Monday, May 16, 2016

You Are A New Noun. Are You Living Each Day With An Awareness Of That Newness?

My Utmost For His Highest
 
…you may be partakers of the divine nature… —2 Peter 1:4
 
“We are made “partakers of the divine nature,” receiving and sharing God’s own nature through His promises. Then we have to work that divine nature into our human nature by developing godly habits. […] Does it really matter that our circumstances are difficult? Why shouldn’t they be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we remove God’s riches from our lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it removes God from the throne of our lives, replacing Him with our own self-interests. It causes us to open our mouths only to complain, and we simply become spiritual sponges— always absorbing, never giving, and never being satisfied. […] If the majesty, grace, and power of God are not being exhibited in us, God holds us responsible. “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you…may have an abundance…” (2 Corinthians 9:8)— then learn to lavish the grace of God on others, generously giving of yourself. Be marked and identified with God’s nature, and His blessing will flow through you all the time.” CHAMBERS
 
Living each day with the awareness that you possess a divine nature is something that most Christians don’t do.  Someone once said that Christian is not an adjective.  If you remember from English class, adjectives are words that modify or describe nouns,  like the “black” cat.  But the word, Christian, is a noun not an adjective.  It is who we are.  A Christian is a sinner who has been given a divine nature by virtue of being born again by grace through faith.  As Christians we can be described by our gender, our natural ethnicity, skin color,  citizenship, maybe even doctrine.  But at the core, we are Christians who possess the same Spirit, same Hope, and same future.  Where trouble comes is when we reverse the words and we consider ourselves to be one of the adjectives and not the noun.  I am black.  I am white.  I am Mexican.  I am American.  I am rich.  I am poor.  But the truth is, I am a sinner saved by grace.  (Galatians 3:26-29)  “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Did you catch that?  You are Abraham’s seed.  That means that, spiritually, you have a new ethnicity.  You are a “new noun”.
 
Each day, you must walk in that newness (Romans 6:4) “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”  Who you are in Christ should shape your thinking and doing.  Man, in vain, legislates moral conduct, but as you know what man defines as moral changes with time.  What God has declared as moral or right never changes. It never changes.  Man attempts to change others from the outside in.  But true change can only occur from the inside out.  God does that through Christ.  Several years ago, Pastor Marc, a Haitian Christian, and I responded to a vision that he had about planting a church in a certain mountain village near Jacmel.  The church was next to a house owned by a Voodoo priestess named, Meyèze. We held crusades virtually in her front yard.  We built a school and a church next door.  Marc shared the Gospel with her, but she would not yield her heart to the Lord.  But, yesterday she professed her faith in Jesus to the glory of God.  And today she is a new noun, the seed of Abraham, a daughter of the most high God.  You might marvel at the great distance she traveled from a devotion to Voodoo to a devotion to the Lord.  But the truth is that it is the same distance that you and I have traveled.  We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  (Romans 3:23).  God is only one step of faith away for all of us.  Pray for Meyèze.  And don’t forget who you are and whose you are.  Walk in the newness of life.  CHARLEY

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