What Hinders Our Purpose Now? (Part 4)
The Enemy Hinders Our Purpose Now
We are vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy where we have unhealed wounds and are therefore walking after the flesh in that area. Where we believe a lie, the enemy has a legal right to interfere in our lives.
Overcoming the enemy does not mean we will stop being vulnerable to temptation. Being tempted does not mean anything — Jesus was in all ways tempted as we are. It’s when we ascribe meaning to that temptation that we enter deception. Even after Jesus persevered through 40 days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness, even after Jesus triumphed over him, did Satan just give up? Hardly. The same will happen to us. In the spiritual realm Satan and his buddies have no influence or position. In the supernatural/soulical realm, they continue to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives by provoking our flesh, showing us where we have wounds so they can be healed. Then his involvement in our lives gives us an opportunity to learn to rule and reign in this lifetime spiritually, soulically and naturally, over the already-conquered one. The lion who seeks to devour our souls is only released from his cage so that we can learn how to battle him.
So, how then does the enemy hinder our purpose now? The enemy comes at us from two perspectives: either he will draw attention to himself and his purposes, distracting us from the real issue, which is God dealing with us to bring us healing, or he drives attention away from himself, to keep from being exposed and dealt with according to God’s will in that situation. But he can be overcome in God’s timing, and according to His purposes for our lives. So the enemy hinders us from our dependence on God only when we let him distract us or if we ignore him and let him set up camp. (This is not to say that Satan and his pals don’t have power — they surely do. But the source of that power to deceive and destroy can be easily quenched by going to the root of his involvement in our lives and dealing with that. This removes the enemy’s claim on us and with a word from the Lord he must flee.)
9am Sat — Tithing vs. Giving: CONSEQUENCES: “Not Giving God’s Way is Contrary to Our New Nature”
Unhealed Wounds Hinder Our Purpose Now
Unhealed wounds are places in our soul where our needs have not been met in the past, so that we are now believing a lie. We can receive wounds both before we become believers and even after, if we don’t depend on God to meet our needs in a particular area. The most common wound is rejection. We are all rejected on a regular basis and will continue to be while we are here on this earth. So the issue is not how to prevent rejection, how to prevent being wounded, but how to go to the Father to get healed, as Jesus Himself learned to do.
Misunderstanding the dynamics of the wounding process will divert us into one of two tracks: 1) we will become distracted by our woundedness, putting all our energy into getting ourselves healed and avoiding being rejected again, or 2) denying that we have been or are being wounded, we will either stuff the hurt and rejection or hide behind activity so that we don’t have to deal with the hurt or be vulnerable to additional rejection.
In the wild, many animals will hide their injuries, knowing that a wound is perceived as a weakness or vulnerability, and makes them a target for predators. This phenomena seems to be quite an accurate description of Christianity as well; we’re afraid to express our hurt or need for help, having been previously rejected for having a need, told that it’s all in our head and to get over it, or told to stop thinking about ourself and just get busy. Or we’re afraid we won’t be helped at all, but sent home to deal with it on our own, which we have no idea how to do, or we wouldn’t have asked for help in the first place.
Thankfully, God’s purpose in our lives is to bring healing, and He never gives up.
9am Sat — Tithing vs. Giving: CONSEQUENCES: “Not Giving God’s Way is Contrary to Our New Nature”
What Hinders Our Purpose Now? (Part 2)
Our Flesh Hinders Our Purpose Now
Flesh is getting our God-given needs met outside of dependence on God alone. If we don’t understand what our personal flesh patterns are, and how flesh develops, it will continue to develop and interfere with the learning process. Before our nature was exchanged at the cross, the only resource we had available to get our needs met was the flesh, also called our “self” and the “self-life.” Flesh perpetuates our misconceptions, especially telling us that if we really give in to God, bad things will happen. Though we may know differently, we’ll often feel that it might be true. So we often unwittingly allow the flesh to continue as head honcho, until God sets it up to fail. As we begin to understand our new nature, and that all of our needs are met already, we will cooperate with God as He consumes our flesh.
Wanting To Maintain Control Hinders Our Purpose Now
The goal of flesh is to control, so as God brings healing into our lives, and we begin to enter into His rest and freedom, we more and more find ourselves giving up control to God. We all find it hard to change, however, because change means having to deal with something new. So flesh comes along and gives us a reason to resist change, or to want to control how we are changed. This is normal, though the Lord will deal with this in His time as well. Over time, the initiative and motivation for our lives is transferred from us to Him, and we learn to accept change on a daily basis because we are stable and secure in our relationship with Him. We know He loves us, values us, accepts and approves of us now, regardless of where we are on the learning path. So any changes He makes can be, if not understood, at least endured.
9am Sat — Tithing vs. Giving: CONSEQUENCES: “Believers Not Learning How to Hear the Lord”
What Hinders Our Purpose Now? (Part 1)
Misconceptions About Who We Are, Who God Is and What He Is Doing Hinder Our Purpose Now
Do you know why you believe what you believe? Beliefs are caught, not taught, and we are often not aware that much of what we believe contradicts something else we believe (this is one reason there are so many versions of the Bible and an ever-growing number of denominations). God wants us to know His ways, how He does things, how He feels about us, and how He works on our behalf. Taking another’s explanation for this hinders God from revealing the truth to us directly.
For example, there’s a popular saying in Christian circles that goes; “We’re not human doings, we’re human beings.” Well, neither is true. We’re not human doings, or human beings, but spirit beings, with the nature of our Father. But it’s a quotable quote, and easy to remember. The more times we hear it, the more “factual” it becomes — the more it rings true. But God wants to make our true identity real to us: “I am a spirit, I have a soul and I live in a body.”
Knowing Ourselves According To Our Temperament Hinders Our Purpose Now
We often live according to the belief that our temperament is who or what we are. For instance, someone who has a strong intellect may believe that their value to God (and to themselves and to others as well) is measured in terms of doing something with their intellect. Likewise someone who is compassionate and caring toward people may believe that God gave them those qualities in order to minister to people. But our temperament, the way God put our soul together, is not the basis upon which He evaluates us. In fact, most often our temperament, because of our misbeliefs, is our greatest hindrance because it provides a means to excuse the flesh. Our goal for freedom is not so that our temperament can be free, but so that He can be free, unhindered by our temperament. Before our soul (our temperament) can be fully available for the Lord to flow through, it must become unencumbered by the flesh.
Not Understanding How God Uses Circumstances Hinders Our Purpose Now
If your watch stopped, yet you still went by it because you didn’t know it had stopped, you would be believing a lie, you just wouldn’t know it. You’d start showing up late for things, and that’s how you’d find out your watch had stopped, that you were believing a lie. Likewise, God often allows things to go wrong in our lives, to reveal that what we are believing is a lie. If we don’t understand this, and then learn to listen for His voice, to see His hand in every circumstance of our lives, we miss out on learning to know Him in the practical areas of our lives.
9am Sat — Tithing vs. Giving: CONSEQUENCES: “Believers Not Learning How to Hear the Lord”
If Change is God’s Responsibility, Is There Anything WE Can Do?
Well, yes and no. We can learn to actively rest; like an injured patient undergoing surgery, it is imperative we lie still on the operating table. So imperative, in fact, that during surgery our bodies are anesthetized to keep them from reacting to the pain. But when undergoing soulical surgery, we are fully aware of everything that is going on around us. The best we can do is be still and learn to know Him. To get to that state of rest, God will teach us how to truly repent, renew our minds and submit our beliefs, until we believe what He says about us. We will then trust Him because we have experienced His love for us, not because of the strength or nature of our beliefs.
Only God can live the Christian life; our purpose now is to let Him live that life through us without our interference. His life in us becomes our reality. We become blind to our surroundings and our own desires, and deaf to the cries of the needs within and the needy without, to the point that all we know is what He tells us, and only respond to His will, joyfully and with His power and authority.
This will require turning a deaf ear, and shutting our eyes to what we have learned about God and how we fit into what He is doing. What God says to us and about us is the truth, not what we’ve learned from our pastor, parents, our “selves,” etc. Our thinking, feeling and choosing all need to be reconciled, brought into alignment, with the Truth — what God says is true. Just because you believe something is true doesn’t make it true. Test it! Is it bringing you into dependence on God alone or on something else? A fact is anything someone can get you to believe. We must let go of everything we think we know; that which is Truth will remain. What is from God will stand up to all scrutiny. We must learn to trust the Lord to lead us into all truth more than we trust the world, the flesh and the devil to lead us into deception.