Seeds

I am SO thankful for the Body of Christ.  What would we have without each other?  It would be hard to stick close to Christ on our own.  Let's do our part not to be isolated.  I'm half talking to myself - I have a tendency to be a recluse and I'm still really lacking local girlfriends.

I've been mildly obsessed with Joyce Meyer's materials recently.  At the gym the other day, I listened to her podcast, and it got me excited.  I thought I should share!

She was talking about how we wallow around in our struggles like pigs in mud sometimes, but that we don't have to because God and Jesus Christ have given us absolutely everything we need already.  If you read through any of the new testament and reflect on that, you'll see the truth in it.  Once we decide to make Jesus our Lord, we get his spirit and his mind in us.  We get holy spirit, which empowers us.  See Acts chapter 2.  But remember how you can possess something and not use it?  Like that ugly shirt you got from your aunt, or the lotion you haven't opened yet that's just sitting there.  Why would the principles not be the same with holy spirit?  It's like having muscles that we don't work out - our holy spirit can and does atrophy.

We have to activate what we got, people!  And it can be hard work, but it pays off... and it's not THAT hard.

Anyway, she was saying that we have the seed of God planted in us if we are born again.  Seeds don't just spring out of the ground into full grown plants with fruit all over them, though.  And babies (which start with a baby making seed) don't burst out of you the moment after you get pregnant.  You can't even SEE that you're pregnant for a long time, and plants take forever to grow to the point of producing anything, it seems.

 In the same teaching, Joyce suggested not fellowshipping with your sin.  Don't focus on the stuff you do wrong all the time! You are forgiven!  Fellowship with God and get your brain thinking what He wants you thinking!

So let's not be acting like we aren't powerful people who have what it takes to live the way God would have us live.  All we have to do is truly and firmly believe what God says to us and about us.  The fact is, we are more than conquerers.  We are lights in this world.  We are free.  We are loved.  We are beautiful.  We are strong.  We ARE blessed, already.  We CAN take captive our thoughts to make them obedient to Christ.  We are able to be disciplined (that's one of many I'm working on).  We all have an important ministry and purpose on this earth.  Each one of us are unique and we should be different than everyone else.

Joyce's point was to stop asking God for what you already have and just USE it already!  Just believe it and decide that you are going to live in victory.

How awesome is that?