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Teaching -
Word Of The Week
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Written by Pastor Judy Sky
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Tuesday, 14 October 2008 15:47 |
by Pastor Judy Sky
I have a little spiritual exercise for you today. Set aside a few moments of quiet time to ‘be still and know...' Psalms 46:10
Consider these questions for yourself, and pause and calmly let the answers come, (Selah!)
Do this exercise in light of all the answers being available to you by ‘letting this Mind be in you that is also in Christ Jesus': (Philippians 2:5  )
- What is in the mind of Christ today
- What is in Your mind, today, Lord?
- What is God thinking today?
- My God... what are You thinking about today?
- What are You thinking about me today?
- What do You want me to know, Lord?
I ask You now to download the thoughts You want me to think.
Let Your mind be in me... the Mind that is in Christ Jesus.
Empower me to think as a spirit-man, son of God.
I have Your Spirit in me. (John 16:7-16 )
I release from Your Spirit in me the thoughts that are mine from the Mind of Christ.
I choose to receive Your thoughts now. I know, according to Your Word that You want me to Let Your Mind Be In Me that is also in Christ Jesus... I receive all that You are imparting to me, my God.
My God,
- What are You thinking, (through The Mind of Christ), about my particular situation, dealing with _______________________?
- What are Your Thoughts, Oh God, about my particular: relationships, finances, ministry, condition, health, future, love life or ‘love walk'... my maturity level...How precious to me, are Your thoughts, Oh God...So high, so wide, so deep... How precious to me! (Psalms 139:17)
- What is Your heart and mind, my God, and what do You want me to think about my self, individually...
- Give me Your heart and mind and love for this particular group of people __________(friends, family, church, co-workers, etc)?
- Give me Your Vision and impart in me what I need to know intuitively or consciously from Your plans for me and for us:
- What does Your Mind... The Mind of Christ see coming up for me, and for us?
- What do You, Oh God, want me, and want us to know now?
- What do You, Oh God, want to do in me and in us to prepare us for what is to come?
- How and through what means do You, my God, want to accomplish that?
I know that I may not consciously hear and understand all that is being imparted and downloaded and released from Christ in me to my own soul... through The Spirit of The Mind. .. but I do know that Your Word says, ‘Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened unto you. (Matthew 7:7 ) Solomon was wise in asking for wisdom to rule the people, rather than riches that he got anyway. (2 Chronicles 1:10-12 ) I know that Wisdom is from Your thoughts, my God... and I am asking for Your Mind to be in me, and Your thoughts to fill that mind. Let that same mind be in me as is in Christ Jesus. I choose to believe it and I choose to receive it all.
I know, according to Your Word, that is exactly what is happening right now and I peacefully and confidently and joyfully receive all You are imparting to me. I pray that I will live out of what You are giving me, for Your glory. Amen
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus
We can consider for our example the difference between the thinking of Mary and Martha and the thinking of the mind of Christ Jesus
... and consider what the experience might have been for Lazarus as he went through the valley of the shadow of death into hearing the call of God on his life.
Re-read story of Lazarus: (John 11 )
Mary and Martha scolded Christ for not being loving, and for not being faithful to their brother. They judged that He was wrong, demonstrated a lack of promptness and bad timing and that He was allowing Himself to be distracted on His way to visit poor, sick Lazarus
They admonished Him, ‘If You would have been here, our brother would have lived!'
But maybe he needed to go all the way through that death experience in order to be the first example of Christ raising the dead. Because he went all the way into and through death, he became the first of this sort of resurrection life....
We have resurrection life in the form of Christ in us, on the inside, actually walking it out in us and as us, telling us to ‘go forth... to all the nations fulfilling the great co-mission.
Lazerus only had The Life of Christ on the outside, calling him to ‘come forth'. Then he needed the help getting his grave-clothes unwrapped.
That is our part... loving each other and dealing with the ‘stinketh' stuff with in and about each other. We've been given the empowerment and the command to separate life from the death and even to the stench of death, the healing of the memories, and the filthy rags that are the end of our own righteousness and independence from God. There is One New Man (Ephesians 2:14-18 ) who is able to do these things, with Jesus as The Head. Jesus is the Firstborn of many brethren (Colossians 1:18 , Romans 8:29 ), and our spirit-men are of that ‘Many Brethren Company'.
What was Lazarus's part? To hear? To respond to the voice and the call? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word or Voice of God (Romans 10:17 ). The faith of God, or the faithfulness of God raised him up. The brethren loosed him and released him from all that bound him up and stunk. How powerful is that? How loving is that? What an example is that!
We need to stop listening to the wisdom of the world and begin to listen to our God. We need to stop going by the lower and base senses: what we see and what we feel.
We need live by :
"THE ONLY TRUTH ABOUT US is WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT US."
The bible says: A thousand will fall at your left hand and ten thousand at your right hand but it will not come near you. (Psalms 91:7)
But Lazarus died!
But Lazarus got raised up again, from the dead!
This was the greater miracle granted him:
To be raised the dead and not merely healed from sickness.
The impossible became possible.
The unthinkable became thinkable,
and now we need to THINK ON THESE THINGS...
that which is true and lovely and a good report... regardless what the News says.
We need to begin to think the thoughts of God.
We can see how God thinks when we are familiar, in agreement with and comfortable with discerning, recognizing, knowing and loving His Word which is His Voice.
His Words are symbols that re-present His Self.
When we know His Word and His Voice and His Ways, we can begin to know His Nature and His Spirit.
We have a ‘set' of His Words to establish and embellish the pattern of His Image in us. We can pass anything through that filter and discern if it is God or not. We can know God in an ever-increasing revelation, through all these facets if we know THE TRUE GOD... AS HE IS.
We learned a lot of ‘False-God Religion' that needs to be un-learned. We need to know that our God is all good, all loving with unconditional love that we cannot earn. When we allow ourselves to be Fear-Motivated, we are worshipping a false god. When we constantly learn to choose to dwell on and entertain THE THOUGHTS OF GOD, that are scripturally validated, we begin to have His Nature and His Spirit running through us. His Words are spirit and are life to those who believe. (John 6:63 )
Our minds are renewed by ‘the washing of the water of the word of God' (Ephesians 5:26 )
We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. (Romans 12:2 ).
That renewal is from the mind of Adam to THE MIND OF CHRIST. We are a people in the midst of transformation, who will move through the transformation according to the thoughts we choose to think.
The ‘mind' is identified by what it produces... there are only two minds: Christ and Anti-(or instead of) Christ.
A lot of people want to deal with God apart from Christ. They are a bunch of mixture: Pro-God, but anti-Christ, or instead of Christ. The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of The Son of God. We have been given that same spirit that raised Christ from the dead and it has the power to quicken and make alive... even our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11 ) Scripture does not say that that ‘quickening' is for some other day or realm or season. It is ‘since' the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you He shall quicken your mortal body.
Remember to watch and listen to your words... not to be religious, but as a clue to you, spirit-man, what your own soul is up to. It is up to you spirit-man, son of God, to guard your heart and mind. You are spirit, and that is the spirit of Christ, that is also your spirit. ‘who is joined to The Lord IS ONE SPIRIT (1 Corinthians 6:17 )
Remember: ‘out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks' (Luke 6:45 ) And ‘as a man thinketh, so is he' (Proverbs 23:7 ).
Let your own words tell on your soul as to whose thought you've been thinking; whose nature have you been entertaining?
Love believes the best of everyone. What do you believe?
Perfect Love casts out fear (1 John 4:18 ). Are you entertaining the temptations of the spirit of fear? These questions are not for condemnation, but for realization and responsibility and empowerment to choose and change:
Are you anxious?
Are you dreading?
Are you experience panic?
Are you worrying?
Are you a little paranoid?
Are you insecure?
These emotions may be the product of an unconscious entertainment of ‘some other spirit' of ‘some other false-god' or of ‘some other motivation'.
Jesus... with THE MIND OF CHIRST is THE WAY.
The one who comes to rob and steal and destroy is the temptation to choose SOME OTHER WAY(John 10:1 ) to get through much tribulation. We have THE WAY as our vehicle and transportation.
We are IN CHRIST.
We have available as our ENGINE, THE MIND OF CHRIST, and as our fuel that will faithfully get us where we are going: THE THOUGHTS OF GOD. ‘His word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path'.
WITH WHOSE MIND ARE YOU THINKING?
CHECK IT OUT BY LISTENING TO WHAT YOUR MOUTH IS SPEAKING. IT WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU ARE THINKING IN YOUR ‘HEART', IN THE SPIRIT OF THE MIND . CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOU'LL CHANGE HOW YOU FEEL. CHANGE HOW YOU FEEL AND YOU'LL CHANGE WHAT YOU WILL OR WILL NOT DO.
CHRIST IS OUR LIFE AND OUR ONLY HOPE OF GLORY:
‘Let this mind be in you that is also in Christ Jesus, who thought it not, too great a thing to be one or equal with God.' (Philippians 2:6 )
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