Exchanged Life Spirituality Part 2

God’s Plan to Meet Our Needs

We are going to continued to talk about the Exchanged Life Spirituality this morning. I just could not get a way from it. And the title of this lesson is God’s Plan to Meet our Needs.

Now… once we are in Christ, we automatically become members of a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple.

It is through this new identity of whose we are in Christ that God can satisfy our deepest needs.

What I hope and pray that we take away here today from this lesson are two things.
1. An appreciation of God’s plan to meet our deepest needs through our participation in a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple.
2. Encouragement to respond to God’s gracious plan by knowing, reckoning, and yielding.

An appreciation of God’s plan to meet our deepest needs through our participation in a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple is our first item we want to look at this morning.

Without Christ, we have not fellowship with God. We have no communion with God because God does not have fellowship with sin. It is only through Christ that we can have fellowship with God.

Without Christ life is all about self, and we are driven to use people, things, and circumstances to meet our needs. In Christ, we have fellowship with God. For us believers, life should be all about the One who has already fully met our needs.

A Spiritual Family
If you are a born again believer then you are apart of a big spiritual family. Guess who is the firstborn of that family?

Colossians 1:18
(18) And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He may be pre-eminent in all things.

Christ had to be the first born in order that we may be born again into the family of God. We are the brother and sister of Christ. He paved the way for us to be in this spiritual family.

As members of God’s family, our need for unconditional love and acceptance if fully met. We are secure in god’s limitless love. God’s love has NO LIMITS.

In Romans 5:8 tells us that “even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”.

One of my favorite verses in the bible that talks about the unconditional love and acceptance is Romans 8:38-39.

Romans 8:38-39
(38) For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
(39) nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What great love God has for us! It’s unconditional and it’s freely given.

A Spiritual Body
Now let’s go onto a how we are apart of a spiritual body.

In Ephesians 1:22-23 it tells us that “we are the body and Christ is the head”.

As individual parts of Christ’s body, our need for true significance and identity is fully met. We have meaning and purpose because of who we are in Christ… because we are meaningful and because we have purpose we belong to Christ. It’s not because of anything we did, can do, or will ever be able to do that can gain us acceptance into the family of God.

2 Timothy 1:9
(9) who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the eternal times.

1 Corinthians 2:9
(9) But as it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

We can’t image what it is going to be like to be in the presence of all mighty God. We can not comprehend it. All I know is that it will be worth it all… I don’t care what you go through on this earth it is going to be worth it all when you get to heaven. God has some big things planned for us. He wants to love on us for eternity… it is going to take forever and ever to show our thanks and his love for us!

A Spiritual Temple
And to finish up my first objective let’s talk about how God wants to create a community of spiritual beings who will receive and reflect the likeness of God and glorify him forever… let’s talks about how we are a Spiritual Temple.

As living Stones in God’s temple, our need for lasting competence and fulfillment is fully met.

All of us have gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to us for the specific purpose of blessing others and glorifying God. And if we use those gifts for those purposes, then the things we do in his power will last forever!

Colossians 1:29
(29) For which I also labor, striving according to the working of Him who works in me in power.

Ephesians 3:16
(16) that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man;

As children of the most high, almighty God we must train ourselves to look beyond people, beyond things, and beyond circumstances to meet our needs.

Job is a great example of depending on God. Even though everything he had was taken away from him he dared to believe that all though he had nothing in the natural that God was enough for him.

Folks, I am going to be honest with you. I don’t know if I am there in my walk with Christ right now. But I am more and more lead to this walk now more that ever. I am more determined to lean on him now more than ever. I am more determined to be totally sold out to him now more than ever. Why? Because the more I study his Word it tells me that in him I have everything I need.

Why is it that so many of us Christians continue to act as nonbelievers when it comes to the quest for security, meaning, and fulfillment in life?

Ephesians 2:2-3 has the answer. By looking at these verses we can determine that three powerful forces works against our walking in the Spirit: the flesh, the world, and the devil.

The Flesh
Now… when we were saved we received a new spirit when we came to Christ. But our new spirit is encased in this same body and its same physical needs and cravings. Nor were your mind, emotions, and will instantly transform when you became a believer.

The flesh is the power or “law of sin” that is still in our members. Remember in Romans 7:14-25 when the apostle Paul goes through and talks about the things he did not want to do are the things he did and the things he wanted to do he did them not. Then he goes on to talk about the flesh was warring against his spirit.

We become changed from the inside out not the outside in. We begin to gradually conform to the image of Christ by the renewing of our minds… and that comes by reading his Word and praying.

The World
The second of these three forces is the world. We live in a culture and society that promotes values and perspectives so the opposite of how the Bible says we should live. We talked about this earlier but the Bible tells us that we are pilgrims in this world, the Bible tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. But yet some Christians live in this world as if this is all there is therefore seeking happiness in materialism. The only way to get around this is to be informed; to have knowledge, to gain wisdom from God’s Word and with the help of his Holy Spirit.

The Devil
The third force that works against our spiritual life is the devil. Satan and his demons use the world (debt, social status, materialism) and the flesh (lust, pride, anger) in an attempt to defeat us and make us useless for the kingdom of God. Now the devil can oppress us but only while we are controlled by the flesh… he has not effect over us if we are controlled by the spirit because he can not defeat the life of Christ that is present within us!

All three, the flesh, the world, and the devil war against our spirit health daily. This is a spiritual battle. Every aspect about our spiritual life hinges on how we respond to God’s plan to satisfy our needs for personal worth. In other words… do we look to God to satisfy our needs for the flesh, for things of the world? If you do then you are walking in the spirit and you will find joy, peace, and contentment. But if you are not then you will struggle during your Christian journey.

Our Response to God’s Plan
In Romans chapter 6 describes a three fold process to help a believer move from the inside (inner man) to the outer person (outer man).

These three things start with:
1. Knowing – knowing who you are in Christ (Romans 6:3-10)
2. Reckoning – considering these truths to be so (Romans 6:11)
3. Yielding – presenting yourself to God (Romans 6:12-14)

Knowing
I’m sure you can recall the story in Luke 9:18-20 when Jesus was praying and his disciples joined him… Jesus asked his disciples those two questions.
1. Who do the crowds say that I am?
2. But who do you say that I am?

We can ask ourselves three fundamental questions as well:
1. Who do you say that you are?
2. Who do people say that you are?
3. Who does God say that you are?

Many people and sad to say Christians as well have their own sense of identity based on the first two questions. We discussed earlier about how we must base our opinion of ourselves on what God says about us and about who we are and not what we think or other people thing about us.

We have to know and understand that as believers Romans 5:8 that God loves us unconditional and he accepts us no matter how we feel or perform.

Believers must know and understand that not only did Christ die for us but we also died with and in him. The Bible tells us in Romans 6:6-7 that “our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin”.

Quote from the book. “Through our co-crucifixion with Christ, we have died to the bondage of sin, and God has already accomplished this. We may not feel this is true, be we must never reason from our performance to our position; our security and significance in Christ are not threatened by earthy failure or rejection, we must base our behavior on our belief.

In other words who we are should determine what we do, and not what we do should determine who we are! Why; because KNOWING our identity is based on our new birth in Christ.

Be determined to know who you are in Christ Jesus and Know what God says about you!

Reckoning
Ruth Paxon wrote “Sin need have no more power over the believer than he grants it through unbelief. If he is alive unto sin it will be due largely to the fact that he had failed to recon himself dead unto sin.”

Reckoning is a process… it’s not easy nor is it natural for us. For most Christians, sadly, they have to come to the end of their rope, the end of their own resources before they have a realization of their co-crucifixion with Christ.

Most of the time it takes believers to be broken and then and only then will they surrender and turn from a self reliant life to a life that total relies on God.

Faith is a total dependence on God… and this God-dependence can only begin when our self-dependence ends.

When we surrender full control of our life and plans to Christ, we discover his peace. When we lose our lives for his sake, we find his life instead.

Giving us you life, decisions, everything there is about your own will and identity is a hard thing to do. It’s not natural! But loosing our life is the only way we will find his life.

I want to be honest with you… there was a time in my life that I was afraid to pray a prayer like… oh Lord, what ever it takes to draw closer to you Lord, that’s what I’ll be willing to do. Connie and Marty used to sing a song called whatever it takes to draw closer to you Lord.

That is a BIG STATEMENT. Fear would grip me… would he require or take my home, my cars, my business, my family so I would rely on him and him alone?

We must “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12) by reckoning what God has said about our position in Christ to be true! You have to pray for a spirit of wisdom and a revelation of knowledge of Him like Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17.

This brings me to the last of the three.

Yielding
As we come to realize who we are in Christ, and come to terms with reckoning it to be true (or getting it into our spirit), then we need to act on it by yielding ourselves to God as new creatures in Christ.

Romans 6:12-13
(12) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
(13) Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

If we want our spiritual lives to grow and prosper, this threefold process of knowing, reckoning, and yielding should become a daily habit for us.

Luke 9:23
(23) And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

By practicing these principles it will free us from being grabbers/takers and allow us to become givers who expect and need nothing in return.

If we try to gratify our needs, we will experience frustration and failure. But if we pursue God and hunger and thirst for him and his righteousness, we will be satisfied and our needs will be fulfilled.

Matthew 5:6
(6) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

All of this that we have talked about this morning boils down to one thing. Trust… can we trust God as a person and believe that truth is what God says it is, regardless of how we see it or feel.

This all leads back to where we began this teaching… the character of God.

We must know and study the character of God. As we renew our mind concerning the love of God we begin to realize that he is not carrying out his program at our expense but for our highest good. He loves us so much!

I encourage you to look over that sheet I gave you concerning what God says about you because that is the character of God. God is not a man that he should lie!

This is why is so important to renew your mind with the truths of Scripture on a regular basis and respond to them by putting them into action.