King Soul
The book of Romans describes the reign of two kings who seek to rule in our lives. There is a king of sin and death and the King righteousness and Life
As believers, King sin used to reign in our dead and mortal body but now King righteousness reigns in His domain which is our spirit and our mortal body now quickened by His spirit.
We are a spirit who possesses a mind (soul) and who lives in a body.
You’re a spirit being. We are made in God’s image. With our spirit, we contact the spirit world. With the mind, we contact the world of thoughts and with the body, we make contact with the physical world. The world only seeks to develop the soul and mind and body. So university professors can’t stay married. They can become educated idiots. Bodybuilders with perfect bodies, can’t cope with life and may jump off bridges.
Mankind can’t be normal until they live by the Spirit. The Spirit is to give the orders and tell us how to live. The mind/soul is the servant and needs the education to know what to do and how to act. And the body is a slave needing to be told what to do. Its voice needs to be judged for its legitimacy.
Friend, before we were believer there was no King righteousness reigning, only king sin reigning in our life. The King of righteousness and Jesus now lives in our spirit, soul and our body. Let’s walk in the spirit and allow the King of Righteousness to rule in every part of our life.
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Success out of Failure
I used to work at the city council where there was a man in our section, who often used to say “success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.” Everyone wants to claim they played a part in something that was successful but when something is a disaster or fails, nobody wants to own it. We might talk about failure in hushed tones but everybody does it. Teacher and students, cops and crooks, parents and children all fail. Doctors fail and they bury their mistakes! Nobody likes to fail but everybody does sometimes. In Gen 3.10 we find that failure is part of the human race. Moses failed in understanding when he sought to save the Israelites. He rose up in anger, killed an Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Samson failed morally and David failed the temptation test. Peter denied that he knew Jesus, and wept bitterly later as he thought about his lack of courage and loyalty. Probably like me, you have come to church some weeks with a small or large library of failures from the past week, and some even added that morning.
Friend, failure has been a part of the human experience for a long time but stop and think; did their failure stop them being used by God and becoming an eventual success? No they all finally did the will of God. Some of them not in spite of their failure but because of their failure, as it made them more aware of their need for God.
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Credibility
Credibility among those we serve is important. Credibility takes time to gain but can be lost in a moment. Credibility is gained when we are consistent in character.
If we find ourselves secretly wishing we could be recognized more, like Judas who as part of the team was more mindful of his area of service than the good of the whole team our credibility is in danger
If we won’t allow another person to hold a different point of view from ours, we’re not giving them the same dignity we demand ourselves. Or if we are envious when they are “promoted” in the fellowship, perhaps it’s time to humble ourselves before God again and remember that He will promote us in due time.
Perhaps our insecurity is crying out. The insecure get security from what they do, not who they are. These people need a greater revelation of the Father so they can grow in security. Most believers are not villains: in the body of Christ, there are no heroes and no villains.
When we recognize a lack of godly attitude or lack of character we need to go back to Jesus and ask Him to live through us again.
Friend, conflicts are opportunities to develop or destroy your credibility as a leader or as a believer. Remember ministry is based on credibility. If we have little credibility with people we will have a little ministry to people. As credibility grows our true authority grows.
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To do you good
The forty days passed slowly in the desert, but each day Jesus prayed and prepared for the enemies attack. After Jesus had been tested in the wilderness, He came out in the power of the spirit. He was the true Israel and unlike natural Israel, He chose to live by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. Increased power and blessing followed His passing the test in the wilderness. After Paul had learned to humble himself before God in the desert for many years, he came out with the greatest revelations of God any man had ever had. He learned to collect “Manna” he’d never seen before; things about God he could have never imagined, things about grace, things about the gentiles he never has seen before, till he could say “Everything I thought I knew before, is just dung.”
He was humbled and tested to see whether he would “collect” and obey Gods new manna and was given the honor of penning revelations that brought light to the whole world.
God’s blessing still follows obedience. It is the test that makes you a testimony. God’s supernatural life is on the other side of your wilderness test. He just wants to do you good. That’s what a father wants; for His children to be blessed in the end.
Friend, we can't change our test but we can change our perspective. We can't change having to go through the wilderness but we can change how we look at it. Our perspective should be that God only tests us to do us good in the end, and our best days are just beyond the word we obey. Our breakthrough and blessing are just after the next test we pass.
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Raising children
The rugby coach asked the team to run another five lengths of the field. He knows that although training is not popular, it is only the hard yards that will prepare them for the rigors of the games to come. He is training them for the challenges of the future. It always takes discipline to maximize our potential. No one loved us like our own father, so we know when they disciplined us it was because they loved us. The discipline of children is not done to them but it is done for them. Discipline helps children grow in obedience and respect. Without obedience and respect in society, there is no civil order only anarchy. That is the reason why God tells fathers, to train the next generation to obey, honour and respect authority. Child discipline builds a sense of justice; it also removes guilt, develops their sense of right and wrong and gives boundaries and security.
Deuteronomy says that God disciplines his children, for the same reason. The discipline of the wilderness was to prepare them to enter the land. It doesn't matter how much we turn up the volume at church or how high we jump in the worship, if we aren't people that fear God or have not been trained to live at our potential, we may not enjoy the fullness of what God intends.
Friend, Father God may discipline us, but it will enable us to enter the inheritance and the better future He plans for us.
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God works
Paul writes to the believers at Philippi “I’m in prison but God is at work. I’m not preaching around the nations, but God is at work and so I’m confident that God is at work in your life too, no matter how difficult your life seems”.
If we think God is not at work in our lives to will and to do of his good pleasure during the hard patches of life, we end up thinking that others are in charge of our life and not God. We will murmur in unbelief thinking that other people, not God are determining our circumstances and happiness.
We actually become idolaters because we reduce God down to the size of a small Sunday god, a quite time god or a good time only god. He may not have caused the hardship but He certainly can use while you are coming out of it.
Friend, the apostle understood God is always at work, so he says to his friends in lesser trouble, rejoice in the Lord always. The Lord is at work.
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The wilderness
The wilderness stretched out in front of the people of Israel for miles, as they walked through the desert on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was harsh, empty and cold at night, and it was hot during the day, but there was no alternative. In the wilderness, they were to learn to observe the word of God, and not to observe everything else around them. It was a place that tested their hearts to see whether they would obey God's Word. In the wilderness, God gave them manna they didn’t know so they would come to understand they could not live on the bread they already knew. To see that the things of this world, that they knew, were not what gave them life. The Manna was a type of Jesus Christ. It was free, pure, from heaven and tasted good, but it had to be gathered daily and eaten daily to be enjoyed. As they picked up Manna every day, they learned to obey and they learned to trust God. They learned to do things Gods way and they learned to do the difficult. When they came out of Egypt as slaves, they thought of themselves as poor, man dependent, and bound by natural limitations but as they learned to walk in God's ways they learned that they were wealthy enough, to have a day off every week, that dependence upon God meant the impossible could happen and that God can remove human limitations.
Friend, like the Israelites we have to learn that Gods ways are different. We need to learn that he is for us and leading us into a life of unrestricted, heaven-sent, limitless possibilities.
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Failing to love
Jonah hit the beach thankful that God had spared him and was keen to complete his preaching mission in Nineveh. As he preached repentance he could hardly believe the success of his crusade. The whole city from the king down to donkeys clothed themselves in sackcloth. Jonah’s message had melted the coldest heart; what a crusade. But was God content or was Jonah a success/
Jonah did the right thing, but he was not yet the right person. So God comes to him again in Chapter 4.2 because God wanted him to learn to love. As he sits down in the glow of his success, God prepares a vine to grow over his head to give shade which Job enjoyed greatly. Then God prepared a worm to kill the vine and the shade, and Jonah wanted to die. God brings the whole lesson to close. Until you learn to love like me, you have not yet succeeded. To be a true prophet; to speak for me, to represent me, you need to represent my love.
Jonah’s failure was not really rebellion but actually a lack of love; he could not love as God did. Most failure is just a lack of love.
Failure helps us to see that we need to abide in His love, in order to love others. In the parable of the two debtors the man who failed to forgive failed to love! True success is not just persevering or never quitting. We may be inspired by the story of Disney who went broke seven times before he had success or Edison who did 10,000 experiments to perfect the light bulb before he had success, but real success is not about accomplishing something so much is becoming someone.
Friend, success is not the ultimate triumph but ultimate love it’s not what we have done, but who we become.
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