Category Archives: Dan’s Blog

Self-Will Twisted

Leave a reply

The gift of self-interest has become twisted. What began in a more perfect world as a healthy motivation to support and enhance life has degenerated in this fallen world into a power struggle—man against his fellow man in an egotistical attempt to improve his standing in life.

Satan is well aware of this weakness in our nature. So he uses it to dominate man, taking him down the road to self-destruction in an endless cycle of immorality and greed.(Ephesians 4:19) The truth is that self-will can never be satisfied devoid of relationship with God, and it’s desperately sad that so many have been blinded to this reality.

Man’s first taste of the bitterness of self-will was experienced by Adam. The fall of man is a very sad beginning to human history, but is also interesting because it says so much about our nature. Many Christians view Adam as being a perfect man—someone very different from man as we know him today. The fact is he was a perfect man. He was created sinless in a sinless world, which is the reason God could inhabit his being so freely and completely.

Yet this raises a question as to what the true definition of human perfection actually is. I think Adam was human in all the ways we’ve seen man’s nature to be in the foregoing chapters. What perfected his humanity was his relationship with God, and the fact that he dwelt in fellowship with God in a sinless world.

The Gift of Self-Will

Leave a reply

What is self-will all about? Surprisingly, self-will, which is embedded in self-interest, is actually a gift of God. But how could something potentially so ugly be a gift of God? It’s because life here on earth demands that we either take care of ourselves or die. And God has placed in each of us the compelling drive to live. We hang on to life with all we’ve got! This can clearly be seen in the way man tries his utmost to enhance and extend his life in any way possible. Only the hopeless cause life to abruptly end, or allow it to simply waste away.

And added to this powerful need to cling to life is man’s yearning for significance. Significance is another of God’s gifts essential to our being because our need for meaning and purpose provides the underlying motivation for reaching toward God’s purpose for us. We possess an inherent need to feel important—to have a healthy sense of self-worth. This need is rooted in the fact that we truly are valuable, yet often unaware that it is so.

Self-Will

Leave a reply

A commonly taught principle relevant to God’s purpose for man is that he is endowed with free will. It is said that man is a free moral agent, meaning he possesses unrestricted power in making moral choices.Indeed, how could God possibly have designed man devoid of the power of choice? He had to give him the ability to choose—not merely between right and wrong, but more importantly choice in regard to the lordship of God over his life.

Yet what appears on the surface to be the ability to choose freely, is in a very real sense something more than merely free will. 

Man’s rejection of God as Lord of his life does not in any way mean that he possesses the ability of free choice in regard to everything else. Rather, in refusing to accept God’s purpose and plan for his life, he inevitably opens himself up to control by some other outside force.  And this force is ultimately Satan. But the tool the devil uses to subjugate mankind is man’s will—a will inherently rooted in self-interest. So we should instead think of this self-serving attribute of man’s nature—what we commonly call free will—as self-will.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

Man’s Heart

Leave a reply

The term self doesn’t appear by itself very often in the Bible. But while the term self is not all that common in Scripture, there is another widely used term that expresses the same idea: the heart. The term heart appears some seven hundred times in the Bible (about a hundred times in the New Testament), where it is always used figuratively meaning the center and seat of human life.

We can look at the heart as being the engine that runs our being. It is who we are: our self. Our heart is the core of our being as well as the umbrella over our entire nature. It all boils down to this: our beliefs, our mind-set, our choices and our behavior are all dictated by what is truly in the heart. Jesus said, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”(Luke 6:45)

Now in trying to understand the state of a person’s heart, the only difference between nonbeliever and believer is the condition of his spirit—dead or alive. The heart of a nonbeliever is precisely the same as what we’ve already identified as the flesh: man’s soul interacting with his physical nature through his mind, all unaided by God because his dead spirit is incapable of sharing in His life-flow. On the other hand, the believer’s heart, while still strongly pulled by the flesh, has the advantage of the influence of God’s life coursing through it by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

Exploring “Self”

Leave a reply

Have you ever wondered why cars are called automobiles? I’m sure you’ve spent many hours pondering this very thing! Well, the car was given the name automobile not because it automatically drives itself, like an autopilot flies a plane, but because it is self-propelled. The automobile doesn’t need a horse to pull it or legs to pedal it since its built-in engine provides the power to move it along. So what, you might ask? Well, this name is very relevant to our discussion because the auto in automobile originally comes from the Greek word autos, meaning self.

Being self means that we are autonomous as to our decisions—in a figurative sense, self-propelled. It means that though we are absolutely dependent on God, even to the point of taking our next breath, He has designed us such that we are endowed with the capacity of independence in regard to the choices we make for our lives.

Self is simply me, a personal being given the glorious gift of existence and awareness. “It is the man’s “I AM,” a gift from the I AM who created him…,” as A. W. Tozer puts it. But this gift of being has the effect of placing me at the center of my own personal universe. Asked if we think the world revolves around us, most of us would deny it. Yet given the nature of me, it would be hard to truly believe otherwise!

Vibrant Relationship!

Leave a reply

Can you see how important it is to have the presence of the Holy Spirit indwelling our being? Only through an impartation of His life can our conscience be restored to a healthy state. Our conscience then has tremendous influence on our will, which in turn is able to dictate itself more intentionally to the thoughts and feelings of our mind.

The transformation of the mind brings about change in our behavior not merely by attempting to control our flesh through an external system of do’s and don’ts. Rather, genuine change comes from a deep rebuilding of our character—that quality which directs our actions from within and stands firm no matter what we find facing us.

None of it’s possible, though, without a vibrant connection with the Spirit of God. Consequently, developing a lifestyle of communing with God is the key to genuine change. We can’t simply pay lip-service to this spiritual discipline. It has to be real; it must be alive.

Vibrancy in any relationship comes as the result of intimacy. The beauty of it is that such intimacy with God is not only possible, but His design brings with it the expectationfor both growth and bountiful flowering in each and every one of His children. But if that’s truly the case, why do we so often stubbornly refuse it? In a word: self.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

 

 

Renewing of the Mind

Leave a reply

Although an attempt to produce genuine change in man’s behavior through discipline of the body may have some minor value, it ultimately never produces the desired effect.(Colossians 2:22-23) This is because it merely treats the symptoms rather than the disease, and only leads to heaping on a load of guilt when it fails to work. By its very nature, this strategy is doomed to failure because it simply bucks God’s design—His life flows not from the works of the flesh, but from the Spirit of God surging through the panel of our spirit.(John 15:5)

And here’s another prevalent misconception: the belief that we can transform ourselves by acquiring knowledge about the things of God. Can’t we? I hear a chorus of voices shouting, “Of course we can; how else can we grow in the knowledge of God and thus renew our minds?” The fact is that this too bucks God’s design. When Paul admonishes us not to “be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” he doesn’t mean merely the intellect. Rather, he means the transformation of our mind defined as the inner man—our immaterial nature integrated with the physical mind.(Romans12:2)

But doesn’t gaining more knowledge about God mean that our heart will change in the process? Well, in a sense it does, because knowledge of the things of God and His kingdom are certainly vital to our growth. But such knowledge must be pursued from the right motives if it is to be effective. Why? Because true change in the heart does not come from the direction of the intellect. Rather, the genuine source of change in our heart is the result of the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God bringing our spirit alive to Him. Jesus said, “But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.”(John 16:3) He does this by disclosing to us—Spirit to spirit—revelatory truth within, as well as spiritually quickening what we learn through our intellect.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

 

 

 

 

 

An Empowered Body

Leave a reply

Paul tells us in Romans 8:10-11, “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

How can our body be spiritually dead because of sin and alive at the same time? Does this merely refer to our glorified bodies when resurrected? I think that may be part of it, but I believe it also means that our physical bodies are being made alive in the here and now. How? By being given the capacity to fulfill our purpose here on earth, in our flesh, by the power of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence. It’s His power that makes it all possible!

Hinged to God

Leave a reply

Man’s soul, his mind, and his body are designed in such a way that they cannot fulfill their purpose unless the his spirit is alive, and thus capable of action. So movement in our spirit  can only take place when it is securely fastened to God and thus enlivened by the power of His Spirit.

All the elements of our nature (body, mind, soul and spirit)  are interrelated—they are progressively hinged to one another, each changing automatically as its neighbor changes. Progress in the spirit changes the soul, in turn affecting the mind which dictates the behavior of the body. It is impossible for our elements to operate effectively independent of one another, because they are all securely hinged together.

Now, what happens if our spirit is not securely hinged to God? Tug all you want on the body and it won’t effect our mind and soul much at all. The sad fact is that the purpose of man is totally lost when his connection to God severed.

Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself

Born Again!

Leave a reply

The new birth is God’s vehicle for entrance into our spirit. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”(1 Corintians 15:42-44) Christ’s death on the cross—His sacrifice for our sins—paved the way for each and every person on earth to experience His indwelling presence. But though He offers it as a free gift, it doesn’t just happen automatically.

We may receive His gift only by our willingness to turn from our own selfish desires—our sin—and then put Him in charge by making him the Lord of our life. If you haven’t already taken this step, do it now! God will keep His word, and will allow you to enter a life you never dreamed possible. Only through the life-giving power of the Spirit will we ever be able to experience the interaction of the elements of our nature as they were always intended to be.

God never meant for a single one of us to forge a life devoid of His presence. Only in Him can we ever arrive at the zenith of God’s purpose and plan for us—this great gift of all-embracing personhood in Him. For those of us who have entered into the very life of God through Jesus, it’s easy to see those who don’t know God as stumbling through life much like zombies (the living dead, right?).