Split Personality

 

If we live life with one foot on the dock, and the other foot in the boat, we will end up getting dunked, once the boat moves from the dock for any reason. The slightest turmoil in the water will cause us to lose our balance.

God says that lukewarm people - those who live with their feet in two separate places at once - make Him sick to His stomach! He would rather that we live up to our convictions and either follow Him wholeheartedly or not at all.

To live any other way is hypocritical and smears the name of Christ in front of the world. Even unbelievers know how Christians are supposed to act, and they lose respect for us and for God if we are hypocrites with a split personality.

God prefers that we live in total surrender to His will and way. He knows that Biblical principles allow us to reap only good things in life. If we have a mixture of both secular and Biblical ideals in our world view, we end up reaping the negative consequences from the corruption we sow.

God wants us to follow Him completely, and to give Him His rightful place in our life. At the center of complete surrender we realize that we no longer live for our self, but Christ lives in and through us (Galatians 2:20).

Our obedience proves that we actually know God (1 John 2:3). He circumcises our heart, cutting away the flesh from our life, so we can live in harmony with His Spirit and one another (Romans 2:29).

We walk in the fruit of the Spirit by the power of the Spirit, and Christ's divine life replaces our carnality and worldliness (2 Peter 1:4).

Sanctification has various fluctuating tempos in our life. Sometimes, the process is fast; at other times, painfully slow. It is constant, however; and God gives us His patience and fortitude to press on through this cleansing process until our personality and goals reflect and are focused on Christ alone (Colossians 3:3-4).

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for making us a new creation by Your Spirit - with the mind and divinity of Christ abiding in us. Keep us in union with Your Spirit and hold us close to You as You use us to further Your Kingdom in the earth (Galatians 5:15-25).

Our spirituality is not complete until You give us our glorified, immortal body when we see Jesus. We need You every hour, every moment of our life. Teach us not to speak with words of carnal, mortal wisdom, but to utter only the Words taught to us by Your Spirit and full of Your glory (Philippians 3:10-12; 1 Corinthians 2:13).

Thought for the Day:

Our goal in life is to bring God glory through our every thought, word and deed, living in the fullness of His Spirit by the power of His resurrection; a surrendered life of one who is born of the Spirit and will never perish. - Peter 1:3-4

Split Personality

When we come to Christ, our spirit which was dead in sin, comes alive (Ephesians 2:5). We are Born Again and everything in us is made new (John 3:1-21; 2 Corinthians 5:17). The manifestation of this change takes years.

God convicts us in areas which are negatively affecting our witness for Him. We cannot judge others. We may think someone smokes too much; but God is more interested in deeper issues, which we cannot see.

In the beginning, we are partially surrendered to Christ. We hold back whole rooms in our soul, where we do not want God to go. We slam the doors shut and sometimes even lock them.

This is why we appear to our self and other people as a split personality. Part of us is sanctified and part of us is carnal and still caught in the web of sin.

The longer we walk with the Lord, the more willing we are to surrender more of our secret self to Him. We unlock some doors, but we protectively keep some of them closed or partially open.

We are not willing to live in total transparency before the Lord and our fellow Christians. However, with time, we learn to trust God's kindness and mercy. We depend upon His grace above all else.

We come to live a surrendered life when we understand that it is not I, but Christ living in and through us (Galatians 2:20). Christ is our whole life and we want nothing else (Colossians 3:4).

Total surrender to Christ produces fruit in us from the Vine (John 15:5). We develop the habit of walking in stride with God's Spirit (Galatians 5:15-25). We learn to think and speak by the Spirit too, reaping God's rewards (1 Corinthians 2:13).

Prayer:

Father God, Your Spirit transforms us from a split personality into a totally new creation. We no longer desire carnality, but want only that which is spiritual in our life. We come to know Christ intimately and the power, strength and truth of His resurrection (Philippians 3:10). We grasp all that Christ provides for us (Philippians 3:12).

Thank You for transforming us into the likeness of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). Help us to live a life of whole-hearted devotion and worship to You in holiness and with eternal goals, priorities and values. We rely on You to walk with us through the perils of this life and to make us victors in all things (Romans 8:37).

Thought for the Day:

We bring glory to Jesus when we live in the fullness of His atonement and the redemption of His sacrifice, which He shared with us by His resurrection from the dead and ascension into Heaven. - 1 Peter 1:3-4

Split Personality

God did not call us “Christians”. It is a word derived from the concept of living as “Christ-followers.” There is a slight misconception with this word. God does not see us as individual beings, but as Christ’s Body. We do not actually “follow” Christ, because He lives within us. 

We follow His teaching (Galatians 6:2) and His example (1 Corinthians 11:1); but we live in Him and He lives in us (Colossians 2:6). We are actually dead now, and He lives His life in and through us. His divine presence permeates every part of our spirit, and as much of our body and soul as we surrender to God’s will (2 Peter 1:4).
 

God does not see us as a human self and divine self. He only sees Christ in us. In this same sense, neither are we to divide our life into secular and spiritual, or into human and divine pursuits. We are not split into two personalities or compartments, because our human self is dead now, and we are fully united with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3; Galatians 2:20). 

As authentic Born Again Believers, we live in Christ throughout every moment of the day, just as He permanently lives in us (Colossians 1:27; John 17:23). Christ is our life (Colossians 3:4).We do not have a quick devotion in the morning and then go about our day, leaving Him behind. 

Jesus wakes our body up in the morning, so that He can live His life in and through us all day long. Jesus types our boss’s reports, answers the phones, builds the buildings, repairs the cars, ministers to the sick, beautifies our clients, teaches the students, empties the trash cans, cares for the children, cleans the house and grooms the lawns or the pets through us. 

We are dead, not we but Christ lives in us. The life which we now live is by the faith of Christ who loves us and gave Himself for us (Galatians 2:20). There is a fine line between reckoning the human-side of us dead and actually living as if we are dead and living now through the Christ-nature within us. 

That is why Paul said that he dies daily (1 Corinthians 15:31). We die to our self until we are so surrendered to Christ in us that He uses our body, soul and spirit as vessels to live out His will in our life. 

We have no aspirations, dreams, goals and desires of our own, because He lives His life instead of us. We walk in total obedience to the Holy Spirit as Christ performs through us all of our mundane tasks during all of our waking moments.

Jesus provides the job for us that He wants to use to witness to our co-workers. He takes our car to the mechanic that He wants to influence for His Kingdom. He uses our body and soul to heal the sick, encourage with our smile or kind word, or minister in a myriad of ways to the person beside us in the grocery store and bank, and all the people He encounters through us during each moment of our day. 

We are dead, and Christ accomplishes God’s work in the earth by leading us by His Spirit. 

Prayer:

Father God, teach us to recognize that Christ in us is fully divine. We have the same chance, which Jesus did of living a Spirit-filled life. You want us to cease from our efforts, so that we will enter into Your rest (Hebrews 4:10). I am still learning how to do this. The fullness of what this means is still sinking into my soul. 

I am still in the flesh sometimes. However, now I walk more and more by the direction of Your Spirit. This is such a serene and joyful life. Your love flows over me like a waterfall all day long! People actually ask me why I am so happy! They see the difference, which the Christ-life makes, even in my face!

Thought for the Day:

God does not want us to plan our day, but to enter His rest as His Spirit leads us to live out His plan for our day.