Are you really dead to self?

Who is self?

Who did the disciples consider themselves to be? From their remarks on who is the greatest (An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest – Luke 9:46), the mother of Zebedee’s sons who asked for them to sit on both sides of Jesus when He became king (Matthew 20:20-22) and Peter's attitude of self importance (Peter answered and said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.” – Matthew 26:33) we can see that self was initially first and foremost to them. 

    

Even though Jesus did all the miracles and often spoke of His heritage, they still perceived Him from an earthly perspective and because of this perception they sought position in Jesus' expected hierarchy. Self was first on the minds of the disciples until Jesus died for them. This shook them so hard that they went into hiding, not really knowing what to do.

It was only after the Holy Spirit was poured out on them that they understood the spiritual significance of Jesus' purpose for coming to earth. This together with the hours of training they received from Jesus caused a miracle in them - self died. Thereafter only one thing mattered - the Kingdom of God and its King.

Has Jesus died for you? No, that answer came too quickly. After all the teaching the disciples received about what would happen to Jesus, they were still very much focused on self, until the reason why Jesus died and resurrected became reality for each one personally. The stark realization that that which they witnessed during the crucifixion was actually for them personally, made them painfully aware of how petty their self centred attitude was in the light of Jesus' display of ultimate selflessness. If you had to literally stand at the cross during the crucifixion and became aware of your selfishness in the light of Jesus' selflessness, would you have changed?

Only when the Holy Spirit reveals to you the reality of Jesus' sacrifice for you personally, will self die in you and will you walk in the selflessness and power of Jesus. John the Baptist who was already rock bottom in terms of material goods and social status declared that Jesus had to become more and he less.

I ask again; has Jesus died for you in the sense that you are so awed by it that you will gladly shift self out of the way so Jesus could shine instead. Are you so stunned by His sacrifice that you are ashamed of your attitude in life?

Holy Spirit, please fill me with an awareness of Jesus' selflessness so I can become like Him.

Are you dead (part four) to pet sins?

This may be a touchy subject. Let us first define pet sins. A pet sin is something you enjoy, but which is evil in the Lord's eyes. It is usually something we justify ourselves for. The knowledge that we are free in Christ does not help much when it comes to this self justification. Some of us are very aware of this sin, but some don't see anything wrong with what they are doing. We think that God does not mind our pet sins, since we think they are forgiven in Christ and therefore we reckon we are free to sin as well. There are, however, many passages contradicting this self justification of which the following are the most relevant:

1 John 3:5-6: ^“But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”

Romans 6:1-4: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

 Romans 6:15-17: “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

1 Corinthians 6:12, 13B (Amp): “Everything is permissible (allowable and lawful) for me; but not all things are helpful (good for me to do, expedient and profitable when considered with other things). Everything is lawful for me, but I will not become the slave of anything or be brought under its power. The body is not intended for sexual immorality, but [is intended] for the Lord, and the Lord [is intended] for the body [to save, sanctify, and raise it again].” This is written in the context of sexual immorality.

We find a similar passage in 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 (Amp) in the context of the believer’s freedom: “All things are legitimate [permissible—and we are free to do anything we please], but not all things are helpful (expedient, profitable, and wholesome). All things are legitimate, but not all things are constructive [to character] and edifying [to spiritual life]. Let no one then seek his own good and advantage and profit, but [rather] each one of the other [let him seek the welfare of his neighbour].”

Examples of pet sins are:

Serving Mammon, in other words enjoying and making use of the comfort and enjoyment that money and a materialistic lifestyle brings at the cost of service to the Kingdom of God. It is very convenient to live as you like, avoiding the obvious sins, but only tagging Christianity along as an eternal security measure. The problem is that in this process a serious sin is committed, which is disobedience to the Holy Spirit, since obedience may cause us inconvenience regarding our lifestyle of materialistic comfort.

Sports: An excessive awareness of and participation in sports, either as spectators or athletes at the cost of serving the Kingdom is sin. Again we have self justification here. “I take part to the glory of God.” What you need to ask yourself is what is in your heart. How does your focus benefit and promote God's Kingdom in that souls are saved, people are discipled and educated in God's ways. If you only use yours being a Christian to benefit your sport and the image you portray, you sin. If you put the watching of and participation in sports above the development and usage of your gift to serve the Kingdom, you sin and need to die to this sin.

Yielding to the desires of the sinful nature (the flesh):

These could be greed, dishonesty, anger, selfishness, lust, pornography, vanity, hatred, unforgiveness, corruption, manipulation, etc. There are many demands we receive from our flesh or carnal nature that need to be overcome and die, since they stand in the way of our purity and an unhindered relationship with the Lord, (Galatians 5:16-26) Do not be deceived. God may love you as you are, but without holiness no-one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). The word holiness here means sanctification or being made holy. This is a process. See the series on holiness to be found in the archive to the right of the Word bytes blog in August and September 2014.

Satan and his demons attempt to use these weaknesses in the flesh to make us ineffective and delay God's plan with us. The Lord, however, uses them to form our character and to teach us a victorious life as well as self control (Paul’s thorn – 2 Corinthians 12:7-9). The aim is for the above-mentioned things to die so we could be completely sold out to the Kingdom - or as Isaiah put it in his famous chapter about True Fasting: “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.”

Lord, please show me my pet sins and help me die to them.

Are you dead (Part Three)

In the previous message we started looking at what is it in us that should die?

The next thing that should die is our pride. If we look carefully at our lives we will find a lot of pride. Maybe you will see what I am getting at by answering the following questions.

·         Do you get agitated when someone underestimates your ability, understanding, intelligence etc?

·         Do you get envious of someone whose gift appears to be better than yours?

·         Do you get jealous when people appear to adore or enjoy someone else's ministry gifting or style?

·         Do you jealously hold onto the power that you have obtained over time?

·         When your faults or errors are pointed out, do you retaliate - even if only in your heart and thoughts?

·         Are you acting in self defence when you feel threatened regarding your power, popularity or position of influence?

·         How dependent are you on the Lord? Do you consult Him in everything you do, because if we don’t, we tell the Lord in essence we can do it ourselves and don't need Him - pride?

·         Do you try to control – even the works of the Spirit?

·         When you pray publicly or minister, do you catch yourself thinking whether you impress God or listeners?

I think you get the gist of what I am saying. “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted,” (Matthew 23:11-12). I think the reason why we do not see the kind of power that Jesus and the apostles used to see is because pride stands in the way. Most of us want to be seen. When a move of God happens somewhere else, we often want it as well. Why would that be? What is the motive behind our desire?

Jesus' focus was completely on His Father (John 8:27-29) and the disciples' focus similarly on Jesus via the Holy Spirit (John 15:5). We say all the right stuff, but what do we think? Are you like the apostles who gave their lives for the Kingdom's sake, or are you like Ananias and Sapphira who lost their lives lying to the Holy Spirit in order to impress others to maintain their pride.

Jesus humiliated Himself to the lowest possible level and the result was that He was exalted to the highest possible level. Even in this high position He still humbles Himself by pleading on our behalf before the Father.

How low are you prepared to go or is pride standing in the way? Do you think if pride stood in their way the apostles would have been so recklessly obedient. Paul used to be a man of stature (Acts 23:6), yet he did not think twice to obey to the point of a life as described in 2 Corinthians 11:22-29. How do you think a man of his position felt about being flogged, thrown into jail, and chased out of town by hooligans? If you were in his position, would your pride not have retaliated?

Take Jesus - how many times do we see Him defending Himself? Who was He and where did He come from? If He had any pride, how would He have reacted to the way He was treated? If you were in His shoes, how would you have dealt with it?

And Peter? He had a good deal of pride that Jesus had to deal with, but when the Holy Spirit took over it all changed. Maybe this is the secret. Who controls us - our pride or the Holy Spirit?

If pride is altogether dead and we have no self centred motives left, we are about ready to move in the same power Jesus did. Miracles and healings are not the only manifestations of power - any evidence of God's power backing His servants is a manifestation of the humble being exalted. I am thinking of teaching, serving and witnessing that result in salvation and faith.

The letter kills, but the Spirit brings life (2 Corinthians 3:4-6). A word uttered or a deed done in pride is void of power, even though it is from the Word of God, whereas the latter done in humility in the Spirit works change.

Just after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts, Peter simply witnessed without signs and miracles and well researched words and 3000 got saved in an instant. What happened? After the recent events and his experience with the Lord Jesus Peter was humble enough to have the right motive for his actions – the will of God. With him out of the way the Holy Spirit had the stage to show God off. They same happened throughout the book of Acts with all the believers.

Who do you show off? Remember there is no point in only answering with words. What is in your heart?

Lord, please reveal my pride so I can humble myself completely.

Are you dead? (Part Two)

In order to understand the phrases dying to your carnal self and hating your life, we need to define them. You hate your life when you hate the fact that the busyness of your current life and the demands of your selfish nature stands in your way to obey the Lord’s every command and be as fruitful as possible. Dying to self is to do something about it and remove these from your life so you have more to give to the Lord.

What is it in us that need to die?

Our life needs to die. “What do you mean my life? What am I worth dead?” you may ask. If you live YOUR life, you live it as you like for yourself. You make decisions according to your desires, your passions, your lusts, your comfort and securities. This is what needs to die. So what does such a life look like? In looking at it we assume you are a Christian and could build your life around any of the following:

a.    You have a comfortable (in many cases a very luxurious) home, an impressive career, a number of pleasurable activities, inclusive of the cars you drive, the sports you play and the social life you live. Christianity is an essential status you had to acquire and you make sure that your giving and your presence at church circles are not passed unnoticed.

b.    For some who were not so fortunate in life to have the opportunity to acquire loads of money, the basis of their Christianity is actually very similar than described above. The way around the lack of money is being one-eyed king in the land of the blind. You make sure you impress those around you with a lifestyle and a presence that are just a little more impressive that those of others. Quite often power, such as in serving in many committees, forms part of the package.

c.    For a third type of Christian comfort is the name of the game. You do your Christian duty by paying your tithe and sooth your conscience by attending church regularly, attending home cell and so on. You just do not want to be asked to be involved in any more, since it may interfere with your sports idolatry or social life.

d.   Some Christians are ambitious and climb the ladder of success in sport and career, tagging Christianity along because they really would not like to wind up in hell.

The Lord Jesus said in Mathew 7:21-23 under the chapter heading “True and False Disciples”, that many will tell Him they have done all these wonderful things in His name and for Him, but He told them He does not know them. Why is this? It is actually quite simple – those who do not die to themselves and hate their own lives, only tag Christianity along with their self-centred lives, which they love more than the author of this Christianity. They never go to the trouble getting to know Jesus through studying His Word and obeying what He tells them to do and therefore, when they approach Him on the day of judgement, He seriously cannot recall that He ever met them, because they never had a relationship with Him.

How much do you know about the Lord? Do you know which of your actions He likes and dislikes? Do you know what His exact will for your life is and what He wants you to do to get there? What is it that stands in your way to get to know Him better and find out what He desires for you?

In human relationships, such as with your spouse, partner or boss, you know what to pursue with the person involved in the relationship and what to avoid. As you get to know your boss, you know what not to do and what to do to avoid his displeasure. The same applies to your spouse.

Why would it be different with the Lord of hosts? If the Lord Jesus and the angels had to step lightly to stay in favour with Father God, why would it be different for us? A general lie that is preached these days is that the Lord’s love is unconditional? If it had been so, why did He deal so severely with certain people, including those of the New Testament? Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) come to mind. Why did He not just give them a fair chance to come to their senses and repent? If He loved them unconditionally, why did He act so severely?

God seeks holiness and obedience? He probably made an example of Ananias and Sapphira as a message to the Christians in the ages to come. If He had to act so severely with all Christians lying to the Holy Spirit, many more would have died. Maybe this is the reason why certain Christians died prematurely. Only God knows, but since the passage about Ananias and Sapphira concludes with these words; “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events”, should we not fear God enough not to act like them.

As I studied the book of Acts and came to the account of Ananias and Sapphira, I felt the Lord said to me the church is polluted with Ananiases and Sapphiras. How often have you deceived people with your spiritual motives, creating an untrue impression of yourself or what you do in order to impress those who matter? God is not to be fooled around with. He may be merciful right now, but there are lots of evidence in the Bible that we will answer one day for our actions and motives. Can the Lord say of you as He said of Job: “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?” (Job 2:3)

Lord, you need me to be wholly available to help in the harvest. Help me to hate and die to those things in my life that keeps me from getting there.

To be continued.

Are you dead?

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

“⁵For if we have been united with Him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with Him in a resurrection like His. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

“⁸Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God.

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace,” (Romans 6:1-14).

Have you ever struggled with the things you do that you do not want to do as Paul mentioned in Romans 7:14-24? How many times have you decided not to criticise, or not to retaliate, or not to defend yourself, or not to be nasty with your body language, or not to return to your pet sin or idol? Maybe you have decided to live more for Jesus and less for your material desires, but struggle to sacrifice your time for the sake of those that need you because you cling to your comfortable lifestyle.

The problem is that we set up our lives to be in control and therefore, however hard we try to live without sin, including the sin of making our own decisions, we do not succeed. I have desired to live outright for the Lord - under His control and in obedience - for a long time now, and since I have set out in the attempt to master it, I have received real understanding of where Paul was at as recorded in Romans 7:14-24. It is especially difficult to control the feelings, thoughts and the tongue toward those with whom I have relationship challenges and in relationships where pride tends to rise.

Since I am in serious pursuit of holiness and to be right with God, I fasted and prayed about this and the Lord said to me: “You’re not dead.” Suddenly it struck me – a dead man cannot retaliate, be proud, be critical, be full of material lusts or be selfish. A dead man can be slapped, kicked, criticised, be shouted at, and so on, but he will not respond. If I am dead in myself, but alive in Christ, I look at myself from inside of Christ and tell my flesh: ‘I am alive and will act like Christ would, but you are dead’. I then asked the Lord how do I die to sin and self.

“Ask me to teach you,” He said. Now, please think carefully before you ask this off the Lord, but if you do, expect to be challenged and for things to happen in your life that will help your carnal nature to move out of the way. I am looking forward to the result though. Maybe you can witness below if you had death-to-the-flesh experiences. If you as a kernel of grain die, you will produce much fruit.

“Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me,’” (John 12:23-26).

If your life, in other words your lifestyle, desires and behaviour, stand in the way of the Lord accomplishing His desires for you, you need to lose (hate) your (current) life (John 12:25) so you can take up His life (Romans 6:8-10).

Father, teach me to die so I could live only for You and bear much fruit.

Don’t Sin

We have concluded our series on holiness and, although my heart yearns to write endlessly, my time is temporarily occupied by a development we are busy with. Therefore I have decided to leave our study on the epistle of John for a while and just regularly place a golden nugget or some of my previous articles until such time as I am in a position to write regularly again. Do not forget to like my Facebook page at Word Bytes for then you have regular access to some more teaching.

“No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it,” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

I do not know what temptations you have struggled with before or currently have a hard time with. I know though, that I am tempted quite often to sin in a certain area. When temptation comes it usually works like this: Initially I resist it, but as the lies from Satan and the self-justification of my sinful nature increases, I sometimes give in to the pressure, my flesh enjoys it for a while, after which regret kicks in and condemnation follows. This is probably what Paul referred to when He wrote about the thorn in his flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

It is easy to justify ourselves with the fact that we are weak, as an excuse to enjoy the sins that are common to man.

In church we, however, had a simple message the other day about the above passage in 1 Corinthians 10:13, which triggered the following thought in me:

The Lord promised He will give a way out of a temptation. If we therefore surrender to sin, we do not bear with the temptation supported by His power, but basically slap Him in His face so to speak, for we then show Him we did not want His way of escape, but rather desired to sin.

We read in Hebrews 12:4: “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Say for instance you have parked your car on a sloped road facing a cliff. You get out having a look at the view, when your child releases the handbrake and the car starts rolling. You have just swum in some nearby pools and are barefoot. You run closer and throw your weight against the car which causes your bare feet to drag across the rough surface of the road until the no skin is left and blood flows. Are you going to let go of the car because your feet are bleeding and let it drop down the cliff with your child it? No, you are going to resist its momentum until you succeed.

Sin is like that car - a killer! It kills your godly potential, you success as a ministering Christian, the souls of those you influence and those you do not reach because of your sin of disobedience.

Sin is not only doing wrong things. It is any form of disobedience. “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin,” (James 4:17).

Are you resisting sin to the point of shedding your blood? Do you rely on the Lord for His way of escape?

Lord, you are purifying your church. Please include me.