I know I said this earlier in the week but, praise God for His forgiveness and redemption! Because this makes all the difference.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Ro 8:1 NIV
So as we understand that God has forgiven our sinful nature and all our sins- past, present and future- we begin to not allow any guilt to make us feel condemned, but we do allow it to convict us. As we understand we need to change the way we think, speak and act to line itself up with this New Creation Identity we have in Christ, then we work with the Holy Spirit within to transform us. Let me make this clear: our identity used to be a sinner, who is doomed to be eternally separated from God, Who is Life…that means death is what we were heading towards. But our New Creation Identity is a saint in Christ…again this does NOT mean we will act perfectly all the time. We will still mess up because we are children still growing, learning and maturing to become like Jesus. Thus the next working of the Holy Spirit within.
3- The Holy Spirit compensates for our poor behavior: that last definition of redeemed we talked about the other day is to: “do something that compensates for poor past performance or behavior.” The Holy Spirit, not only convicts us of what we are still doing wrong, but then He teaches us how to correct that behavior. The Holy Spirit guides our thoughts so we begin to think more like God. The Holy Spirit gives us counseling about our emotions, so that we can control them and not fly off the handle, be impetuous, and get ourselves into trouble. The Holy Spirit directs our desires, so that our will, will align more and more to that of God’s. We will want what God wants for us more than we want what we wanted for ourselves. See? The Holy Spirit is the loving power that brings about change, one decision at a time.
Join me in memorizing 52 verses this year:
January: 1- Jn 3:16; 2- 2Co 5:17; 3- Jas 2:26; 4- Eph 2:10
February: 5- Jn 10:10; 6- Ro 6:23; 7- Rev 21:4; 8- Php 4:13
March: 9- 1Pe 5:7; 10- Jn 8:32; 11- Dt 30:19; 12- Jn 3:30; 13- 2Chron 20:3
April: 14- 2Chron 20:12; 15- 2Chron 20:15b; 16- 2Chron 20:17
May: 17- Ro 8:28; 18- 1Co 13:13; 19- Php 2:12; 20- Mt 5:4
June: 21- Lk 23:42; 22- Jas 4:7; 23- Pr 22:6; 24- Mt 5:3; 25- Jn 14:6
July: 26- Jas 2:19; 27- Dt 31:8; 28- Jn 14:15; 29- Jn 8:11
30- Ro 8:1
<>< Peace, Diane
