Integrity- People of God

There is a process in changing the way we think. We change the way we think by first learning what we should be thinking and we know this by reading God’s word. We will obtain truth, the knowledge of God and understand His kingdom principles.Once we become aware of the way should think we will realize our thoughts are not in line with God’s way and then we should ask God to change our thinking to His kingdom ways. Prayer is an act of submitting to God’s will. As we become aware that we are not living right and cannot in our own strength, then we should seek God who is able to create in us a clean heart, theright mindset and to have the mind of Christ.

Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. KJV

Prayer is an effort of the will. When a truth of God’s kingdom is revealed, everyone will take action on that revelation. Whether their actions are a conscious and deliberate decision or not their actions will reveal their choice. Most often these truths appear to be unattainable. It is then that we will decide, whether to seek God and ask Him to help us to live and walk in these truths or remain in a common state of selfishness and pride. The battle is fought and is won or lost in our mind and thoughts to accept or reject these truths. it is with our will that we will choose withresolve to seek God and to change or to continue in the samefallen mindset.  

When we learn God’s truth and understand His principles, we will recognize our utter hopelessness and inability to perform and be right before God in our own strength. Often it is in our brokenness and despair that we will see our need and want to turn from our old habits and change the way we operate and view life. We repent by changing the way we think and seek God’s truth rather than our own way.  As an act of our will, through prayer, we ask God to give us His desires, strength and power to perform these truths according to His principles.  It is God who will give us both the will and desire to perform His will. He has provided a way for us to stand righteous beforeHim, through faith in Jesus and not through our own efforts. 

Philippians 2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. NKJ

We are all born with the propensity and tendency to sin, it is ourfallen nature. We have been hard wired for sin by the fall. The motherboard of our mind is set for sin and only Christ can reformat and rewrite the program of our mind and the desires of our heart. Christ will change out mind’s processing system to the things according to God’s kingdom principles which are different from the world’s way. Our whole life has been trained in a fallen operating system and we are well accustomed and acquainted with using this operating system. It is like using a “Windows” program and then Christ becomes our Savior andwe are given a new operating system, like a “MAC.” They areboth operating systems that controls, drives and maneuvers our actions and the way we compute life’s daily issues but they are totally different in their operational methods and functions. 

When a person is born into the kingdom of God, they are given a new spirit and a new operating system. The body and hands are still familiar with the habits of the old system and tend to want to revert back to the old way of doing things but the Holy Spirit by revealing new truths is converting the heart and thoughts to God’s ways. We have been given a new spirit and a new heart that is in Christ. The desires of our heart are changed as we learn these new truths and we must starve the old way of doing things and create new habits that lineup with God’s truthand thereby transform our actions and convert our ways.

Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. NIV

Jeremiah 24:7 Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart. NKJV

There are many crossroads in life that every believer in Christand they will have to determine if they will change or remain the same. Their choices will be to allow their old habits to remain or to ask God in prayer to change their heart’s desire to things according to His will. We all have faced the same problems and have asked the same question Paul asked, “who can deliver us from this flesh?” The things we do not want to do, we find ourselves doing, because of this fallen nature, and the things that are right and true we want to do but do not do or preform them. But thanks be to God!  Through Jesus Christ we can be free from the slavery of sin by asking God through thepower of the Holy Spirit to set us free that we may walk in love and truth. 

Often people want to run away from God in the midst of their mess but that is when we should seek Him in prayer. The world will want to condemn us for our wrong doings and tell us to stay away from God because He does not want us.  God was not surprised by our actions but provide a way of escape through Christ.  In the midst of our disorder and disaster we should pray and ask God to renew our minds and hearts to His kingdom ways and principles. God says we have not because we asked not. This world and the enemy will lie and try and keep us from seeking God. 

Romans 7:18-19,24 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do: no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

James 4:2You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. NKJ