I want to share a powerful message by Bruce, a fellow Brother in Jesus Christ.
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by: Bruce
It seems to me many Christians today are not walking in power but rather are found hanging on by their fingernails, feeling like they must be the only ones who feel as they do, that they are "different". Every step is struggle for them, and no matter how much they try, they cannot seem to get the hang of walking with even a semblance of even normalcy, let alone victory. To you, dear saints, this post is dedicated to you. May my words greatly encourage you.
You feel a failure, and labor under a continual cloud of condemnation, correct? Yet, unknown yet to you, you are blessed, for unlike many who walk on in blindness, making a fair show in their flesh, quite pleased with their accomplishments in their Christian walks, you accept in yourself what they do not see as the same truth in themselves, that one cannot please God no matter how hard one seems to try, if that effort is not powered by faith but rather by a deep hidden self confidence. Outside of God doing it in you, for you, walking victoriously in Christ seems a virtual impossible dream.
We have cursed our weakness and the sins that so easily sway and beset us. We identify closely with Romans 7, where the battle rages and defeat is so often the end of our attempts at resisting satan. No matter how much we try to feed our white dg inside us, our black dog comes out like superdog. Sound familiar?
The first step out of the walk of defeat that has been our home for so long is to acknowledge it to God. Can I tell you a secret? He is not surprised or disappointed in you for your failure! He made us! He knows that because of the fall of Adam, all flesh is as grass! He knows that in our flesh, our old man, nothing good dwells. Most havce yet to learn this most paramount lesson. He knows too how we want to do good and yet do not. He knows how we want to avoid the secret sins that so easily seem to capture us, yet fall at even the smallest temptation. Listen! That heart PLEASES Him!
If you have done step one, failed miserably and know it, and come to the end of hope in yourself, with no remaining confidence that somehow, you will do better if you just try harder. You know that is a lie, that given 100 more opportunities, you will fail in all of them. Congratulations, you have gone through the hard part! You are very very close to victory, far closer than most.
This "revelation" that we need an absolute miracle to be able to truly walk as Christ desires has been hidden from the wise and from the strong among us, but to us who seem to have been satan's cannon fodder for so long, bemoaning our weakness, is it not quite easy to admit that all of our righteousness is as filthy rags in God's eyes?
Blessed are you! Why? Because our amazing God has designed a salvation that is hidden from the wise and strong and the self confident and revealed to the weak, to the addict, to the sinners, to those who long for freedom but who have NO strength.
"and to them that have no might, He increaseth strength."
2 Chronicles 14:11
May I now share with you the next step on your pathway to freedom? You long for it, you know you cannot achieve it, now you must see that God wants to give it to you freely thru faith in His goodness alone!
God asks two things of us, to yield fully to let Him work in us what we cannot, and to believe His amazing promises that he will change in us what we cannot, that he will loberate our captive souls from bondage to the flesh! In your weakness, in your defeat, in your brokenness, God asks you to do something that is totally contrary to normal thinking. He asks for you to claim as yours something you know you do not possess. He asks you to believe that He can and will do for you what you cannot. He asks you to reckon yourself dead to sin (Romans 6:6), to believe your flesh has been dealt with by the death of Christ, and then he asks that you yield yourself to Him as one alive from the dead (Romans 6:13), not as a failure trying to die to self.
If I may relate my own personal experience, I was a failure of failures. I was at the bottom of the class in failure school, LOL. No exaggeration. Bound to heavy and disgusting secret sin, God led me to read Romans 6:6 two years ago, and in an instant, the spirit opened my eyes. I finally saw it....I had never reckoned myself dead to sin, but instead tried in my effort to die to it...and failed for 36 years. Talk about a slow learner.
So what did I do? Like any crazy and totally desperate person, I decided to put God to the test, to obey what Paul asked me to do, to believe I was a new man and that I was no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit. So I spoke the words out loud, confessing my freedom that Christ died to give me, and I mena LOUD, so that the devil could hear me, my God could hear me, and most importantly, I could hear me! I suspect my heighbors could hear me too!
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Faith, long a dead dormant seed in my heart, sprouted again, faith in the God of all comfort, the God who wants to be a Father to me, not my judge, faith in the God who has promised to "cause me" to walk in obedience (Ezekiel 36:26), faith in the God who guaranteed that our shield of faith would quench ALL the fiery darts of the wicked one, faith in the God who assures us that in EVERY temptation he will make a way of escape so that sin will NOT have dominion over, no, not for one minute longer.
My eyes were finally off of me and my abilities (ok, ok, my LACK of abilities! LOL) and back on the God who can and will "save us to the uttermost", the God who always causes us to triumph in Christ Jesus. It has now been 25 months of joy and victory as my confidence in Him grows stronger every single day, as I put on the "new man" God has provided in Christ.
Please do not misunderstand, when I say God delivers us from sin, I am talking willful disobedience, not character flaws that God promises to fix as we learn to abide in Him. But when temptauion now comes, my white dog is indeed a pit bull and my black dog the Toco bell chihauhau. With that freedom, condemnation slso is gone, a thing of the past, replaced by a gentle and patient accepting Father who challenges me to go further, deeper in my trust in Him. The word of God, which before seemed dead to me, is now alive with Him, and I have fallen in love with one particular scripture that means so much to me now.
"Wherefore are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that be these, we might be partakers of the divine nature"
2 Peter 1:4
Begin to read the word and search out these promises for they are stepping stones up to heaven and to becoming changed into the image of Christ. Here is a good one to start with....
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."
Galatians 2:20
I pray you are encouraged.http://bibleforums.org/showthread.php?210030-Blessed-are-those-who-struggle-and-fail-for-they-are-close-to-victory!
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