Looking Inward & Outward (with the goggle of Faith) – Part 60

Looking Inward & Outward (with the goggle of Faith) – Part 60

1. By bringing a daily siege and a barrage of distracting thoughts against the mind of a believer whose primary goal is to be a stone in Zion, the devil seeks to discourage us to draw back from the Lord, or to place a low premium on the Faith He authored and finished. But by steadfastly and tenaciously holding unto such every revealed word of righteousness on such issues, we prevail, climb higher and render such thoughts as a new captive of Christ. As we excel here, we would come into a place of increased strength where we would gain the might needed to cast down imaginations and things from the heights that oppose our comprehension of God (2Cor. 10:5, Isa. 40:29).

2. Before and even much after we got born again, it took a kind of power, to, unlike Jesus and everyone who ended up overcoming the devil, keep us carnal by keeping our eyes on ourselves, on things that perish with the use and on all manners of definitions that can be traced to the fallen man (Acts 26:18c). The New Testament therefore came to offer us a superior form of power that can strengthen us to take our eyes off all these and place them on things above; like Christ Jesus and His apostles did. The gospel of Christ is what empowers us to do this by enlightening us on the perimeter of Christ’s walk, even His Faith (Rom. 1:16-17, Col. 3:1-2).

3. An idol is anything that we can successfully seek or have at the expense of the faith and love that committed Jesus to leave His throne and offer man God’s throne (Matt. 6:33/19:21-24). It includes things the enemy can use to unlock excessive desires in us, which in turn makes us offend the faith in Christ and displease the Father. We might make some fair guesses about them when they are tangible; but we are mostly ignorant of them when they are intangible and this makes them more injurious to our souls. Some of them hide under our repeated use of the pronoun “I”, in conversations or things that gratify our desires (Rev. 3:17, Isa. 14:13-14).

4. The measure to which we are alive or can respond to dead thoughts, even selfish thoughts that defile us when they become our meditation, or thoughts that the enemy feeds our soul with through sensual dictates from our natural senses, is the measure to which we are alive to self or are unresponsive to Christ; and as such, would keep responding to the bidding of this world. The measure to which we are alive or responsive to lively thoughts of God’s righteousness, that flow from the Spirit of God through our spirit and into our souls, is the measure to which we are alive to Christ and would have His mind developed in us (Jam. 3:14-16).

5. As useful as academic enlightenment is to man, it can and has never helped him to see his nose in the realm (of true light) that matters; neither has it been able to help man locate the actual civilization meant for his soul, nor has it been able to give him an iota of confidence in the face of fear. If only believers can throw as much weight of learning as they have done outside the learning that raised Jesus to a place where the Father was well pleased with Him, even of His Faith, many would realise why they really didn’t understand for a long time, the essence or economy of the New Testament (Acts 26:18).

6. Any believer, however endowed and called, whom the Lord cannot successfully slowdown in certain seasons of life; and then expose/deal with his/her known and unknown harmful natures and tendencies, would end up escaping the very process meant to prune and bring him into true or enduring honour and greatness, like it did in the lives of Joseph, Moses etc. His/her strength and brightness would become good tools in the hands of the wicked one to foster disunity to the Lord’s work and hurt His servants/children. His untreated lust for influence would become the primary hindrance to the great and enduring things the Lord would have done in and through him, in due times (Jam. 4:1 Isa. 11:2-9).

Blessings!

Tayo Fasan

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