Growing In Grace - Truthforlife.org

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Crucified with Christ

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20

On 2/20 of this year 2011 I was baptized. This declaration is an outward symbol of what inwardly took place when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I was crucified with Christ as I went into the water and I emerged reborn, renewed and reawakened in Him. The death of my old life came. 

The person I was doesn't exist anymore. I have been resurrected from death to LIFE. Christ now lives in me. Just saying, knowing and feeling that is the most beautiful and awe inspiring thing I have ever experienced in my life. God's Grace and Mercy are like no love I've ever known.

Jesus Christ is my Savior, to whom I'm madly in love. He pierced my heart and made made me white as snow.  

Isaiah 1:18 

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
   says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
   they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
   they shall be like wool. 

Sin. No one wants to talk about sin. No one even wants to hear the word. Well let me just say this. I was one of those people who didn't want to hear it, not just that; I didn't even believe in sin. I would try reasoning with everyone I knew that was "christian" after going to a Judaism 101 class that sin directly translated from Hebrew only means missing the mark. "See!!" I would say "Sin isn't a condemning thing". "It just means we are missing the point. We are missing the purpose that God has planned for us, that isn't so bad. Plus how can I ever love a God that would condemn anyone anyways?" "I can't. My God is the God of love!"  I would say. "My God would never do that!!" 

But as I looked out at the world. As I looked at my relationships, and what I had become in relation to the people I loved in my life. I saw that missing the mark aka sin, is horribly, horribly wrong. This world and my life was nothing to the perfect heaven I imagine we would all be apart of through the "consciousness of Christ" It didn't even come close.

All at once I realized that there was no way to know how to get to that perfect place except through whom the phrase "Christ Consciousness" is inspired; Jesus Christ. 

I started to contemplate this. Jesus is Christ, so why wouldn't I look to Him?! Why would I just pass over His life and purpose and teachings?

Then it hit me; Jesus never sinned. Not once. How could someone come into this world and not sin?! How could someone come here and do exactly God's good and perfect will? Not just that, how could he know for sure what Gods perfect will for his life was? He HAS to be supernatural. And in fact; He was. He couldn't have done it any other way then being created exactly for this purpose. God created his Son Jesus Christ to come to this world and be completely pleasing and perfect. God created him to be perfect because he loved us so much. Jesus died on the cross so that we are redeemed to God. And he was raised from the dead so that we ourselves could defeat death aka sin. You see God cannot be in the presence of sin. Kind of like a saying; where light exists, darkness cannot. God is light, so therefore cannot be in the presence of darkness also known as sin. We cannot be in the presence of our creator when we walk in paths of darkness. We are turning our back to God every time we miss "the mark" the purpose of our lives. So because God loves us so much and wants to dwell among us everyday, all the time, He created Jesus so that he took the punishment for all of us turning our back to God and he died on a cross and was raised from the dead three days later. Not only did God create Him to do just that, he created Him before the beginning of time and he did it so that all we need is to believe. 

Faith that we are redeemed through God's Son Jesus Christ. Immanuel; God indwelling. 

That faith brings Grace and in that grace we experience mercy and when we surrender we also receive a beautiful gift. That gift is the Holy Spirit. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit it is the most amazing feeling of purity and peace you have ever felt in your life but you also become Christ like. In this instant you no longer enjoy being in the presence of sin. You crave holiness and union with God. It's the most amazing experience I've ever had in my entire life so far. I've never been so happy and fulfilled. 

Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness.

All at once, I understood and I saw God's grand design. Jesus is the Messiah. My Savior from sin, Our Savior, the one that died for us, the one that died for the many and then rose from the dead so that he could ascend to Heaven so that we got the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we could live a pure life like Christ, separated from sin. Not because we had to, but because we wanted to, because we loved Him and He loved us that much.

Jesus bore all the worlds sin. Think of that --- one man, a human man but also God, who never came close to sinning, hung on a cross, to die and bare every sin. Every horrible thing that comes out of this imperfect world. No wonder he says: (Matthew 27:45-46) From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)  This is when He had to bare all of our sin and when God had to turn His back on His own son because He couldn't be with him in the presence of sin.

After this, I knew Jesus was the son of God and that my old life would change forever. I quit smoking cigarettes and all things involving nicotine (which is a miracle even to myself, I truly never thought I would) I quit everything that was in anyway polluting my mind. Drinking, drugs, ect. This was all done by the Grace of God. It's not me, and I won't take credit for it. I have tried, by my own will, so many times to become pure and holy and I couldn't do it on my own. Only God and the Holy Spirit has that power, and only by believing Christ died on the cross, so that I was forgiven of every sin, gave me Gods power, glory and love.

I used to believe we needed the darkness in order to know the light. We needed to experience it in all ways so that the darker we would go, the more potential of light there would be for us to go too. 

I now know, that was a beautiful lie. 

I will refer to this "Beautiful Lie" about the New Age of beliefs that have come into this world and become so "true" to so many people of the world, in many of my future post's. I may lose friends because of what I speak about and say about this "Beautiful Lie" and of course that will sadden me but to be honest; truth and salvation are more important than believing a beautiful lie. John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

 

A Dark Rebellious Life (Part 1)

Titus 2:14

He offered Himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people He can be proud of, energetic in goodness.

I guess life was never altogether easy. My parents argued a lot growing up. Dad seemed to always be upset or angry over something. At age 12 they divorced. I needed my parents the most during that time, just coming into my teenage years and all the emotions and hormones I would be experiencing. I was left without either parent, for years. Both of them were so wrapped up in their pain, they couldn't see or even begin to know how to handle mine. Divorce is devastation. It very well, may be the best and healthiest thing that parents can do for us and our families, yet I think a lot of praying to God is required to come to that conclusion, because  divorce leaves destruction and wreckage in its wake. 

We as a society are so used to divorce now that we have become apathetic towards the word and pretty much unfeeling towards the destructive emotions and tearing down that comes with it. My belief is at this point our generation first starts to experience the hardening of our hearts.

We started disobeying our parents, and of course God, because if God is Abba - the ultimate father; why would we listen to him? We weren't even listening to our own father. He failed us, so what would be any different with God? Our fathers were failures, God is a failure too. We knew He was a failure because He didn’t stop this awful divorce. He allowed us to be swallowed up wholly by misery and the absence of love in our families. We thought He would protect us. We then stood in the middle of the storm and watched everything we ever knew, every anchor we had in this life, being swept away. Protection went out the window. We started to lash out and not listen to our parents. We stopped listening to that small quiet, reassuring God voice that dwells within us all. This disobedience became the first layer of crust around our hearts and our first experience of separation from God. 

Then we became selfish. We believed our parents owed us and everything they sacrificed to give to us; we took for granted. We believed God owed us for this pain too. We had torment that made us believe we were entitled. They owed us big time for the ache and separation they had caused. And God owed us because He allowed for that separation. Our parents ruined our home and our family and because of that; they owed us anything we wanted to make up for ruining our lives. This sense of entitlement is the second layer of crust to wrap around our once soft and open hearts. Selfishness is our second experience of separation from God.

The third and most damaging separation from God is distrust. It is the final layer of crust that hardens our heart so much that we no longer need God.  

Before this divorce, we trusted as innocently and purely as a child. We knew our parents, they knew us and we didn’t question them. We knew they would always lead us down the right path. Because of this we knew God and he knew us. We knew he knew us and we didn’t question Him. We had a faith that could move mountains. Now we didn't know who or what to trust. Trust and faith go hand in hand. And trust and faith went out the window. We lost trust and faith in our parents and we were forced to become self-reliant. Because of that self-reliance, we found that we needed nothing and no one outside ourselves, least of all God.

  Now I am not saying divorce is the only cause of the hardening of our hearts, because abuse is a big one too, mental, physical, sexual, emotional abuse can also bring on all of the above reasons. I just personally picked divorce because I am a product of it and with the sheer number of marriages failing; I know without a doubt, I am not the only one. The statistics speak for themselves. Over 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Once our hearts become fully hardened we are tied off from Spirit. We can no longer hear what God is trying to say to us. We start fully listening only to ourselves and in this cutting of Spirit we are thrown into the pit of this world without the proper compass. This is the beauty and danger of our current generation for it allows us to make our own choices and make our own mistakes. Yet, due to our lack of outer support, we usually learn the hard way. We can find our place in this world, but we do so by trial and error. This leaves us slaves to sin. Sin literally translated from Hebrew is “missing the mark” meaning; missing the point of life. We have no one to help us navigate through the darkness by shining light where we need it and so we find ourselves in the middle of a dark rebellious life. 

After my parents got a divorce, my mom had to start working and providing for our family; while trying to have a life so my sister and I kind of got lost in the middle of that daily struggle. I started staying with friends and their families to find some sort of normalcy. I also started smoking because that was something my parents did and it also brought normalcy. I went in search of a home and I found it at a friend’s house. Her family was Christian and went to church. When I was 13 years old I was formally introduced to God. I took right to it, surrendering to His love and also surrendering to the fact that my mother and father would not be the ones to protect me, but God would.

Matthew 10:39

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

Extraordinary Surrender

There is light and there is dark.

 

 

There is light. There is dark.

There is light and there is dark.

 I repeat this so that I remember to see the inherent difference.

 

 

On one side of the veil there is truth, light, joy, understanding and love. On the other side there are lies, darkness, pain, confusion and hate. In between these two veils there is a plethora of varying extremes and many ways to use these forces. 

I used to believe we cannot have one without the other. In a sense it's true; how is there light without darkness? Love without hate? Joy without pain? Truth without lies? There is not one without the other. This is an absolute truth.

There is, however, a way to be in alignment with the light side and have little to nothing to do with the dark. This is my experience of falling into that alignment and making the conscious choice to do so.

 

 

To know I could fully surrender to light and accept that choice was a long, hard road, but once I finally let go and got out of my own way, I fell into light head first and I haven’t looked back. 

 

 

That light is Christ Jesus. That surrender is finally understanding and accepting that I cannot get into alignment with light until I am in alignment with Him.

 

 

John 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

 

 

 

On January 9th 2011, I rededicated my life to Jesus Christ. My experience thus far has been one of many miracles and this blog is my own account of my life and all the miracles that have happened thus far and all the miracles that will happen and I will write about to keep account of all things done through Jesus Christ so that people will see Him through these posts.

To know me, you must know my past. In the next few post’s I will give an account of my life prior to accepting Jesus Christ as my savior and prior to the rededication of my faith in Him alone.

For now I pray all who read these words will hear Truth, and that God’s Grace will fall upon you as it did me. No matter what you have done in your past, no matter how far from or how close to God you think you are, I am here to tell you the good news; You can never be so far gone that God will not forgive you and you can never be so close that God will not surround you with his grace as long as you believe in His Son with all of your heart.

 

 

 

 

Proverbs 3:1-6

1 My son, do not forget my teaching,

   but keep my commands in your heart,

2 for they will prolong your life many years

   and bring you peace and prosperity.

 3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you;

   bind them around your neck,

   write them on the tablet of your heart.

4 Then you will win favor and a good name

   in the sight of God and man.

 5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart

   and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways submit to him,

   and he will make your paths straight.

In Jesus name I pray that you light the way for everyone in darkness, so that we may not perish but will have everlasting life, and that we will live in perfect harmony to our heavenly father and his pure divinity. Amen.