Sitting has to do with our
self-image and who we are in Christ.
The devil can kill, steal and destroy us if our conduct and lifestyle
are not pleasing to the Lord. However,
what we think of ourselves, or our self-image, determines our conduct. We may try hard to change our conduct,
but it is really determined by our self-image. What we think of ourselves (our self-image) is the only
thing we can change. In order to
have an accurate image of ourselves (accurate in God’s eyes), we must renew our
minds by the Word of God. “And do
not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of
God” (Romans 12:2).
If you
want to have a fruit bearing abundant life, you will need to know how these
three issues – SIT, WALK, and STAND – work together.
We need to
STAND against the devil - (warfare - John 10:10). Satan is determined to steal your seed as described in Mark
chapter 4.
But we
cannot STAND until we learn how to WALK - (our conduct or lifestyle - Ephesians 4:27).
Satan will attempt to cause you to walk out your life in an ungodly
manner so that you will be unable to STAND against him with the power of Jesus,
who is holy.
However,
we cannot WALK until we learn to SIT - (our self-image - Luke 6:45). Many Christians attempt to walk out a
holy life by self-determination, which eventually becomes legalism and
rules. This style of life will cut
you off from real relationship with the Lord Jesus.
We
are living in a spiritual war and we need to STAND against the enemy, but we
cannot stand unless we are living the right life and we cannot live the right
life if we have the wrong self-image.
We
need to know who we are (SIT) before we can live as we should
(WALK) and before we can (STAND)
against the devil in our lives.
This is based upon three verses in Ephesians:
SIT -
Ephesians 2:5-6 says, “…even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up together, and made us sit
together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
According
to this verse, are we SITTING with Christ in the heavenlies;
or are we going to do so after we die and go to Heaven?
WALK -
Ephesians 4:1 says, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which
you were called.”
STAND -
Ephesians 6:11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”
Let us learn to sit.
We are going to behave
exactly like what our heart tells us we are. “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings
forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth
evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).
To SIT
with Christ in heavenly places depends upon His Cross. Look again at Ephesians 2:5. It says that we were dead in our
sins. Can a dead man do anything? No way. A dead man does not need to learn to walk or stand, or to
throw away bad habits, a dead man needs LIFE ! A dead man cannot
give himself life, he cannot even try. It took God through Christ to give us
life.
First, let’s define
sit in terms of the spiritual world.
Our legs
are holding us when we stand, but when we sit we are resting our weight on the
chair. It is a matter of effort or
rest. We either become weary or
rested. We rest our entire weight
on Jesus, our very selves, and our very future.
In
creation, God did everything before He created us. Adam began his life with the Sabbath. What did man have to do with the
creation in the first 6 days? How
much help did God receive from Adam in creating the heavens and the earth? What was Adam’s first day like? It was a day of rest. Read Genesis 1. God created everything in 5 days, then He created man on the 6th day. Man did not help God. The first day that man awakened to was
the 7th day, which was the day of rest.
Only after Adam was totally provided for did he go to work.
God worked, then
rested. Man rests, then works.
This is
the Gospel! God completed the work
of redemption. He purchased us
from bondage to sin and Satan and gave us a new nature, a new birth that
implanted the very life and character of God inside of us. We could do nothing to earn this. All we can do is enter in by faith when
we hear about the offer.
You
may or may not feel different, but your feelings are not reliable. You need to become accustomed to
believing God’s Word and put your emotions and feelings aside. Some wonderful and beautiful events
have taken place in the life of a Christian. The enemy, Satan, will use your old sense ruled mind to hide
those facts from you. They are facts, they can be relied on. When we begin to take the Word of God
as final authority, we will begin to see the truth. Final authority is not circumstances, it is not your
emotions, rather it is God’s Word. Take a journey into the Word of God to
see who you are!
There is a
legal side and an experiential side to who you are.
When
you submitted to Jesus as Lord, and when God planted the Word of God in your
heart, you entered into the death and resurrection of Jesus. You experienced the new birth. 1 Peter 1:23 says,
“having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through
the word of God which lives and abides forever.”
Legally,
we have been crucified with Christ according to Galatians 2:20 and Romans
6:6. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have
been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
However,
we may not be experiencing that reality as yet. This is where so many new believers get on the wrong
track. Just because they are not
experiencing the truth of the Word, or worse, they may be experiencing the
opposite of what the Word says, they become discouraged and quit
believing. In the world, seeing is believing, but with God, you must believe before you will
ever see.
We
need to know that we are not two people, we do not
have dual personalities! Some
Christians promote this idea due to their experience of not having victory over
sin. Some say that Paul’s dialog
in Romans 7 indicates that we have two natures living in us. Romans 7 does
not say that. It says that the
“sin principle” is working in us.
If we have been crucified with Christ and born again, then the old
nature, the old man has died, and a new man has been born in us.
We need to
renew our minds.
When
we are born again, our spirits are regenerated, when we go to Heaven our bodies
we will be renewed, but our minds are renewed daily as we live out the Word of
God. The answer to the struggle is
as our Pastor put it into perspective during a service. He said that we are not freaks, two
people, but rather our “flesh” is really the old thinking in our brain and
mind. Our minds have old “tapes”
that cause us to act according to the old nature. It is kind of like a tree that has been chopped down but all
the leaves have not died as yet.
The Scripture that supports this is Romans 12:1-2 which says, “I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
of God.”
Jesus
became your sin and you became His righteousness.
2
Corinthians 5:21 (KJV) says, “For he hath made him to
be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him.”
How
did this happen? A blood covenant
has been applied to your life. A
great exchange has taken place between you and Jesus Christ. On the cross, He took every bad and
negative thing in your life. At
the resurrection, He gave you every positive thing in the nature of God
Almighty! He begot you as sons and
daughters and seated you with Him in a realm FAR above all your enemies. Satan, your enemy, will do all in his
power to steal this from you with lies.
However, if you know the truth, and stand on the truth, you will be a
winner! You went through the
crucifixion with Him, the death with Him and have already been resurrected with
Him.
We
must look at how Jesus came to this place of sitting. He was crucified, dead, buried and resurrected. At His resurrection He became the first
born of a new creation. After His
disciples and about 500 others saw Him for many days, He went back to the right
hand of the Father, and was seated as King and ruler of the universe.
Now,
if we are sitting with Him in the heavenlies, then it
stands to reason that we went through the entire process with Him, through His
death, burial, and resurrection to a new creation and ascension. It is like putting a marker in a book,
and then moving the book around.
The marker goes with it.
You may ask, “How can I have experienced this process with Christ, I was
not even alive then?”
The
answer to that lies in the fact that God lives in eternity, which really is the
absence of time. So when we
experience the new birth, we pick up the entire history of Jesus, no matter what the time
difference may be. Some Scriptures
that support this idea are:
“How
much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God?” (Hebrews 9:14, KJV).
“…grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time
began” (2 Timothy 1:9b).
Following are some facts in the Word that you should
meditate on. These facts are good
seed, which will bear good fruit in your life.
The Holy Spirit through
the Word can make who you are in Christ a reality. You need to take the Word at face value and believe it as a
legal document.
You were
hopelessly lost. That means that
someone else had to search for you.
Ephesians 2:12 says, “that at that time you
were without Christ, …having no hope and without God in the world.”
You were
dead in your sins. There is no
way out for a dead man, except to receive life. Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you He made alive, who were dead in
trespasses and sins.”
The blood
Jesus shed on the Cross removed your sins. He took your place.
Colossians 1:14 says, “in whom we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Ephesians 1:7 says,
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins,
according to the riches of His grace.”
The word ‘forgiveness’
actually means to separate or cut away. Our sins have been taken away from us and put on to Jesus,
our sacrificial Lamb.
You were
already “in Christ” when the following events took place.
You were
crucified with Christ. “I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and
the life which 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).
You died with Christ. “For if we have been united
together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the
likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5).
You were buried with Christ. “Therefore we were buried with Him
through baptism into death” (Romans 6:4a). “…buried with Him in baptism”
(Colossians 2:12a).
You were
made alive with Christ. “And you, being dead in your trespasses
and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made
alive together with Him” (Colossians 2:13). “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us
alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5).
You were raised with Christ. You are seated with Christ. “…even when we
were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have
been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5-6).
That
is our legal standing with God today and the foundation of our legal
rights. As far as the spiritual
world is concerned, your position is with Christ in the heavenlies. You are in a seat of authority. Satan and your mind will tell you that
you are not seated with Christ in the heavenlies, but
that is a lie! You need to know
that God seated you with Him while you were yet a sinner!
You are a new creation. “Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold,
all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You might
ask, how can this be? Good question. God put us in Christ. “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus,
who became for us wisdom from God – and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).
Being in Christ is like you were in your father and mother as a sperm
and an egg. You inherited their
history in your genealogy. Just
imagine that you are a marker inside of a book. When the book is moved, the marker goes with it. When the book is put on the shelf, the
marker goes on the shelf. If the
book is burned, the marker is burned.
If by some miracle the book is restored and put back on the shelf, so is
the marker.
Your history, and who you are in Christ
is the result of the Blood Covenant with God through Jesus’ death on the Cross and His resurrection.
You are righteous. Righteous means to have a right
standing with God. A son (or
daughter) is righteous with his father by birth. He is in the family and he has a right standing that the
neighbor does not have. We are
righteous by our new birth, not by anything we have done. “For He made Him who knew no sin to be
sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2
Corinthians 5:21). We are
righteous because God put His life in us, not because of the way we act or
live.
Satan’s
dominion over you is broken.
Satan had dominion over your old nature, but your new nature is Christ’s
own Spirit that has already defeated Satan. Romans 6:8-10 says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe
that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from
the dead, dies no more. Death no longer
has dominion over Him. For the
death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He
lives to God.” If the spirit of
the world has had you living in fear, God will set you free right now!
We need a renewing of the mind.
“I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
of God” (Romans 12:1-2).
Here is
God’s promise to you. Hebrews 8:10 says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with
the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in
their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they
shall be My people.”
Read 1
Peter 1:6-7. What does it say
about testing and trials?
The
proof of whether or not you believe is NOT how you feel. The proof is what will come out of your
mouth from the abundance of your heart.
Luke 6:45 says, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings
forth the good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings
forth the evil. For out of the
abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
The
only way to overcome and be healed from things like sin, fear, guilt,
addictions, feeling unworthy, feeling like a failure, etc. is to accept these
facts. When we know for sure that
God loves us, that we belong to Him, that He has made us a new creation and old
things have passed away and we know that our new identity is in Christ, that we
have been purchased from slavery and been given the choice to accept the
absolute Lordship, authority and care of God, that is when we begin the process
of overcoming all the bad things in our life.
The
easiest thing to remember is the Cross. The Cross of Jesus took everything that
is bad in our life and that comes into our life, and transforms it into a
blessing.
All this
fantastic and good news of who we are should not give us a proud, puffed up
attitude. “I am the vine, ye are
the branches”(John 15:5a, KJV).
Without absolute dependence upon the life of God living in us, we are
nothing. We are not called upon to
be independent power people. We
are called upon to be totally dependent upon the life that was inserted into
us. A branch cannot do anything,
it will die, if
it does not stay united with the vine.
We need to take on the cloak of humility and know that without Him we
are nothing! If you examine John
15, staying dependent is always related to the Word of God.
Don’t be a chicken, you are an eagle!
One day, an eagle’s egg
fell from its nest and rolled into a chicken pen. The eagle was born with the chickens and acted like a
chicken, but it kept seeing a difference as it grew. No one was there to tell it that it was not a chicken, but
an eagle.
When
storms came, the eagle would rush off to the chicken house with the rest of the
chickens, running for cover, but the eagle always looked over his shoulder and
up, and he saw these other strange birds on the cliff. They were not afraid,
they were not running. They were standing with their wings locked into special
sockets (that makes them like a wing welded to the fuselage of an airplane),
they gazed right into the storm, even though it was still miles away. They waited and waited and then, bang! The storm hit them but instead of
hurting them all it did was make them soar. They went straight up into the air, up to 30,000 feet above
the storm into clear air. The
eagle would say to himself, “Oh man, look at those guys, I wish I were like
them.”
One
day he looked UP, and saw an eagle flying and soaring high with a storm. All of the sudden, he knew, “I am not a
chicken, I am an eagle. Why should
I run?” He climbed the hill,
locked his wings,
then he took off and soared!
My friend,
you are not a mere human, you are not a chicken. You are made to soar in the heavenlies with Christ. Look up!
Now
remember the parable of the sower in Mark 4 (read
it). Satan comes to steal the seed
of the Word of God sown in your heart.
Today a seed of who you are was sown. Tomorrow, stand fast if discouragement comes through some
circumstance. The Word is
true! Circumstances come and go.
The
following is a quote from Richard Wurmbrand’s
devotional, Reaching Towards the Heights - May 15th. [i]
“We become holy by feeding upon the right spiritual food.
In an experiment it was found that worms that usually live in the darkness can be conditioned to leave this habitat and to prefer the light. As often as they would withdraw into darkness, they would get electric shocks, whereas if they came out in the light, they found abundant food. With time, these beings ‘put on a new worm,’ to use the biblical expression. Contrary to the habits of their species, from that time on they preferred the light to darkness. Then these worms were cut into small pieces and added in the food given to other worms: and, lo, these worms also changed their habits. They had increased, with the addition of the flesh of the new breed of worms, their Ribonucleic acid (RNA), the depository of memory. They would shun darkness and prefer light just as the beings upon which they had fed. Similar experiments have also been made with other animals.
If you wish to put on the new man, a man of righteousness and holiness, feed upon Christ. He has become flesh in order that He might become your daily food.”
On
the Cross, Jesus quoted from Psalm 22:6 which says, “I am a worm.”
Strong’s
concordance [ii]gives
this definition for worm:
"08438 elwt towla` {to-law'}. from 03216;
TWOT - 2516b; n mAV - scarlet 34, worm 8, crimson -
the female 'coccus ilicis'
1b) scarlet stuff, crimson, scarlet 1b1) the dye made from the dried body of
the female of the worm “coccus ilicis.”
When
the female of the scarlet worm species was ready to give birth to her young,
she would attach her body to the trunk of a tree, fixing herself so firmly and
permanently that she would never leave again. The eggs deposited beneath her body were thus protected
until the larvae were hatched and able to enter their own life cycle. As the mother died, the crimson fluid
stained her body and the surrounding wood. From the dead bodies of such female scarlet worms, the
commercial scarlet dyes of antiquity were extracted.
What
a picture this gives of Christ, dying on the tree, shedding His precious blood
that He might “bring many sons unto glory” (Hebrews 2:10, KJV)! He died for us, that we might live
through Him!