Camidria
Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2017
- Messages
- 736
I believe that all Christians that was born again could relate, the moment you make a commitment to Christ that is the moment that most of us leave behind a life of sin, we become a new creation. Through a deep and very personal relationship with Jesus, He starts to show us our true identity in Him and little by little He sanctifies us as we become more like Him in character.
What does this mean? Let's break it down!
Imagine you are like a spiky ball, on the inside your spirit has been sanctified (made clean, pure and blameless before God when you accepted Christ) your flesh on the other hand still has all the sinful habits you picked up while you were still in the world.
Then by studying the Word of God, spending time in prayer and also bit by bit trusting Jesus with every part of your life, God begins to 'take away all the spikes'.
This is why you see Christians that even after they are saved they might still do certain things that aren't acceptable. By allowing God to prune away all your bad habits, your flesh comes in line with what happened with your spirit.
This time can really be very hard for you as a new Christian, and satan will come with many many lies trying to convince you through other people (and other Christians even that are still weak in their worldly habits), that you are not saved and you are still doing all these sins and you are not worthy etc.
So how does sanctification look? I will give an example out of my own life:
Growing up I never had a father that affirmed me, and he did many bad things to me and my mom like verbal abuse. I was always caught in the middle of a fight. I grew up believing that I wasn't good enough and nothing I did was ever good enough. So the acceptance of people became an idol for me. An idol is something you worship or deem more important than God. When your focus is constantly on what people think of you, and not on God and what He wants you to do or what He thinks of you, that can become a subtle idol that we cannot even see! This can lead to you compromising your values even for acceptance!
So this was the first thing God sorted out for me as a new believer. He would constantly remind me to focus on Him and not on other people. It was very hard to do that as I craved love and acceptance of others!! He taught me to find all that acceptance in Him, as this was one of my biggest idols it took years for my identity to be established in God. Finding that I only need Him and nothing and no-one else. As I became obedient to what He was telling me to do, I became more reliant on Him for my acceptance and forgot about others. And finally when I didn't need anybody anymore to like or accept me, people actually started thinking differently about me.
We have to realise that as Christians God is never done with the work He has started in us. We will always learn to be more and more obedient as time goes on, and we will stumble and fall as God is teaching us to lay off the flesh. We are all human, and we all make mistakes. God loves it when we are brutally honest with Him, when we admit our faults and when we become dependent on Him alone. You will always be pruned and sanctified, and in this process it is important to realise that the devil is out to destroy you and will try and temp you again and again until you have learned to resist him while relying on God only!
Be always in prayer, ask God what you should do and learn to be obedient in that. Ask for scriptures and trust Him to give you the right scriptures. Focus on Him continually and you will see how your life will turn around!
What does this mean? Let's break it down!
Imagine you are like a spiky ball, on the inside your spirit has been sanctified (made clean, pure and blameless before God when you accepted Christ) your flesh on the other hand still has all the sinful habits you picked up while you were still in the world.
Then by studying the Word of God, spending time in prayer and also bit by bit trusting Jesus with every part of your life, God begins to 'take away all the spikes'.
This is why you see Christians that even after they are saved they might still do certain things that aren't acceptable. By allowing God to prune away all your bad habits, your flesh comes in line with what happened with your spirit.
This time can really be very hard for you as a new Christian, and satan will come with many many lies trying to convince you through other people (and other Christians even that are still weak in their worldly habits), that you are not saved and you are still doing all these sins and you are not worthy etc.
So how does sanctification look? I will give an example out of my own life:
Growing up I never had a father that affirmed me, and he did many bad things to me and my mom like verbal abuse. I was always caught in the middle of a fight. I grew up believing that I wasn't good enough and nothing I did was ever good enough. So the acceptance of people became an idol for me. An idol is something you worship or deem more important than God. When your focus is constantly on what people think of you, and not on God and what He wants you to do or what He thinks of you, that can become a subtle idol that we cannot even see! This can lead to you compromising your values even for acceptance!
So this was the first thing God sorted out for me as a new believer. He would constantly remind me to focus on Him and not on other people. It was very hard to do that as I craved love and acceptance of others!! He taught me to find all that acceptance in Him, as this was one of my biggest idols it took years for my identity to be established in God. Finding that I only need Him and nothing and no-one else. As I became obedient to what He was telling me to do, I became more reliant on Him for my acceptance and forgot about others. And finally when I didn't need anybody anymore to like or accept me, people actually started thinking differently about me.
We have to realise that as Christians God is never done with the work He has started in us. We will always learn to be more and more obedient as time goes on, and we will stumble and fall as God is teaching us to lay off the flesh. We are all human, and we all make mistakes. God loves it when we are brutally honest with Him, when we admit our faults and when we become dependent on Him alone. You will always be pruned and sanctified, and in this process it is important to realise that the devil is out to destroy you and will try and temp you again and again until you have learned to resist him while relying on God only!
Be always in prayer, ask God what you should do and learn to be obedient in that. Ask for scriptures and trust Him to give you the right scriptures. Focus on Him continually and you will see how your life will turn around!