This Christmas I traveled
by airlines to see my family. I brought some baggage and these days you have to
pay for extra baggage. It’s the same with our lives—and it costs too much. So
let’s see if we can get rid of some of that. Let’s lighten up our load.
We can’t really move
forward if we keep adding to the pile of stuff that we take with us from year
to year.
So this is what we can do:
First thing is to think about, then write down one temptation that took you
away from doing God’s will this past year. Look at that thing and forgive yourself
for doing it. Guess what? We’re not perfect Christians; nobody is. As hard as
we may try to be “good,” sometimes we don’t even really know what “good” is. So
we make mistakes. We have to admit that we’ve messed up. We may even have to
admit that according to what the Bible says, we’ve sinned. There I said it.
But that’s why Jesus is
our savior. We mess up, we admit it, He picks us up. He forgives us and we
forgive us. Done. But how do we stop from messing up in the same way again?
We need to ask ourselves, “Why?”
“Why did I allow it?” “What is it in me that may have contributed to bringing
this thing to pass?” Once we can see the answer to this “why” question and we
have an understanding of it, we can forgive ourselves and get healed.
Any mistakes we make are
not in our spirit man—that’s perfect. But mistakes are in our thinking,
emotions and decisions—all soul-related.
God said, “For I will
restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds” (Jer 30:17). There
are no wounds in our spirit, only in our soul. God sent Jesus to earth to show
us how to get our souls healed and drop the baggage that is so hard to drag
around with us. The older we get the heavier and more cumbersome the bags get.
Paul tells us his deep
desire in Philippians 3:10, “That I may know him (Jesus Christ) and the power
of his resurrection.” The original Greek word for “power” in this verse is “dunamis.”
Dunamis is defined as “miracle-working power, moral power, excellence of soul.”
The resurrection power of
Jesus Christ is the miraculous power that refreshes and changes our souls.
It’s in our souls that we
err against God, but we’ve been given “dunamis,” which is excellence of soul.
We have excellence of soul. Say it, “I have excellence of soul. I have moral
power, by the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God to me.” It’s the same
miraculous power that it took to raise Jesus from the bonds of hell, that will miraculously
break us free from the bonds of sins and errors in judgement in our soul lives.
We have that
miracle-working power of dunamis in us. We can release it by soaking in the
light of Jesus Christ. Light dispels darkness. We can release it by letting the
light of dunamis power invade our souls. Like it says many times in the Old
Testament, “open the gates.” We say, “I have miracle-working power in me I have
excellence of soul and moral power because God gave it to me.” Excellence of
soul is to make the right decisions, right choices, the right thoughts
according to the spirit of God in Christ in us.
We soak in dunamis like we’d
soak a stained piece of clothing. We don’t just dip it in and take it out. It
needs to be immersed for a while. We soak our innermost being by meditating on
the truth that Jesus Christ wants to heal our souls and is miraculously
changing the effects of what’s happened to us.
Second Timothy 2: 24-26 tells
us that when we don’t have excellence of soul in a category of life, we are
opposing our own selves and that we are to “awake ourselves out of the snare of
the devil.”
As we start to claim our
right to exhibit excellence of soul and moral power we will begin to see in our
lives where the origins of our errors came from.
Did something make you feel
rejected as a child? Did you feel you had to close the door on your real self
in order to protect yourself? Did something or someone make you so angry you
did things to hurt yourself? Did you hide in pain killers or alcohol to protect
yourself after a car accident you caused?
When we see where the
beginning of our hurts and errors in judgment started, we have the power and
backup to confront them and the miracle dunamis power will nullify them and
make that baggage drop away, deteriorate. It will no longer be ours. It won’t
be us carrying around those old suitcases and backpacks.
Instead those things will
be flat lined, more as if we are watching a movie about someone else’s life. It’s
not us anymore because we are free.
Welcome to a new life,
2016.
Love, Carolyn
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