Being honest about all things in your mind is where the Holy Spirit will begin in order for your perspective to be aligned in the truth. This never comes by sheer acknowledgment or agreement but by powerful conviction through deep cleansing producing clearer understanding. Cleansing because the lies in our minds are filthy.
(I can tell someone that I will not use them for my gain because I don't need them, and that makes sense to them, but that will not mean they will understand enough to trust me with access to all their bank accounts, emails, and phones, unless they know I want access to all of that to protect them because I love them)
So then the truth is, do we know we are loved by God?
Why do we lust?
Why do we get upset?
Why are we angry?
Why are we anxious?
Why are doubting?
Why are we worrying?
Why are we scared?
What happened that sin gave birth to these once good capacities? The capacity of desire for relationship and touch are God-given desires that went wrong and turned into lust and infidelity.
Our capacity to be all about how right and true God's authority and ways are became narcissistic. Are we upset because glory is not being given to God or are we upset because someone isn't giving us our due glory?
Anger is a capacity to hate sin. Not a reason TO SIN.
So where have these capacities been mishandled in our lives? GOD USES ALL things, including every past memory to help us understand and know the depth of His love for us. If we are His then we were predestined from the beginning. All that had happened to us in our lives went through His Sovereignty as His love for us remained the same as when we became aware of this. He loved us back then as He loves us now and forever, so what did God see happen to us that He allowed to happen that we don't understand very thankfully?
Daily conversations with God
"For this reason I kneel before the Father
I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,"
Ephesians 3:14, 16, 18 HCSB
"... display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus."
Ephesians 2:7
Genuine KINDness should be a quality we all pray to have! So many phonies out there who act "kindly," but truth must pervade our kindness as well.
---> Kindness is the channel for grace. Grace is what restores all things to the truth (or truth telling to take place). All things restored, by truth, give God all the glory.
Where does kindness show up?
How can we tell false from true fullness of Christ's kindness in ourselves or from another?
"...speaking the truth in love,"
Ephesians 4:15
(This could be tough love or gentle tender love, but it is real truth that makes love real)
Always being reminded of the truth about real love:
Love is kind, patient, does not boast or envy, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrong, never ends....
When I speak to someone to tell them the truth, am I speaking from this real love? If not then it only means I lack the comprehension of that real love in me (from God).
Do not become callous!! Honesty and vulnerability are what guard against this desensitization.
They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. (Ephesians 4:19 HCSB)
Renewal begins with the mind, Let the Spirit lead your honest thoughts toward renewal of those calloused ones.
you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; (Ephesians 4:23 HCSB)
Genuine renewal leads to genuine "putting on" of the truth (prior to this is genuine "putting off" of old lies that shaped harmful desires)
you put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. (Ephesians 4:24 HCSB)
Truth-telling should take place inwardly and outwardly.
Since you put away lying, Speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. (Ephesians 4:25 HCSB)
During truth-telling allow anger to happen! But think again for why anger is powerfully bustling during a truth-telling moment and be led to convincing truth about your anger, not just dwelling on the feeling. Understand why you are angry. What is needing to be put off in you? Let the Spirit speak.
Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, (Ephesians 4:26 HCSB)
For truth-telling to occur let kindness pave the way, let kindness set up the room, let kindness be a mutual cup of grace between both hearers.
No foul language is to come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. (Ephesians 4:29 HCSB)
By what of our doing does the Holy Spirit become grieved? Perhaps by suppressing truth-telling to take place both inwardly and outwardly.
And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30 HCSB)
Truth-telling will produce a person as such:
All bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. (Ephesians 4:31-32 HCSB)
"As dearly loved children." We imitate God not to be loved but as we are loved.
Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. (Ephesians 5:1 HCSB)
Truth-telling exposes our darkness more clearly!
Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret. Everything exposed by the light is made clear, (Ephesians 5:11-13 HCSB)
...and then the Messiah will SHINE on you by truth-telling taking place in His Spirit with your minds.
for what makes everything clear is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and the Messiah will shine on you. (Ephesians 5:14 HCSB)
Truth-telling is comprehension, clearness, and knowing God's will.
So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. (Ephesians 5:17 HCSB)
The more we understand our past, the more we will understand our present, and the more we understand our present the more we will understand (and hopefully believe) our future.
The words of truth-telling are scary before, during and after! even Paul needed boldness! So many arrows from the accuser will shoot your vulnerability with lies, but our refuge is always in God. So much understanding of light in the dark, so much spiritual transformation, and so much change is new and unpredictable (which can appear to be a vulnerability of our safety of self), but all of this is emboldened by truth-telling continually within ourselves and amongst our constituent body parts, the community of the church. Emboldened by God making His love for us deeper and wider, higher and impenetrable!
Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert in this with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints. Pray also for me, that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. For this I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I might be bold enough in Him to speak as I should. (Ephesians 6:18-20 HCSB)
We are being brought into clarity, to make known with boldness (which comes from understanding and certainty) the mystery of this amazing gospel of Jesus!
When anyone asks me about politics I have no sense of boldness, in fact the subject makes me really uninterested because I neither care nor know much about it. I don't know when political polls are being taken, I don't know the names of politicians and what they claim to stand for, I don't even know what I want or what America needs within the realm of political power to change a bad or keep a good. So when I am asked about politics, if I am honest, I cannot say much. But I can use my powers of persuasion, lying, social media, rhetoric, and vocabulary of political terms to APPEAR like I know what I'm talking about. The same thing goes for God's love.
Do you APPEAR to know God's love for you without actually knowing it or do you, like Paul, see the enormity of it and so need boldness to even begin to speak about it to others? Do you know the gospel that Christ died for you and finished your "trying" to get better. In Christ's completely done-and-OVER-with work on the cross, you are His by faith through grace! That's all.
Know His love by knowing the truth.
Know the truth by unraveling the lies.
Unravel the lies with the help from Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. (Meaning comforter, counselor, helper, encourager, advocate to God the Father)
I hope and pray you notice a desire for some confusion in you to be brought into the dawning light of His truth--His truth that even in that, He worked in and through to love you and draw you to Him. In everything.
Ask Him why.
God deeply loves you,
Jmegrey
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