HOW DO WE LIVE AS CHRISTIANS (BELIEVERS)
INTENTION:
I found in my life
that ‘how hard the Christian life can be to live’ is a matter of how I live it.
I’m not talking about just giving in to the world around us, but gaining a
strength that is not just my own ability to overcome it.
My entire Christian
life and its way of living changed the instant that I was Baptised in the Holy
Spirit. I began to heal from religion, letting go of trying to live that
“righteous” lifestyle and started letting the Lord guide me to heal me. He not
only transformed how I read and understood the Bible, He continually shows me
His ability in me to get through the challenges that this life brings.
This is what I want
for you to experience in your life and healing journey too!
I.
TOPIC:
We want to look at the question: How Do We Live as
Christians (Believers)?
The basis (foundation) is Love. Not only that we are Loved
by the Lord, but that, as we heal (break off our restrictions), we manifest
Love out from us. The core of who we are is Love. For God = Love, we are of
God, and as such, inherently (naturally) designed to be Love. Love is how we
live; and Love for self (healing) brings freedom.
First-and-foremost, I want to thank the Lord for all the
people that He orchestrated in my life that not only helped start this healing
journey, but that He continues to bring into my life people—directly and
indirectly (books, memes, online resources, etc)—to fulfil this life-long journey
into healing.
This notion of His Love began with me recognising,
discerning, rejecting, releasing, and undoing all the church religion
(spiritual abuse) placed on me… and this is how I journeyed to where I am now:
·
I realised I actually didn’t have to work for
God’s approval; and thus, relationship with Him. This had looked like me trying
to be a “perfect Christian” to make sure God stayed happy with me; and that He
witnessed all that I was doing to make Him happy—in essence, to earn His
Blessings, Favour, and Love. Both the church and my family upbringing taught in
me that love is earned (same with “gifts”), not given without the proof that you
do deserve it. And that my value in life was based on what I did to prove that
worth.
Yet, I finally came to
understand elements of what Unconditional Love looked like: the Father Loves me
no matter what I am or what I do! When this became a reality to me, I stopped
wasting my time and energy on “people-pleasing” God, and have been learning
what it looks like to just rest in His presence with absolutely NO fear NOR
worry that He is ever upset or disappointed in me. I may disappoint myself, or
be disappointed (real or perceived) by others, but that disappointment is only
there because of the conditional love program in me (in this world). Because: I
AM valuable to Him; I AM valuable to myself; I AM valuable to this world.
·
Then, taking that freedom from worry, and
accepting the freedom that is being who I am as I am. That, freedom looks like
the ability to be imperfect, make mistakes, and feel incomplete. I didn’t have
to strive to be like Peter or John or Paul or any other biblical figure. They
are just human beings like me—no different than any human being—the only
difference being how they, in their own quirky uniqueness, chose to be a vessel
of the Lord. It is the freedom to embrace my own humanness as I am: my gender,
my emotions, my preferences, my identity, my programming, my heart, my history, my mental
state, my physical characteristics, my personality, and more.
This is the freedom to be
loved (to accept love) as me for me—an amazing freedom. The freedom to do or be
something, with the same freedom to not do or be something. If my stronghold
traps me in doing / being something, I have the freedom to not do / be it. And
if my stronghold traps me in not doing something, I have the freedom to do it. Examples
of what this can look like is:
o
If I struggle with not eating enough, I can gain
the freedom to eat.
If I struggle with eating
too much, I can gain the freedom to eat less.
o
If I have rejected sex, I can gain the freedom
to have sex.
If I can’t refuse sex, I
can gain the freedom to say no to sex.
o
If I am addicted to drugs / alcohol, I can gain
the freedom to not be addicted to them.
If I fear drugs / alcohol,
I can gain the freedom to enjoy them.
o
If I don’t have boundaries, I can gain the
freedom to implement them.
If I have too many
boundaries, I can gain the freedom to open up more.
And that, no matter the
course I take to break free from the stronghold, I do not have to fear that God
looks down (diminishingly) upon me. For the healing (the freedom) is greater
than how you get healed (get free).
·
And this healing, to me, is to be free from the
programming put in me by the church, the world, or my family. That my trauma-programming
of survival, my abandonment wounds, my feels of always being misunderstood /
un-appreciated, and my decades of “Christian” teaching (wrong teaching) can and
will be broken. That the detriments of the trauma (programming) and spiritual
abuse that restricts my life, I have the authority to overcome it: to delete
the programming, to renew my mind, and to discover in that healing, the
Abundant Life the Lord wants me to live. For, as I heal, the Lord in me gets
set free to “Just Be” Him—simplifying this life.
What I am learning now
about what it is to “Just Be”, is that I could accept myself for who I am—the
who, what, when, where, why, and how that makes up my being. I could just
accept myself for who I am: feelings and all, mistakes and all, traumatisation’s
and all, abuses and all, thoughts an all… that I could allow Him to meet me for
all that I am. And from there, find and embrace the healing I do need and
deserve. Yes, the healing may be hard, but the “Just Being” from the healing is
great reward. Utilising His authority in the healing!
·
That Christ Jesus gained back for humanity their
God-Designed authority, means we have the authority to change our programming
(overcome our flesh). His Authority allows me to achieve the things that were
beyond my limited ability set into place by my programming.
What Christ Jesus did in
giving back humanity their authority, does not just apply to believers—you
don’t have to be a Born-Again Christian to be able to heal and change. We see
so many people in this world seeking out the same healing, and experiencing the
same change, freedom, and Love in their lives. The Lord makes healing available
in countless ways that are beyond just a Bible—it can be through other writings, meditations, guidance, journeys, philosophies, medication, psychedelics, mindfulness, other individuals / groups, and more. This is the
freedom He showed me for myself: that I could embrace all the ways He works to
help me heal to set me free.
And, this understanding, and this ability (this entire
process), personally for me, seemed to have transpired when I was Baptised in
the Holy Spirit. The “before and after” me looked and felt different.
On the 28th of May 2014, in the loft I lived in,
I asked Jesus Christ to Baptise me in the Holy Spirit with the ability to speak
in Tongues. And in that moment, cutting through the fear and doubt, I trusted
the Father and asked. He delivered on His promise. I lay face-down and sprawled
out on the wood floor. Jesus’s presence was so real standing next to me in His
sandals and white robe, that I reached out my hand expecting to touch Him.
From that moment, my whole Christian life changed, and I
began renewing my heart and mind to some powerful spiritual truths that I had
not heard before. No longer could I be a passive Christian just waiting for the
Lord to come again, but could be an overcoming Christian. I began to hear the
Holy Spirit more clearly, scripture popped out at me in ways I never
experienced before (with new meaning that was without any judgement or
condemnation), and I was speaking in a multitude of Spiritual Tongues. I changed,
and my whole outlook on life changed.
I didn’t always get things right though. As one of the
mistakes I made ,even after the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, was thinking that
because I was now full of the Holy Spirit, that with His insight and
cooperation, life would therefore become easier. Yet, it didn’t become easier
for Jesus, it just became different.
I still faced persecution, still have to continually renew
my mind, and still make my own free-will decisions. Thus, my reality became a
Life of overcoming all that is—not only overcoming my own past and programming,
but overcoming everything that this world throws at me. Remember: it is not God
bringing trials to me to test my overcoming ability, but the Lord giving me the
strength and ability to overcome all that this world (and my flesh) throws at
me.
·
Refer also: https://cbadenhorst.blogspot.com/2016/05/trials-by-flesh-05-20-16.html
https://cbadenhorst.blogspot.com/2019/03/trials-of-faith-trials-against-faith.html
And, I could overcome within the identity of who I am, as I
am; with the same ability to allow myself to be changed by Him in the ways that
set me free: “growing from glory to glory”. And this change (and ability to
change) is a blessing—for, being a “Christian” isn’t about denying the things
that need changing (healing) in our personal lives; it is recognising and
acknowledging Christ in you for the change.
Christianity is not about conformity (although it may be
mistakenly taught as such); Christianity should be about the embracement of our
own uniqueness with learning to overcome all of our own personal obstacles in
life. And learning how Jesus (as a culmination of all human beings) lived His
everyday life in an overcoming way.
We can look how Jesus had the authority to not only set
people free, but stayed free for Himself: He set boundaries, dealt with other
people’s unhealed parts, got frustrated, didn’t shy away from His own emotions,
and had to also confront those times when He wanted to quit. And then doing so
all from a space of Love.
For, Love is the key—and for me, I had to (have to) break
down so many un-love obstacles (fear) in my life. And that journey into Love is
me discovering what those strongholds are, healing out from them; to then
operate, not out of a stronghold space of fear and hurt, but of Love. Truly,
Love manifests in my life as I become free from my strongholds.
I’m not “learning to Love” out of some moral obedience to
the Law—the Law cannot bring about Love (the Pharisees proved that). Love
fulfils the Law. I was trying to achieve a life of Love by obeying the Law (the
religious approach), instead of removing my obstacles to let Love freely flow
from me.
II.
READING: 1
John 4:1-19 (MSG)
My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear.
Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about
God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.
2-3 Here’s how you test for the genuine Spirit of God.
Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who
came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God. And
everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with God.
This is the spirit of antichrist that you heard was coming. Well, here it is,
sooner than we thought!
4-6 My dear children, you come from God and belong to God.
You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in
you is far stronger than anything in the world. These people belong to the
Christ-denying world. They talk the world’s language and the world eats it up.
But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who knows God understands us and
listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen
to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of
deception.
7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other
since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a
relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first
thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love.
This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so
we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not
that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a
sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our
relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we
certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love
one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in
us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply
in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own
Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the
Father sent his Son as Saviour of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus
is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We
know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from
God.
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a
life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of
the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on
Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no
room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling,
a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in
love.
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we
were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
III.
RELATED VERSES AND QUESTIONS:
A. Giving
up our own ability to achieve acceptance. If I can never make myself “right”
with God, what programmes us to keep trying? For, if my right-standing with God
is only through Christ Jesus, and I am Born-Again by Him, why do I still feel
like I have to achieve to make sure my Father is happy with me? If He is a
Father that is pleased with me for just being His child, I can take off my own
pressure to feel like I need to live up to some self-defined expectation of me.
This is the freedom to that makes up me “Just Being”, instead of me “proving”.
Galatians
2:17-21 (MSG)
Have some of you noticed
that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to
make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order
to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore
be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be
good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be
acting as a charlatan.
19-21 What actually took
place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and
it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man.
Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely
with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer
central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have
your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in
me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on
that.
21 Is it not clear to you
that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an
abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I
refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God
could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
Galatians
5:22-26 (MSG)
But what happens when we
live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit
appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life,
serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion
in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and
people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force
our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
23-24 Legalism is helpless
in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to
Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding
to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
25-26 Since this is the
kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we
do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but
work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not
compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another
worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is
an original.
Question: Do you feel you sometimes try to
achieve out of your own ability? Do you believe God has given you of His Spirit
for your free and unlimited use?
B. Freedom
because of what Christ accomplished. Adam brought captivity; Jesus brought
freedom!
Romans
5:18-21 (MSG)
Here it is in a nutshell:
Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and
death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just
getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put
many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21 All that passing
laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t,
have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace.
When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten
us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting
everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that
goes on and on and on, world without end.
Ephesians
1:7-12 (MSG)
Because of the sacrifice
of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free
people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And
not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided
for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such
delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in
which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in
deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It’s in Christ that
we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard
of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for
glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything
and everyone.
Question: As a Christian, do you feel absolutely
free? What does freedom mean to you?
C. We
are given the ability to Live as Christ. As we re-program ourself and/or heal those
parts of us that still connect to this world, we in essence, set free Christ in
us. And when we get free, we can also “Just Be”.
Philippians
2:12-16 (MSG)
What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing
what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in
responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet,
redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and
sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you,
God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
14-16 Do everything
readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into
the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted
society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God.
Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be
proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I
didn’t go to all this work for nothing.
Philippians
4:6-9 (MSG) {PoG}
Don’t fret or worry. {When you are} worrying, pray. Let petitions and
praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before
you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good,
will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ
displaces worry at the centre of your life.
8-9 Summing it all up,
friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things
true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the
worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put
into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do
that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most
excellent harmonies.
Question: When you’ve gone through a healing /
renewing experience, what are some aspects from that journey that you can see
align with Jesus Christ (Him in you)?
D. It’s
His power living in and through us that we have an Authority. God doesn’t say,
“good luck” after we are Born-Again, He teams up with us as equal partners to
share responsibility for our life here on earth.
Ephesians
3:20 (MSG)
God can do anything, you
know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest
dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his
Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Colossians
1:9-12 (MSG)
Be assured that from the
first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to
give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough
understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for
the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you
learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray
that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim
strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is
strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the
Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and
beautiful that he has for us.
Question: Do you understand that His Spirit and
“glory-strength” is given for you to use?
E. Learning
and understanding that moral obedience and rule-following does not make the
heart Love; but that as we Love, we naturally don’t do harmful things to
ourselves or one-another.
Romans
13:8-10 (MSG)
Don’t run up debts, except
for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you
complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with
another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours,
don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can
think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself.
You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law
code, the sum total is love.
Galatians
5:13-15 (MSG)
It is absolutely clear
that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this
freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.
Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.
For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love
others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and
ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each
other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
Question: What is your heart-condition regarding
Law-abiding and Love?
IV.
FURTHER THOUGHT:
A.
Mark
4:14-20 (MSG)
“The farmer plants the
Word. Some people are like the seed that falls on the hardened soil of the
road. No sooner do they hear the Word than Satan snatches away what has been
planted in them.
16-17 “And some are like
the seed that lands in the gravel. When they first hear the Word, they respond
with great enthusiasm. But there is such shallow soil of character that when
the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for
it.
18-19 “The seed cast in
the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news but are overwhelmed
with worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want
to get. The stress strangles what they heard, and nothing comes of it.
20 “But the seed planted
in the good earth represents those who hear the Word, embrace it, and produce a
harvest beyond their wildest dreams.”
Thoughts: The
implementation of the Word of the Lord in our life looks different for each of
us. We each have our own history and “baggage”—strongholds—which the Word of
the Lord can help us overcome. Not all of us will fully heal in each area of
our life (hence why we get a new body), but we do have that ability to heal so
much of ourselves. But each person has a different heart condition in receiving
the Word, and that condition may or may not change over time. Yet when it does
change into that “good earth”, it manifests a harvest of fruit that brings such
fulfilment in our life and our relationships here on earth.
·
For some, the Word is stollen before it can
penetrate their heart, and they don’t manifest any healing.
·
For some, the Word does seed in their heart, but
the hardship to heal becomes too much too bear.
·
For some, the Word does seed in their heart, but
their healing journey gets stifled by the world’s (our ingrained) programming.
·
For some, the Word does seed in their heart, and
they do heal the many parts of themselves: overcoming both the healing
hardships and the programming of this world.
Yet, regardless of if we heal or
how much we do heal, it does not change how much the Lord truly does Love us.
And without the struggle to “get the Lord to Love me”, the more I can put into
overcoming the difficulties of my healing journey; utilising ALL that the Lord
has blessed me with to overcome! And one of these Blessed ways to help us
overcome is His Gift of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
B.
Would you like to have the Holy Spirit fully in
your innermost being (filled and overflowing); trusting and accepting the Power
of Him in you?
John
14:25-31a (MSG)
“I’m telling you these
things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the
Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will
remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s
my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being
left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.
28 “You’ve heard me tell
you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back.’ If you loved me, you would be glad
that I’m on my way to the Father because the Father is the goal and purpose of
my life.
29-31 “I’ve told you this
ahead of time, before it happens, so that when it does happen, the confirmation
will deepen your belief in me. I’ll not be talking with you much more like this
because the chief of this godless world is about to attack. But don’t worry—he
has nothing on me, no claim on me. But so the world might know how thoroughly I
love the Father, I am carrying out my Father’s instructions right down to the
last detail.
Thoughts: Sometimes we can feel that the Lord
is not near… or worse off, feel “abandoned”. Other times it is that we would
feel more secure if Jesus was still here with us (next to me). But here, Jesus
shares with us that the Holy Spirit is a greater benefit to us. How amazing is
it that the Holy Spirit is referred to by Jesus as a Comforter! Someone that
brings peace to our souls—an emotional being that can transform our fears to
peace. He reminds us of whom Jesus truly is and make clear to us (unconfused
for us) the notion of whom God is as a Father. Confirming that His presence in
us testifies in our being that we are NOT abandoned, but powerful and
authoritative; and calls out for us that we truly have an Abba Father that so
cares for us:
Romans
8:15-17 (MSG)
This resurrection life you received
from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant,
greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our
spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we
are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to
us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through.
If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go
through the good times with him!
Galatians 4:4-7 (MSG)
But when the time arrived that was set
by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the
conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been
kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful
heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own
children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out,
“Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make
it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re
also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.
A thank you to Kelly and Joshua who are inspirational in this life-journey. And to all the family, friends, sponsors, and donors who have fed into this ministry and outreach.
If you would like to support this ministry and outreach, you may do so via our website or at:
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