Understanding the Sabbath
Today’s Focus: Coming to Rest by the Spirit Part 1: The Transfer Point
Scripture: Romans 8:6; Philippians 2:5; Galatians 4:6; 2 John 2:15; 2 Timothy 2:22
Greetings Kingdom Citizens
Romans 8:6: For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Now this scripture gives two distinct situations. You can either be carnally minded, which is to be lead by the soul and the product of that life is death. Or you can be spiritually minded and live but not only live but have peace. For someone to have peace in their life, they do not have strife hence they are not striving or stressing so they are at a state of rest, but we will look more at this later. So we must become spiritually minded. What does that mean?
Well we know we must first get the communication to God restored and get that Spirit-to-spirit connection. We know that this connection is restored at regeneration or at the time you were born again when God sent the Spirit of His Son in our hearts crying Abba, Father (Galatians 4:6). When God does that, we now have the Mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5). Now when you are regenerated you still have a problem in the sense of living by your soul. To be transferred from this point to being lead by the spirit of God, two things must happen.
The first is you must put down the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (2 John 2:15) because those attributes are not of the Father. Paul tells Timothy this:
2 Timothy 2:22: Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
So we must flee these lust because as long as we entertain them, we are being lead by our soul. This requires us to deny ourselves.
Second, the Lord will take us through trials and tribulations as a part of His administration of the Baptism of Fire. We know that the baptism of fire is a trial and tribulation that the Lord takes us through to purge us from being soul-dependent to being Spirit-dependent. Now in the midst of this processes you need to learn the voice of the Lord. This is the hardest thing I believe a believer goes through because of the influence of the natural world on man and the need to transfer thinking from soul to Spirit.
In the next message we will look at some of the problems we have today hearing God because if you cannot hear God, how can you worship Him?
Peace, Love and Grace from the Father,
Calvin Calhoun, Jr.
