7/28/2022 • Desk of Dennis Piller
God’s Chemo for my Cancer'd soul !
As I look back upon my Christian life, as old as I am, I am humbled by how much I still do not know. Here of late, I have been reading books that are over 200 and 300 years old and when you get past the stumbling block of the English they used back then, the insight that they bring is truly life-changing and even mind-boggling as to their depth of truth and interpretations of scriptures.
I was raised believing there were two sorts of Christians, first class and second class…the spiritual and carnal distinction drawn from the King James rendering of one Corinthians 3: 1-3 The first one sustains patience, joy, constant inner confidence, and regular victory over temptation and sin, in a way that the latter does not.
I had concluded as a young Christian that I was not spiritual enough yet.
But I wanted to be useful to God. So what was I to do?
Let go, and let god. It’s amazing how everyone knows that statement. It has been around for hundreds of years. But inside of it is a secret of rising from carnality to spirituality. “Let go and let God”.
When I was a young man I heard it every time there was a problem that someone would be sharing and it would be someone else’s response. The secret has to do with being spirit filled. Which is taken out of the second half of Romans 7 Deny yourself. Luke 9:23 negating a carnal self…that is to say self will, self-assertion, self-centeredness, and self-worship…the common name original sin.
I have been reading John Owen’s book; “The Mortification of Sin” written 300 years ago. J.I Packer in his foreword, said, “Sin is a blind, anti-God, egocentric energy in the fallen human spiritual system, ever fomenting, self-centered and self-deceiving desires, ambitions, purposes, plans, attitudes, and behaviors.
He continued to say, "now that I was a regenerate believer, born again, a new creation in Christ, Sin that formally dominated me had been dethroned but was not yet destroyed. It was marauding within me all the time, bringing back sinful desires that I hoped I had seen the last of, and twisting my new desires for God and godliness out of shape, so they became pride – perverted too. A Lifelong conflict with the besetting sins that besetting sin generates was what I must expect”.
What to do? Here was Owens‘s answer, in essence: have a holiness of God clear in your mind. Remember that Sin desensitizes you to itself. Watch – that is, be prepared to recognize it, and search it up within you by disciplined Bible-based, spirit lead self-examination. Focus on the living Christ and his love for you on the cross. Pray, asking for strength to say “No” to sin’s suggestions and to fortify yourself against bad habits by forming good ones contrary to them. Ask Christ to kill the sinful urge you are fighting. Roman 8:13 “ For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live”
You probably have struggled as I have with your own thorn in the flesh. Why is it this particular thing? This repeated sin…that seems to plague me? As we move closer and closer to the light, the darkness cannot remain. As we drift backward away… that temptation, ever lurking, ever ready to take any opportunity, any moment of weakness and pounce like a roaring lion will be in our faces. But as we grow our faith, as we abide in him, the hope of glory…more and more those instances grow less and less as His light in us is brighter and brighter. I pray you would encourage yourself in the Lord.
Mortify those thoughts and deeds of the flesh and embrace your own crucifixion.
For to die is gain!
Lauren Daigle Dry bones come alive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XAeyFagceQ
