Be overcoming

[Fish Catcher Jim]

We should all be walking as the overcomers Christ made us. The battles are already won!!
Too many people spent and waste so much time fighting battles that they do not even have to.
They tend to create battles within battles when they do no know or understand who they are in Christ.

Fight the "Good Fight of Faith" that is what we are to do. The only way one can do this is to stay the same or consistent in Faith. We must operate in and by faith 24/7/365 and when oposition arives we do not have to do anything to be preparted for we walk by faith consistently the same every single day......

This is the life we all are commanded to live. People make it so much harder then it is because they want to do it in their time and strength and understanding. Obey His commands especially those in which most think are something not important like walking in love and forgivness and integrity. Blessings blockers they are.

Ok I have gone on long enough.........
Blessings
Jim

 

[JohnC]

From your post - it's obvious that you haven't had to struggle with "Deep rooted" sin.... When you gloss over it with "Oh, it's easy, you just do whatever you want and that's that" - you do great injustice to people who ARE fighting just to "Hold fast"....

You are giving terrible advice to the people who ARE struggling.... That sort of advice is all to prevalent from our pulpits today.... It's the sort of thing that fits nicely into a 30 minute sermon - but fails miserably when you put it into practice.... Just try harder... You will get it next time....

Here's my comparison of dealing with Deep rooted sin.... From my own personal experience....
Matt 12:43-45 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says 'I will return from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So it shall be with this wicked generation"

The process of overcoming deep rooted sin is like this... when the first "Deep rooted sin" is cast out... The house is put back in order... But - do you think that your sinful nature is HAPPY with the situation - NO.... When he comes back - he comes PREPARED with 7 worse than himself... He is ready to attack and re-conquer what was lost..... And - if we AREN'T prepared to "Hold fast to what you have" - then your ENDING state will be far worse than your BEGINNING state....

And - when that Deep Rooted Sin comes back with 7 wicked friends - EVEN WORSE than the original, you are in for the fight of your life.... And that's exactly what happens - ask anyone who struggles with deep rooted sin or addiction....

When you gloss over this with plattitudes and get-well-soon card type advice - you leave the people struggling in sin WORSE OFF than if you had done nothing at all...... because you Juice them up with all the plattitudes and good feeling advice.. Flowers, unicorns, bows, and mountaintop experiences... You cast out the sin and get the house back in order.... Then the sin comes back FIGHTING as hard as it is able - and it brings 7 or 14 or 100 buddies 10x worse than itself with it.... It has ONE goal - and that's to conquer you and enslave you.....

If you are not prepared to FIGHT - to use 100% of every resource available to you - you will fail.... and you will be left 10x worse than you started off.... and unfortunately - that's where so many Christians end up... Never experiencing the true joy and blessings that go along with truly Overcoming AND Holding fast.....

 

[Abdicate]

I agree - what I am trying to do is to share some of my own personal first hand experience on turning the thinking faith into action faith - Obedience.... How do you start to turn the "I know I need to repent" into actual act of Overcoming in real life....

I seemed to have missed this, sorry...

Well, the first step is to speak it. The very first thing God did was speak. Every time you find a miracle, a word is said. Even the woman who snuck up on Jesus to touch His tsitsi had spoken to her heart, Matthew 9:21. Speech is very powerful because like arrows launched, words contain power of their own. Literally life and death are in the tongue. So the first thing to do is speak. Speak God's promises. As you quote them to yourself, faith begins to well up within you which you can take to the bank of heaven. Faith is the currency of heaven, literally. Faith is the "goo" that allows you to see the truth. Faith is the "goo" that allow the unseen to be seen. Real faith allows the impossible to be possible. Once you believe it, you're life will NEVER be the same again. God loves it when you give Him the glory and trust and believe in Him and His word. God change Abraham's name from "High Father" to "Father of a multitude" yet, he had no child of his own. Our own salvation starts by calling out to God! This isn't positive thinking. This is positive believing in the word of God and that it is real to your right now life. I wrote this elsewhere, but I'll post it here too:

Proverbs 15:4 "A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit."

The word "wholesome" is מַרפֵּא which literally means "healing" or "cure". Remove the mem (מ) (meaning "from" or "of") and you get רפֵּא which means "to cure" or "to heal" or "to make whole" or "restore". This is the meaning of the name Raphael (רָפֵּאל) "God Heals" (רָפֵּא אל)

Mem's pictograph is waters. So one could say Proverbs 15:4a can read: "a healing tongue, by the flowing waters from the Holy Spirit, is a tree of life". Some has said that רפֵּא is "relax" so if we relax in the Spirit, we will be healed, because we're anxious for nothing, Philippians 4:6.

Proverbs 18:21 "Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof."

John 7:38 "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

Proverbs 14:30 "A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones."

"sound" here is again מַרפֵּא whereas "envy" is like cancer to the bones. More often than not, arthritis is cause from bitterness. That it's not what we're eating, but what's eating us: anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, worry for tomorrow, to the point we worry when everything's great! You could say that a peaceful, tranquil heart is life to the body! A relaxed mind is life to the body.

Philippians 4:6 "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."

The word "be careful" is the same as "anxious", to "worry".

II Timothy 1:7 "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

Fear leads to hate...fear births hatred. If you fear God beyond His due respect and awe it's the wrong kind of fear. If you wrongfully fear your boss, or mother-in-law, you will learn to hate them! In this verse "power" in Greek is dunamis which mean miraculous power - the power that flowed out of Jesus and healed them all and is the word Jesus used when He said who has "touched me: for I perceive dunamis is gone out of me" (Luke 8:46)! Dunamis is where we get the word dynamite! Love is agape - not just affectionate love, but benevolent understanding love. The love that is I Corinthians 13 love. Finally the word for "sound mind" is sophronismos which is translated in all kinds of ways, but the real meaning is "even keeled" "balanced". One version says that it is "safe and sound in mind and emotions; in proper control of one's faculties of thoughts and emotions." Or as I've heard "no stress" and at peace.

Now read II Timothy 1:6 "Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands."

"Stir up" is to re-kindle and the "gift" is charisma - which is the gift FROM the Holy Spirit, not the gift (doma) OF the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit (healing, miracles, prophecies, etc) are charisma! So what charisma is Paul telling Timothy to re-kindle? So let's see what happened when Paul laid his hands on Timothy:

Acts 19:6 "And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied."

Tongues - the only gift we can call by our will.

Satan is already defeated, so if he comes, don't "try" and defeat him, he's already defeated. It's one thing pray FOR victory, it's another to pray FROM victory. It's one thing to fight FOR victory, it's another thing to fight FROM victory. One is from a point of view from defeat the other from rest. It's one thing to TRY to get healed, it's another to know you are healed, experiencing the symptoms of lies. You are the healed in Christ. Our place is a given, a place of rest in Christ.

Proverbs 16:3 "Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established."

Did God have faith to do what He did in Creation? Certainly. He knew He had the power to do what He said He would do - which didn't exist until He declared them out loud. "By His stripes I am healed." "By His stripe I was healed." In the office, when everyone wants to leave early on Friday, a worker starts a rumor "The boss is letting us off early Friday." By the time the boss hears it, he may think it a good idea. If it can work for a boss who isn't a Christian, what do you think will happen when you proclaim the word of God and its promises?

 

[Abdicate]

P.S. The letter means of מַרפֵּא (meaning wholesome) are

מַ - From
ר - Man
פֵּ - Mouth/Speak
א - Sacrifice

From man's mouth speak of the sacrifice! Isaiah 53:4-5; 1 Peter 2:24

In fact the root meaning for the word stripes means to unite, join, bind together, be joined, be coupled, be in league, heap up, have fellowship with! In other words: with his fellowship we are healed.

 

[Fish Catcher Jim]

I did change my mind when I finally realized I had no power within myself to "Repent" from anything....

That does not make any sense John. To repent actually means to turn from so we turn from the direction we were going and turn to God.

Every time we read His word we in a fact are repenting for we are turning away and unto His ways. We are changing the way we were thinking.

The power to repent is better said ---To be willing to be willing unto His ways.
Blessings
Jim

 

[Fish Catcher Jim]

I just want to clarify this.. I know that you are not proposing or advocating the blasphemy that God is some sort of dog who performs at our beckon call. There are some who teach a doctrine that boils down to: You whistle and God shows up with treasure and health...

I know that you are fully aware that way it works is that God invites and allows us to participate in His program - not the other way around. In every case - the word declaring God's program is the word that God put into the man's mouth.... Never was man given the authority to dictate the program to God. Let's make sure we communicate this clearly....

That said.... The argument I am making on 2nd Timothy 2:24 I posted does not rest upon the "If Perhaps" - the greek word "μήποτε" that you seem to be focusing on - but rather "God will grant"...

My argument is that it is GOD who must grant true Repentance - the ABILITY to start overcoming... We can not achieve true Repentance and Overcoming until we rely 100% upon God's power and God's will for the repentance and overcoming.... That's not easy to do - because we are strong willed people... We can't bring ourselves to rely upon the strength and power of God until we completely loose the grasp on the end of our rope and land hard in the rocks below.... It's generally not until that point do we grasp "God, I am weak and I can't achieve this unless You give me the strength" ... or as Romans 13:14 puts it - "put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,...." It's only through "Putting on Jesus" that we can make any progress at "For the flesh, make no forethought -- for desires."

As an aside - the interesting bit about the use of this word "μήποτε" in the 2nd Tim passage is that it implies the expectation of a negative answer, though the speaker holds out some doubt about the negative answer...... AKA - you are EXPECTING that God will not grant repentance (because the people in question are not seeking it) - but you are holding out for the possibility that He May.... In the direct context of the entire passage (Which is about how you deal with headstrong people who love arguing and beating eachother down all the time) - this is the proper connotation.... That these people have no DESIRE for "Repentance" and so God probably won't force it on them - but there is a possibility that God may "Turn them around"....

Thanks

John you are making this big ordeal out of being an over comer. We are over comers. We renew the mind and learn to walk in the spirit and learn to take every thought captive and speak Gods word we will be walking an overcoming life.

We do not need some special apointment from God to repent. We repent if we are smart just as soon as we see we missed it. IT IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT..
Blessings
Jim

 

[Fish Catcher Jim]

From your post - it's obvious that you haven't had to struggle with "Deep rooted" sin.... When you gloss over it with "Oh, it's easy, you just do whatever you want and that's that" - you do great injustice to people who ARE fighting just to "Hold fast"....

You are giving terrible advice to the people who ARE struggling.... That sort of advice is all to prevalent from our pulpits today.... It's the sort of thing that fits nicely into a 30 minute sermon - but fails miserably when you put it into practice.... Just try harder... You will get it next time....

Here's my comparison of dealing with Deep rooted sin.... From my own personal experience....
Matt 12:43-45 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says 'I will return from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So it shall be with this wicked generation"

The process of overcoming deep rooted sin is like this... when the first "Deep rooted sin" is cast out... The house is put back in order... But - do you think that your sinful nature is HAPPY with the situation - NO.... When he comes back - he comes PREPARED with 7 worse than himself... He is ready to attack and re-conquer what was lost..... And - if we AREN'T prepared to "Hold fast to what you have" - then your ENDING state will be far worse than your BEGINNING state....

And - when that Deep Rooted Sin comes back with 7 wicked friends - EVEN WORSE than the original, you are in for the fight of your life.... And that's exactly what happens - ask anyone who struggles with deep rooted sin or addiction....

When you gloss over this with plattitudes and get-well-soon card type advice - you leave the people struggling in sin WORSE OFF than if you had done nothing at all...... because you Juice them up with all the plattitudes and good feeling advice.. Flowers, unicorns, bows, and mountaintop experiences... You cast out the sin and get the house back in order.... Then the sin comes back FIGHTING as hard as it is able - and it brings 7 or 14 or 100 buddies 10x worse than itself with it.... It has ONE goal - and that's to conquer you and enslave you.....

If you are not prepared to FIGHT - to use 100% of every resource available to you - you will fail.... and you will be left 10x worse than you started off.... and unfortunately - that's where so many Christians end up... Never experiencing the true joy and blessings that go along with truly Overcoming AND Holding fast.....

Brother you seem to be making this so much harder then it is. Why ?
You over come a sin but a sin is not cast out nor can it come back with sin friends.
To over come any sin in your life you need to first want to change (repenting) then you seek God and His word and begin to seek how to do so through His written word. You may fall a million times before you are totally overcome of this sin but that is where Grace is in work.

The time it takes to see this done is totally up to the one who is wanting to be done with the sin. What is the point of making this seem so hard and claiming preachers use feel good sermons and so forth ?
Jim