“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV)
I am fascinated with Jesus. The biggest goal of anything we do at Lifestyle Christianity is to catapult you into a place where you can actually have intimacy with the Lord. The whole goal of our school, our training events, my sending you this devotional… is that we can help take out everything that is screaming your name louder than Jesus… God wants you to know that when He forgives you, He doesn’t leave anything from your past… He wants you to start over, not with a fresh slate, not with a fresh page. He wants you to start over with a new life.
This is the brand-new creation reality. It’s who God says we are, apart from what the devil says we were. Because the enemy will never, ever let you escape what you came out of if you keep listening to his voice… And so you need to be hooked up to the Father’s voice so that the stranger’s seems strange. Jesus says in John 10:27 (NKJV), “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” And continuing the same thought in John 10:5 (NKJV), He says, “... they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
This is a command to not follow the voice of strangers.
But in order for you to not follow the voice of strangers, you have to distinguish which is the Father’s voice, and which is the stranger’s voice. You do not have to be a Christian for 40 years to figure it out. When you came to God, the only reason you came to Him was because He drew you. Then, your spirit became one with the Holy Spirit.
Inside of you, Holy Spirit dwells. We’re called the Bride of Christ, and we are to make ourselves ready. The problem is the soul (our mind, will, and emotions) that has been wrapped up and attached to this world. We need to become detached from the world — completely severed from the world because we’re now the Bride who is headed for the Bridegroom to be with Him for all of eternity.
So in this life, God has given us all the ability to be the Bride. God says in the Book of Revelation that the Bride has made herself ready. So there’s the making ready of the Bride. We can’t think, “God’s going to make me ready.” No, it says in 2 Peter 1:3 that God has given you everything pertaining to life and godliness. He’s given you every opportunity.
The problem is that we have feasted on lies our whole lives. And we’ve thought that this is really it. And the longer you feast on the lies, the more they become ingrained. The longer that we’ve feasted on a lie, we build our life around “the way that seems right to a man” that actually leads to destruction (Proverbs 14:12).
So when the way that is right to God comes in — walking in righteousness, operating in the gifts, speaking in tongues, raising our hands in worship — we have a problem with it. But if someone cuts us off in traffic, we don’t have any issue “raising our hand” at them or using choice words. If I took you to a football game, you would quickly become “one of those” standing and cheering, raising your hands and hollering. I promise. But when you come to church, you’re not one of those because “that’s weird.” Why? Because we’re not taught who God says we are or what pleases Him.
How can we be passive at church and aggressive at a football game? Something must be wrong… But that can change today. You can join in the applause of the great cloud of witnesses now. You don’t have to wait until you’re dead to be cheering, raising your hands, and living holy.
The Bible is really specific: Deny yourself. Self is pretty big. But how can you deny the self unless you know what selflessness is? When I look at Jesus, I see selflessness. We have the perfect example of Jesus to know what selflessness looks like, and how to model it. We have Jesus to look at and learn from with the help of the Holy Spirit so that we can live this new creation life we’ve been given.
Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal one lie you’ve “feasted on,” and replace it by declaring a truth about your identity in Christ. Declare it out loud throughout your day — write it down at home, put it on your car’s dashboard, or even label some alarms on your phone with that truth and set them to go off throughout your day.
Bless you,
Todd White