jesus is the Word that became flesh, John 1. We have to train or put off our former ways of thinking, speaking, acting, and living by giving control to the Word and allowing Him to bring about the renewing of our spirit, soul and eventually body. The last to be changed and only at the resurrection. So the marathon continues. We cannot faint and we cannot give up. We have to continuously work at bringing out what is being worked in by His Spirit.
Our Heavenly Father’s goal is for us to mature and develop the characteristics of Jesus Christ. Spiritual growth is not automatic. It takes intentional commitment. You must want to grow, decide to grow, make an effort to grow, and persist in growing. Everything begins with a decision. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life says, “there are two parts of spiritual growth: “work out” and “work in.” He continues: “The “work out” is our responsibility and the “work in” is God’s role.”
As we cooperate with the Holy Spirit, we will go from struggling with our responsibility for working out, and instead develop into a robust, joyful, fully transformed victorious child of God. We’ll always get out of our Christian experience what we’re willing to put in. We can live transformed, or be conformed. We can let the Word change us, or let CNN inform us. If the news is the first thing you turn on when you wake up…then wonder why your mind is messed up..?🙄 The world has many teachers, but we only need One: God the Holy Spirit. Conforming to and being obedient to His promptings will help us with the transformation process. It all depends on what is of priority to us, people of God. Garbage in garbage out. The Word in the Word out. Remember we’re supposed to be changing the world, as we’re transformed by the Word, not the other way around.
“We have become His poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny He has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works we would do to fulfill it!”
Ephesians 2:10 TPT
You have fingerprints that no one else has, so you can leave an imprint that no one else can. WT
Written by permission of the Holy Spirit
W. Tennant
July 28, 2021
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