I was a cleaning a room this afternoon, listening to an old sermon on CD and realized I had written up part of it many years ago. I thought, "This is so good I might as well rewrite the material rather than dig and try and find what I may have included in an old post." I'm actually recalling right now that I entitled the old post, "All in the Appropriation."
Well, maybe this will seem like a big repeat for some readers, but I enjoyed (and needed) the refresher course myself. I will have another post late this evening.
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Sometimes your emotions go kicking and screaming; they don't want to go because you've allowed them to sit on the throne and you know what a little spoiled brat does when you start making him behave, says Richard Jordan.
You're designed to reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. He says, "Come, sit upon the throne with me and let's reign in life." Not your emotions; your will submissive to God's will. Your faith resting in an understanding of who God has made you in Jesus Christ. That's the way your life is designed to function.
Sometimes you'll go and your emotions say, "I'm not going to GO!!" You say, "Okay, we're going anyway." Sometimes they'll get in the back seat of the car and they'll go "Wahhh!" and you just say, "Okay, if you want to sit there and have a hiney fit, waste your time, but we're going," and you know what? You go.
If you have to go with your emotions kicking and screaming and not wanting to go, go anyway. And the next time you get up to go, you know what? Your emotions will say, "I don't want to go," and you say, "We're going to go anyway," and sooner or later your emotions will look at it and say, "Well, I guess he's going to go; we might as well go with him, but we don't have to have a good time."
You just keep going and eventually your emotions look at you and say, "Oh well, he's going to go. He seems to be having a good time when he goes. Maybe if we go and relax a little bit we might have a good time, and before it's over with, nine times out of ten, your emotions will come along and support the actions of your will. And if they don't, so what! You still did what was right.
In Genesis 27 is the classic illustration of a man operating on his feelings. Jacob's thinking didn't govern him and his feelings were used to deceive him and that's why you have to be very careful. That's the classic example of a mistake based on going on your feelings alone. But understand you don't have feelings to go WITH you that are the result of the godly choices you make.
When we're talking about the joy, the love, the peace, the longsuffering, we're talking about appropriating into your experience the reality of what God has given you in your position in Christ.
You have an identity in Christ; you are redeemed, you are forgiven. God has taken your sin and set you free. He's taken the guilt and sent it to Calvary. He said, "I'll remember it no more; I'll not connect it back with your identity again. I'll do it permanently and forever. You never have to come and ask me to accept you; I already have. You never have to ask me to forgive you. I already have. I've made you complete; I've blessed you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Now, what I want you to do is take what I've already given you and bring it into the experience of your life on a daily basis."
Colossians 2:10: [10] And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
But come down to Colossians 4:12: [12] Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.
Wait a minute, I thought they were complete? Why is Epaphras praying and laboring that they would BE complete?
He says in Ephesians 1, "You're accepted in the beloved." In II Corinthians 5 he says, [9] Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.
You say, "Wait a minute, I thought I was accepted?" That's the difference between your standing and your state--your position in Christ and your practice in time. Your identity in Him and then that identity living in your experience now.
If you're complete in Him there's nothing to make you more complete. All you need to do is appropriate the completeness you already have. Bring it into your experience. Have the practical experiential possession of what already belongs to you. That is to experience the joy of, "I'm already forgiven." Let that inform your mind so that your emotions know how to relate to reality.
Now, there's two things you have to have. One you got to know about it. You've got to see what you already have in Christ. In our meetings I try to teach about that constantly. That's why we rightly divide, so we know we're not Israel; we're the Body of Christ.
The key to the Christian life is knowing your identity, and you can never know your identity if you don't study the Bible rightly divided. Dispensational Bible study is the most practical thing you can have in your life because it gives you the ability to know who you really are.
The other component is you not only have to know who you are in Christ, you have to be aware of your NEED of it because you'll never reach out and appropriate into your experience something unless you know that you really need it.
That's what happened to Paul in Romans 7. He'll say, [24] O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
You say, "What?! How'd he get out of Romans 6 into that so fast?!" Romans 7: [14] For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
You lying rascal! You just told me that you're complete in Christ, dead, buried and raised with Him. How'd you get out of Romans 6 so fast?!
Paul, in Romans 7, is not identifying himself as God does. He slipped back into identifying himself as he identifies himself.
He said it in one little phrase in Galatians 2:20: [20] I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
You got to have those, "It's not I" moments where you become aware of you own bankruptcy so that the riches of Christ become the thing that you need the most.
Appropriating into your experience is closed to all but the needy heart. It's available to only those who will say, "It's not I; it's Christ."
Those two things. A conscious awareness of faith trust in who you are and then a realization of your absolute need in every moment for it. Then you need a lifetime of spiritual growth because, friend, it takes time for the Holy Spirit to work that process into the details of your life.