Recently I decided to write out how my conversion took place. It’s basically my experience of righteousness by works vs. righteousness by faith - the experience of the Old Covenant vs, the New Covenant. Here it is: My personal story of how my heart changed: I found in my own life that I was incapable of keeping Gods law (my mind had not yet been recreated). When I was first becoming a follower of Jesus I was reading all the things I was supposed to do and I was working really hard to try to change myself and make myself do all those things exactly like I read them. But it didnt work. I could temporarily get things changed on the outside. I would be getting along pretty good in one area, but at the same time I would be failing in another area. Then I would get that other area fixed up, but would be failing in the first area again. I didnt have a recreated mind, and I was trying really hard to make things change in my character, but it wasnt working. Its kind of like trying to fix up an old rotten house. You get one thing fixed, but while you are doing that, something else falls apart. So you go to fix that, and before you are done, the first things falls to pieces again! Its just one thing after another, and you just cant keep up....because the house is rotten and falling apart left and right, and you just cant keep up. It is a miserable struggle! Most people would eventually just throw up their hands in despair and bulldoze the house. (Ive seen people do this with their spiritual life too - finally just give it up and go out into the world.) Thats how my spiritual life was to begin with. I was struggling to make myself be what I read a Christian was supposed to be. But it wasnt working. I struggled and struggled, but finally I saw I was getting nowhere. I saw my helplessness. I couldnt do it. So finally I said, God, Im giving up trying to do this. If I am ever going to be good you are going to have to do it in me, because I cant do it myself. About a week later I suddenly noticed that the things I had been struggling so hard to do on my own before were now happening naturally, without me even realizing it! I was becoming what I had been reading about! The changes were happening inside of me and sometimes I didnt even realize that they were happening until after they had happened. It wasnt because I was gritting my teeth so to speak and forcing myself to change. It was just happening inside of me without me even realizing it! As I continued to grow in my walk with God, the changes continued to happen. I still had choices to make, no doubt about it, but now I could actually make the choice and it would become a reality. Before I would make the choice and try really hard to make it happen, but it didnt happen. God had to let me realize my own weakness and helplessness first, so that I would see my need of His help. Then, when I gave up, He was ready to step in and start His work of recreation – taking my old rotten house and recreating it! :-) I still have to choose to keep His Torah. I still have to choose to have my devotional time with Him each day. This doesn’t happen by itself. I have a choice to make. I still have to choose to control my thoughts and keep them focused on pure, ennobling themes. I have to choose to do what I know is right. But now all these things are possible, and when I choose them, Gods power is there to make it possible for me to act on them. By Jesus grace I am striving to live a righteous life by keeping all the Torah and all the rest of the scriptures. But now my mind has been recreated and there is a power that continues to renew that new creation (Rom. 12:2). Im not trying to fix up an old rotten house anymore. I have a Master Creator who is recreating that house and making it into the beautiful mansion that He wants it to be. I still have the responsibility of choosing to do what I know I aught to do. But now Jahovahs re-creative power is there to make it possible to actually act on those choices. And it is Him who plants the desire in my heart to even want to make those good choices and do those righteous actions. If it werent for Him I wouldnt even have the desire to do good things at all. Do I still fail and commit sins? Yes, but mostly because I do not always maintain the close, intimate connection I need to have with my Creator. Usually it is because I have let something restrict the flow of His power into my life. Maybe I was negligent and ended up going to bed too late, and because of that I got up late and only had half an hour of worship time the next morning. My worship was too short and I didnt get the supply of spiritual life I needed from my Creator. Therefore I was weak during the rest of the day and I ended up getting angry and speaking unkindly to one of my family members. The fault is my own for not making the wise choice I should have - to go to bed early enough the night before. This is just one example, but its these kind of things that can interrupt the connection was need to daily have to supply us with spiritual, renewing, life. Many times if I commit sins or make mistakes, and if I think through what happened I can trace cause to effect and I realize where I made the bad choice that led me to sin. Tracing cause to effect is very important. If our spiritual life is getting sickly, we need to trace cause to effect and figure out why! We need to ask ourselves, Why did I make that mistake? Why did I not have the spiritual connection I needed to be able to recognize the right and choose to act on it in that particular situation? Why did I not have the power to say No to sin? Was it because I ate a food that I knew wasnt the best for me, and it disturbed my digestion, and clouded my mind so I could not focus on filling my mind with thoughts about spiritual things throughout the day; is that why I gave in to temptation? Or was it because I spent too much time on facebook and twitter, and fed my mind with mental junkfood, instead of spending that time communing with God and filling my mind with His word? Is that why I made a mistake or fell into sin? There are many, many things that can interrupt the flow of Gods power in our lives. We need to try to trace cause to effect and learn what we can do to make our spiritual life thrive. Im still learning to exercise the power of choice that my Creator has given me, just like athletes learn to exercise their nerves and muscles. Its taking me awhile to learn how to do that on a consistent basis, but I am learning and Jehovah is merciful to me as I keep learning, and sometimes stumbling and falling along the way. By His grace Im not content to continue living my life in a stumbling, on-again - off-again, sinning daily, type of way - caused by my own neglect to choose the right. I pray for His strength and wisdom to exercise the power of choice He has given me so that I will not keep doing those things. I need to be like an athlete who studies carefully to know what will make them the most healthy, and then chooses to live those things on a constant, day to day, basis. I need to be spiritually healthy, and I know there are certain things that will damage my spiritual health, and other things that will greatly enhance my spiritual health. If I choose to partake of the damaging things I may not be able to win the race. If I choose to be negligent I may be overcome in the battle with satan. I can’t afford to do that. I must learn by study and prayer what things will enhance my spiritual health and only choose to partake of those things. This can be a learning process. It can take time. Learning doesn’t happen instantly, but the more time we take to study and pray, the faster we will learn, and the more spiritual health and strength we can have. We will still continue to be tempted, but temptation is not sin. We are all tempted. Even Jesus was tempted, and He was perfect, without any sin. It’s only if we give in to the temptation that it becomes sin to us. Even when we are converted and God has given us a new heart we will still have temptations. Our old human nature will still be ready to clamor for us to give it what it wants. It will sometimes be a terrible struggle for us to say No to it. But God can give us the strength to do that. Sometimes it will feel like we are cutting off our right arm when we have to say No to the desires of our fleshly natures. But we can do it! And it usually gets easier with time. The more times we practice saying No, the easier it gets. We can overcome “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16)! “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” - our trust that the great Creator who designed the world can recreate our hearts and give us the power to choose the right and act on it. (1 John 5:4) May God, our Creator, bless you in your walk with Him!
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 20:48:00 +0000
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