Bars

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philppians 3:13-14

Paul's above exhortation from Philippians is a powerful and true one. Why then is it so hard for us to do? To live out?

In my prayer journal I have a question asked by author and speaker Christine Caine. She asks, "Are we looking at life through the prison bars of the past? The Word of God comes to us, but we hear it through the bars." Obviously then, we can't live out this verse by sheer will power or by positive thinking. It takes the renewing work of His Holy Spirit. The renewing of our minds and even our memories. Not a wiping clean of the slate, but a breaking of those very bars from yesterday that diffuse the power of His Word in our lives and distort the face of Jesus. The prison bars consist of lies planted by the enemy. Lies that tell us that we're still subject to the things that have happened to us, and even more, that tell us we're the same person we were when these things took place. The prison bars keep us from taking hold of His truth that we are new creations in Christ, that all things are new. The old has passed, the new, in Christ, has come. This is what happens in the heart of every believer when He comes to Christ. Our great problem is that it can take time for that message of truth to reach our minds and our patterns of thinking. Especially as concerns how we see ourselves.

We live in a fallen world, polluted by sin. We're born into it and the pollution fills every corner of our being. We're powerless to change that, which is why we desperately needed the One who has all power, Jesus Christ. He breaks the power of that sin pollution in our lives but we have to step into the freedom that comes to us through faith in Him. Too many of us never do. Too many of us live like prisoners of war in a war that has already been won at the cross of Christ.

The Israelites spent 400 years as slaves in Egypt. God broke their slavery and led them out, but they never seemed to fully escape their slave mentality. Neither do so many of us. The Israelites kept hearing Him through the bars of their slavery. They couldn't fully grasp that they were free. Have you?

If you're seeing your life and His promises through prison bars, I encourage you to first confess that to Him and then ask Him to fill your mind with the truth of His Word and have those bars disintegrate before you. They disintegrate when the truth of His Word and promises lays hold of both your heart and your mind. Someone said that the truth of His Word dissolves the shackles that keep us prisoner. The shackles and the bars as well. Be free of a life that only sees through the enemies bars. Embrace His truth. Embrace Him. See everything clearly. See Him!

Blessings,

Pastor O