HOPE: Freedom from my SELF - Audio

The Gathering Place Church - main

Grace has given us a new nature, the nature of God, living inside us. It has the power to overcome our rebellious self-centeredness, but it does not happen automatically. The Holy Spirit does not overpower our will and force us to choose God’s will. We get to decide how much of the new nature we will experience and how far the new nature will replace the old. The fact is there is a war that begins within us the day we accept Jesus as Lord. The Holy Spirit comes and establishes a beach head in our hearts and the war begins. Our self-centered nature vs. the divine nature. The battle ends a spit second after we die. Here is the good news, once we accept Jesus as Lord his death on the cross sets us free from being slaves to our sinful nature. We now have the ability to choose not to think and act out of our self-centered nature. The bad news is that our sinful nature remains. What this means is that our choices of what we think, the attitudes we will allow and the actions we take will determine how free we become of our self-centeredness and how much of the divine nature we partake in. This is what the Bible means when it tells us to “put on” the new nature. It means that our choices really matter. And it is the small choices that matter most. Every choice we make is either strengthening the new nature or strengthening the old and all these little choices add up to the kind of person we are. The biggest problem we have is not recognizing the problem of our sinful nature. Once we know that our default position is always toward our own self-will, we can recognize it at work in all our decisions. To fail to recognize the enemy is to be defeated without a fight. Most of the time Satan is not your worst enemy – your self-will is your worst enemy. Your pride is never your friend! One of the most helpful and loving things God can do for you is show you the depth of your sin. My example with Shell. Judging my mother and siding with my father.