Repeat and Renew

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear in any form. Fear is a spiritual force used by Satan to keep people down. Instead, faith in God is championed. The repetition in scripture is because humans are slow to understand. God provides a way out when faced with temptation. Our flesh tends to forget past victories and focuses on the present. We need to think spiritually and trust in Jesus for transformation. The process of sanctification requires our participation. We need to constantly renew our minds with the Word of God. We have victory and authority in Jesus, and God is always with us. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Deuteronomy 31.8 Yahweh himself is who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you. Don't be afraid. Don't be discouraged. Didn't we do this one last time? Yes, we did. And no, we didn't. Last time was two verses before this, and it was Moses speaking to the people of Israel about what they were about to do. Now Moses is talking to Joshua about what he personally needs to do to lead the people of Israel. And he's told the same thing, to build personal confidence. With personal confidence, he can impart it to the rest of the people, to assure them that in fact and for true, God is the one who is going before you. He will be with you. So you have zero reason to fear, because he isn't going anywhere. And guess what? Hebrews 13.8 tells us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So we get the same deal. Now why is so much of what God says to us in his word a repetition or a slight word change from other things he has said? Don't be offended. Please don't be offended. But I really do think it's because we as human beings are kind of slow on the uptake. I mean, God in a sense doesn't repeat himself. He's not a nagger. He's not going to tell you what to do, and then tell you what to do again, and then tell you what to do again, and then tell you what to do again. He just tells you once, and then that's where he waits for you. And then once you've done the thing, then you can move on to the next step together. And yet, at the same time, he will tell us over and over and over again, in slightly different ways, that he loves us, or that he's with us, going before us in battle, and things like that. We can be smart, and brilliant, and amazing, and wow! I mean, don't you find that? Just look around at the world, what we accomplish, what we can do, what human beings are doing. And at the same time, we can get all bent out of shape when something happens to us. We freak out, and don't know what to do, because Bob at the office is saying blah, and it's going to mess everything up. And we scream our frustration into the void, and we complain to everyone. And then when it's pointed out that Henry, or Jane, or Hal3000 said the same thing a few weeks ago, and we dealt with it just fine then, we'll look at them with tears in our eyes and say, but this is totally different. It's ridiculous. It's what children do. We face the same kinds of things over and over again. Why is that? No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will, with the temptation, also make the way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10.13 That doesn't mean that God sends the temptation. It means when temptation hits, God is there at the same time showing us a way to avoid it. Now what works once will be used again. According to Isabel Myers and Catherine Briggs, developers of the MBTI assessment, that's the Myers-Briggs type indicator, you may have heard of it, there are 16 personality types. This is the most personality types acknowledged. Some say there's only four. Either way, when it comes to human beings, there are only a small amount of differences. The enemy has been dealing with mankind for thousands of years. It isn't hard to see that although there are billions of us on this planet, and billions upon billions over the eons, they need a very small checklist for us. Once they know our personality, which we daily demonstrate for them, they know the playbook by which they can push our buttons and help us to choose flesh over faith. They are expert psychologists, not from intelligence, but from experience of dealing with us. As such, they do not see the out that the Lord provides us. They have experiential knowledge, but not wisdom or smarts. They are dead spiritually. Sadly, we often seem to be in the same boat. Sometimes, we just can't see that they are in essence the same thing. That the blue car and the red car are still just cars drifting over the center line. Other times, it's a harder sameness. We have to eat again and we have no money, or the kids do, or the bills are due. Again, in both types of repetition, we can forget what has happened before. That we moved out of the way of the car. We were gifted food. We found an extra 20 bucks in our account that we forgot was there. Someone we didn't know bought us a coffee or donated to our internet campaign to raise money. We don't remember the outs that God provided in the past, see the one that he was holding out to us or pointing to. We give up. We give in. We do so many things and all of them are flesh. We give into the experience occurring and forget that we are above that. That feelings lie. That flesh is not all that it is hyped up to be. We are eternal spirit beings, but our flesh is finite. Because of that, we have a default to see only what is in the now. We have a hard time focusing on the future. We often forget the past. If it isn't now, it isn't. But the kingdom of God doesn't work like that. Because we are spiritual beings, we're called to think spiritually. Our home is an eternal plane called heaven. We're to connect with that because from that eternal plane is where everything comes. We are to evaluate everything we hear and we see through the lens of our spirituality. That's Jesus that we were born into. So we're to see everything according to Jesus and what Jesus does. We cannot do that without faith. By faith, the spirit is made alive. Without faith, the spirit is dead. This is reality. Adam had full use of his spirit. Then he fell and it died. Or really, he killed it. Without the grace of God, it will stay dead for all of us. That's how reproduction works. Like produces like. Oh sure, there's small differences over time. In essence, if left alone, the child is at the core the same as the parent. Now the father sent his son to pay the price of that betrayal, the cost of sin. Jesus took the price on himself and died for it. Then the father resurrected Jesus to life and that enabled Jesus to transform us to spiritual life. By grace, through faith, the Lord God gives us everything we need. Now we need to walk in it. By reproduction, we have become like Christ. Carbon copies, exact duplicates in the spirit. The process of sanctification is the lifelong process of God working with us to move Christ's righteousness from our spirit to our soul to our bodies. He does the work and the renewing. We do the accepting, learning, and walking. Without our participation, it goes nowhere. Without us abiding in Jesus and choosing the Lord over ourselves and our circumstances on a daily basis, it goes nowhere. Because it is Jesus who does the work in us, not us. Our efforts earn us squat. He earned us eternity like him. So if we're not putting ourselves into Jesus, Jesus can't do anything because we haven't given him permission to. It is a two-way street. His side is ever-flowing. We need to accept it and we need to pick it up all the time. If not, we are going to default to habit. Our flesh wants to do the sinful. Our flesh wants to do the selfish. Because that's who and what our flesh is. It is just its fallen stuff. But we're enabled to be more than that, to pull our spirit into our flesh. But it has to be done consciously. It has to be done daily. It has to be done multiple times a day. We have to constantly be opening that door and saying, Jesus, do it. Father, what do you want here? And just be renewed by them. We need Jesus to transform our minds with the Word of God, which is Romans 12. The Holy Spirit reminds us of what God has said to us, John 14.26. But to remind us of what he has said, we need to hear it. We need to listen to teaching. We need to study the Word. We need to praise and pray and listen to his voice, John 10.27-30. Now, when we walk this way, whenever something comes up, the Holy Spirit will remind us of what happened last time. Whenever we walk this way, we are constantly and consciously choosing God and his way and asking him what to do. So the renewal of our mind happens because we are reading the Word with the idea that it is going to change us. So we read the Word with the goal of applying what it says. The Lord will help us apply it. That's what the Holy Spirit does. We will be able to remember, supernaturally if necessary, what the Word says about our victory, our authority, and the gifts that he has given us to achieve them by grace through faith. Because in Jesus we have victory. In Jesus we have authority. If we establish ourselves as pleasing sacrifices to the Lord, 1 Corinthians 6.19-20, we are in a position to live out the perfect will of God, Romans 12.1-2. God is with us. He will not leave us. He has redeemed us once and forever. He has delivered us from circumstances before. He can deliver us again. He tells us that again and again so that we won't forget it or ignore it or gloss over it. He tells us that He loves us again and again so that we will understand. When we understand, when we take it in, it will change our lives. We will start to automatically say, God has this when trouble comes calling. And then to take it to Him and see what we are going to be doing about it. To see how we are going to be obedient to Him. Not because we have to, but because we love Him and we want to see Him smile. We'll just find ourselves being obedient to Him. It's so that we'll listen to Him each and every time anything happens. We'll listen for that small, still voice that's happening in the midst of the earthquake, in the midst of the disaster. So that we will eat and live and sleep and breathe faith. He has a plan. Seek it. You'll find it. It isn't a secret. It isn't always some grand thing. Sometimes the plan is very simple. He will repeat the plan to you as many times as we need with a smile on His face and a joy in His heart. He is patience. He loves us so much. Walk in His love. Walk in faith. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Luke 5, 12-14. Sin sucks. Bad behavior also sucks. I can list probably a hundred things about myself that I don't like and honestly detest. But I won't. I try and speak life, not death. It helps with self-image. It helps with self-acceptance. Also with depression. But the Father isn't bothered by all of that stuff that we think we see. He doesn't even notice it. That's the great thing about God. He sees us not as we are, but as He created us to be. He doesn't see the fallen us, but the saved, resurrected, and perfected us. Jesus came across a man with one of the worst skin diseases that has ever existed. He reached out and touched him, smiling. Immediately the leprosy left him. That's what it says. Jesus will do the same thing today. He will reach out and touch us, and instantly we will be in His eyes exactly as He always wanted us to be. First of all, what love to touch us in our filth. For our mess not to bother Him at all. Second, what love to see us perfect, whole, and righteous. To see that touch being what cleanses us. What grace to give us that gift. The Father is aware of who we are and what we are, but that isn't what He sees. Jesus meets us where we are, but doesn't leave us there. He enfolds us into Himself, renewing us. The Holy Spirit isn't a divine nag track, but a constant pep talk. He moves us in positivity from who we think we are and what we think we should be doing, to who the Father thinks we are and what the Father thinks we should be doing. Ever patient, ever merciful, guiding and leading with a light yoke and a shepherd's touch. That is love. As we close, remember that you have earth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.