Overcrowded Elevator?

My wife and I try to be intentional and date each other once a week and we have done this for the last ten years or more. Sometimes it’s coffee together, other times it dinner, and on occasion we get away to a hotel. One particular date we stayed at a hotel with an amazing view on the 16th floor. We didn’t want to leave so we waited until the last moment of our check out time. Others must have felt the same way because as we took our luggage to the elevators, several other people on our same floor followed us into the elevator.

Starting at the 16th floor we made it only to the 15th floor before others were trying to cram in the elevator with their suitcases and then the awkwardness of shoulder to shoulder with strangers began. The crazy thing is (what was obvious to us in the elevator) that we were too full for anyone else,  however, the elevator stopped at the 14th floor and no one said a thing as two more people squeezed themselves and their luggage aboard the elevator. Well the next level someone had to say something or we were going to be risking our lives and our sanity.

Next floor level the elevator pings and the door flies open. Once again the people were standing outside the elevator with their luggage in hand but this time I said, “I’m so sorry, we are full!”. The whole group of people in the elevator seemed relieved and after the next few stops (yes, we stopped at all the other floors on the way down) they joined in with me saying, “I’m so sorry, we are full!”. There was laughing and almost making it a game by the time we reached the lobby.

 

Colossians 3:3 says this,

3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Romans 8:1

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

As born again believers, our spirit has been made new and the life we now live, we live by faith in the Son of God. Our soul is our mind, will and emotions. Our mind must be renewed to our new identity hidden with Christ. Like that elevator your soul has room for only so much. You have the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit with you. They have suitcases with them. I like to call them fruit cases! In your soul you have room for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. When the enemy wants to bring your mind fear, condemnation or judgement during life’s circumstances, there is no room for that!  Just remember to join with the Holy Spirit and meditate on your life in Christ Jesus. Go ahead and say aloud with Jesus, “Im so sorry, we are full!”

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Create in me a wicked heart?

 

For years growing up in the church I would question my heart motives and whether or not God could change my heart that week. I felt that if I had a great week seeking Jesus and life was full of blessings then I credited having a changed heart. But then trials and tribulations would come and those blessings were shaken and the seeking of Jesus was harder because He obviously wasn’t changing my heart. The circumstances and behavior in my life must be due to the wickedness of my heart? I could hear the preacher giving glory to his blessed life and church because “it’s all about the motives of the heart.” We would end men’s meetings and accountability time asking, “How’s your heart?” I would cry out to God in tears and ask him to change my heart! At the age of 30, my body was dying and I was averaging 3 hours of sleep at night and I blamed it on the condition of my heart. Why wasn’t God changing my heart?

Fast forward to today and I feel healthier in my body in my forties than I did in my twenties and thirties. What changed? I believe, this is the greatest question you can ask when reading the Bible or looking for answers! 

Jesus revealed truth to me and I want to share it with you in case you believed the same lie I believed. The lie, that your heart is wicked, that it needs to be cleaned comes from actual scripture in the old and new testament. “Wait, Brandon, you just said that a lie can come from the Bible? I can’t keep reading this blog, it’s sacrilegious!” In case you are still reading, I will make it clear that the Bible is not the one lying but the father of lies knows it backwards and forwards, the enemy’s favorite thing is to twist scripture to the believer and use scripture to lie to them! Let’s begin with some scripture you may already have heard or read in church that would lead us, the believer, to believe we have a wicked heart in need of cleaning:

Psalms 51:10

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick: who can understand it?

Genesis 6:5 ESV

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

 

I can hear the enemy now yelling at you, “See, you are nothing but a sinner with a wicked, evil heart!”

Even Jesus said in Matthew 5:8

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Well you have never seen God with your natural eyes so you must not have a pure heart, right?

But let’s not take scripture out of context, because when we do we are left with a con. We have to ask the question, “What changed?”

Galatians 3:23

Before faith came, we were kept under law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

 

Before faith in Christ Jesus all of us were under the law. We all had wicked and evil hearts. King David didn’t have the promise of the Holy Spirit sealing him or Jesus to give him a new heart. He and other prophets had a glimpse though, that God’s promise of a new covenant was coming!

Ezekiel 36:25-26 ESV

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.

 

When I gave my life to Jesus as a young boy, I didn’t feel like I had a new heart. Certainly my body didn’t change? Maybe you have asked the same great question, “What changed?”

Well scripture let’s us know we are made up of body, soul and spirit. Our body didn’t become new and certainly our soul (mind, will and emotions) didn’t become new. So what changed? Our spirit and spiritual heart. Ever notice that since you became a Christian you can’t enjoy sin? The real you is born again with a new heart and the Holy Spirit and you are now hidden with Jesus (1 Peter 1:20-23, Ephesians 1:13).  Your new heart wants to please the Father. Your soul must be renewed to remember who the real you is. Paul said the old you is dead, crucified with Jesus and buried. So God is not trying to clean your heart, He killed it. He also doesn’t talk to your old zombie hearts but the new heart to remind them of this:

Colossians 1:21-23

And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard,

It takes faith to believe Jesus is your righteousness, holiness, sanctification. You must come before him by faith. What doesn’t take faith is to continue to ask God for a clean heart, to ignore the cross and focus on sin consciousness instead of Christ consciousness. This is called self righteousness and takes absolutely no faith but a religious victim mentality that says “I am just a sinner.” This is a slap in the face to what Jesus did on the cross. A believer is a saint that is in the spirit. We as believers have a choice to not walk after the flesh (sin) but after the spirit (Jesus). So our position is who we are, we are in the spirit. How do we walk after the spirit and not the flesh? Everything we do as believers we must do by faith in Jesus Christ, that something changed when we became born again…….our hearts!

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