Death - Resurrection - Life - Part II

Continuing with Part II of  Death - Resurrection - Life
       
      The enemy will always attack you at your weakest point and the vulnerable areas of your flesh, and why? because he wants to destroy you, your witness, your ministry and most of all your relationship with the Lord. 

     And this is exactly what the enemy was trying to do.  His plan was for me to give up and allow a death to take place in my body and in my spirit.  He wanted me to cease to function in the gifting and ministry the Lord had called me to.  He tried to rob me of the power of the Spirit in my life and cause me to lose hope and the that had become my strength.

    
     But in spite of all this, there was a death that took place and that death was the beginning of a process the Lord began in my flesh. 

     In Romans 8: 6a,13 confirms exactly what I was going through and this is what it says:
                    Verse 6a:   For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.
                    Verse 13: For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

     It was a process to renew my thinking, it was a death to selfishness, being self-centered and a death to my old heart.  My heart had become hard and unforgiving.  I would say Lord, I forgive them....my mind would say it and think it, but my heart and emotions were saying and reacting differently.  My heart had even grown cold towards the Lord and I hadn't even realize it until the Lord led me to the scripture in Jeremiah 17:9.

     Jeremiah 17:9 (Amplied Version) tells us:  The heart is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick, who can know it, perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind.

     When you read this scripture, what was it saying to you?  Ask yourself this question.  Do I really know or understand my own heart?  I thought I knew my heart, but as I read this scripture over and over again it began cutting deep and revealing the truth that I could not deny.  I found myself crying out to God and saying, "God, I need a new heart"!  God, I need your nature and your character to be manifested in my life.  Needless to say, I was miserable.

     In Ezekiel 36:26 - God had instructed Ezekiel the Prophet to prophesy to the Mountain of Israel and to the House of Israel, and part of that prophecy says this:

     Verse 26:  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

     The word heart in this scripture figuratively means:  The feelings, the will , the intellect or mind.

     And I thought this was interesting what Ungers bible dictionary describes the heart as:   Being the innermost center, the center of the rational-spiritual nature of man.  It's the center of thought and conceptions, the heart knows, it understands, it's the center of the feelings, affections and is the center of words, actions, pride, fear, despair and pain.

     Now let's see what the word stone in verse 26 means:  Hardness & insensibility which means to be indifferent, not aware, not feeling and in a state of unconsciousness. 

     This describes exactly what was going on in my heart.  It had become cold and unresponsive, unemotional to the things of God and I felt like there was a heavy and unmovable hardness that I just couldn't break free from.  I felt like God was a million miles away.

     Ok, let's go back to our main text which is John 11 and let's read verse 11 and then we will talk about it. 
          Verse 11:  These things said He, and after He said unto them, (we are talking about Jesus here). Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.

     The word awake in this verse come from two Greek words and they are the words:
          1.  Ex meaning:  The point where motion and action proceeds from, time or cause.
          2.  Hoop-nos and means:  A state of suspended spiritual power.

     This is exactly where I was.  My spirit man felt like it was in a suspended state, suspended in time, action and I felt like I had lost the power of the anointing in my life. But all along what was causing that state of suspended spiritual power in my life was due to my cold heart.  It was as if a stone had been rolled over my spirit to block out the life and the power of Jesus in my life. 

     And so the process continued.  I now found myself crying out to God in desperation for healing and my prayer went something like this:   Lord, I'm tired of fighting this cold heart, I can't feel you!  I'm tired of fighting the old thoughts that play over and over in my mind.  I'm tired of trying to control my circumstances, I give up!  Lord, not my will be done but Your will.  I lay it all down and I will rest in you.  Father, help me to die to this fleshly nature and please, "Give me a New Heart".

     Maybe in one degree or another you can relate to the process I was going through and you might be saying to yourself, how do I know if I need a "New Heart?

     1.  The Holy Spirit will reveal to you the condition of your heart through the trials and testings in your life.
     2.  You will know by your emotional response during those times of trials and testings. 
Ask yourself, did I respond out of my old fleshly carnal nature or did I respond through the Spirit?
     3.  Another area you will know is though your thought responses.  Did I respond out of my old thought patterns, my old way of thinking?

     Along with the "New Heart" has to come a "Renewed Mind", but the mind must be transformed and that doesn't happen over night.

     In Ephesians 4:23 tell us:  And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.  The word renewed in this scripture means:  To renovate

     And what do you do when you renovating something.  You tear down, pull down and remove.  In other words, you gut out the whole room or area and make it new again.  And this is exactly what the Lord wants to do in our heart and in our mind.  He wants to renew the old waste places of our heart and tear down the walls of hurt, rejection, fear and bitterness.  He wants to pull down the strongholds of our mind that have us trapped in our past and remove the destructive patterns of thinking and behaviour.  Beloved, this is all part of the "Death" process.


     Next week we will continue with Part III of  Death - Resurrection - Life.

Blessings,


Elma Garlock