Tuesday 23 February 2021

Attitude Adjustments

 


Scripture:  Ephesians 4 v 31-32:  "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32  And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God forgave you."

Ephesians 2 v 4 - 6: "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5  Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 
6  And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:"


Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ purchased our spirits out of Satan's clutches and absorbed them into His body, while dying on a Cross outside Jerusalem. He took every sin and evil thing and destroyed its power over humans.  The wages of sin is death, we were born in sin, therefore these sins were committed before we were in the womb. 

We are still inside Him having been forgiven already.
All we need do to make this forgiveness real is be born again and then death is gone from us and we become children of the Most High. Its not hard to do -all it takes is faith in Jesus to believe He is the Son of God. However, that seems to be beyond some people today.

They prefer to be cool rebels doing their own thing. Or part of some dead religion worshipping idols, or simply atheists who don't believe God exists.  Or following philosophy or the doctrines of men who are exalted above the Word of God.  Colossians 2 v 8: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."

Jesus wants us to lose our ignorance along with anger, bitterness and evil speaking. He can change us to be more like Him - kind, tenderhearted and forgiving. When we lose our sinful nature we gain so much more. We gain goodness, self-control and obedience.

If we refuse to make adjustments to our negative attitude, we will find that eventually the bitterness and anger overwhelm us and we do and say things that cause those we love to reject us. We don't see it coming as it is a spiritual condition to which we are blinded.  2 Corinthians 4 v 3 - 4: "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
4  In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."

It is the god of this world, aka Satan, The Deceiver, Father of Lies, the Great Red Dragon, who blinds the minds of his subjects, sinners, to the truth about Jesus.  He hates being exposed because he has successfully convinced the world that he and his demons are myths.  

Often we need help to untangle the roots of bitterness and anger especially when we are in the grip of emotional abuse.  We need to understand something about how evil spirits work to destroy our personalities and lives.

When the demons have created a climate of fear and emotional pain they keep adding to it until every memory becomes loaded with bitter thoughts.  They have an agenda for every human, destroy this personality....through addictions, sexual abuse, emotional and physical abuse, crime, bitterness, hate, racial hate, disease, idolatry, loss and death.

Jesus said we are born again when we believe and are baptized.  It is the only way to be free of subjection to Satan.  We must then work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.  We need ministry, prayer and the gifts of the Holy Spirit to do this effectively.

Until you forgive from the heart and truly forget you remain a target.  So that's the first attitude adjustment to be accomplished because God says unless you forgive, I will not forgive you!  He responds to us doing it first.

Luke 4 v 18: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,"

Jesus wants to remove the target from our souls that is a bruise being constantly knocked in our emotions. When He has achieved this we will start to experience some breathing space in order to grow past the pain and lose the baggage we have been burdened with for years.

Then our lives can change from bitter and angry to kind and tenderhearted. We will lose the need to drown our sorrows and end up in a worse place. We will gain strength from His joy within us.  When the evil roots have been destroyed then we will see change.  Roots refers to generational afflictions or attitudes that are demonically visited upon us from previous generations.  Like family feuds or a family history of a recurring disease.  

We will not only forgive others but ourselves too for the many things we wish we had not done or said. When we forgive ourselves we get onto the same page with Jesus so that we can love ourselves like He loves us. We cannot truly love our neighbour until we love ourselves in a Godly way.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, only You can bring about these attitude adjustments and we need You to do this right now. We struggle to get answers through our impatience and pride. We humble ourselves to receive Your changes. In Jesus' name. Amen.