Even this last week, I have been reminded again of how great is the present struggle for holiness. Two more reports of people who have failed in the face of the strident and aggressive pornographic cultures in which we live.
Nobody follows Jesus planning to fail. Each and every failure parcels out pain to everyone connected to these failures.
As I said a few weeks ago: Like few other generations before us, we live in a pornographic world. I don’t mean that there is pornography all around. That of course is true. But, my concern is deeper. We have a generation who have been so conditioned by the pornographic environment, that the deepest parts of their beings are pornographic.
Over the years I have met with hundreds of church leaders. What I have encountered concerns me deeply: many are ignorant of the power of the flesh in their lives and thus, at some level, incapacitated by the flesh. Much of this has come, I suspect, from deeply seeded wounds that have led to corruption or rebellion.
Whatever its roots, the issue of the flesh dominating people is a huge problem among church people and leadership today. But, God has supplied everything we need, not just for eternity, but equally so for time…for today.
Attached to this notice, you will find the first in a series of six audios recorded a number of years ago in my mentoring of people just like you. Allow me to help you assess your own life, but also enrich and train others. Please don’t use the audios without the book.
You will need to find the best forum to use these audios. Maybe in a small group led by you or other leaders in your church. Maybe simply as a resource in a six week experience for smaller accountability or discipleship groups. Maybe????
The audios are free. The only cost is the book that goes with it. You can find the book on my website that will take you to Amazon, $8 hard copy, $4 electronic: Freedom From The Bondage Of The Flesh
The only editing we have done to the audios is an introduction to each of the six parts. All of them taken from Galatians 5 and 6, where Paul gives us six straightforward challenging keys.
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” Galatians 5:1
Jesus has paid the price to release us from slavery. One is always a slave to that which dominates them. In biblical terms, this is either the flesh, with all that that means, or, the Spirit of God, and all that that means.
In Galatians 5:17-23 Paul describes both. The “fruits” of the flesh are expansive and include just about any human act that is counter distinctive to the righteousness that describes God and what He wants for us: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies.” And even this is not the whole list.
The listed are extended by Paul to include, “things like these.” The many things listed combine with other things not listed, to express “things” that rise from our flesh. Is there anything, listed or not listed, that is not expressed in our minds or actions? On a daily basis?
Right now, all of those “things of the flesh” that I inherited from Adam and Eve, my parents, and my own rebellion, are being exposed, rejected and a healing process begun, by the Holy Spirit.
The whole gamut of antagonistic things, to righteousness, still in me, layered deep within my mind, emotions and my will, housed in my body, are being slowly unearthed by the Spirit of God.
This great hope is built upon a promise. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” John 14:26
This process of unearthing and beginning to heal us begins with the focus verse, ““For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” Galatians 5:1
We decide, probably daily, to claim this and live in its light. We are free! Free to chose submission, obedience and exposure to the Spirit so that He can be healing us.
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