II Cor. 3: 17,18 "Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's Glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."
That glory St. Paul speaks of is the outworking of the freedom we can experience - in and through Christ - from sin and death. The Lord, through the new birth He gives us, frees us to be a people becoming (like Himself). This is entirely His doing, His initiation, alone. Once positioned in us (the Holy Spirit) and we in Him, He calls us to be engaged, to respond and to exercise our God-given authority in freeing ourselves from the spirit of despair- the spirit of death.
About spiritual realms and authority....I want to take a moment before I go any further, to talk about how I see the two influences of sin and death operating in the spiritual realm against God's people in opposing our freedoms. Please click on the following link to view a brief video on that subject, recently presented at Pasadena Int'l House of Prayer: [Learn more...]
St. Iranaeus, writing in the 2nd century, said: "The glory of God is a person FULLY alive." There are many seemingly lively Christians out there bearing much good fruit in love and good deeds, and yet, interiorly they are bound up in their struggle with thoughts of death. An awful lot of God's people experience this. I know from my travels around the globe ministering to good men and women serving God who despair over the lack of glory they experience in their ministries.
In my own history as a Christian man involved in a vital ministry- the early years of ARM, AIDS Resource Ministry at Desert Stream - there was definite evidence of fruitfulness. I was: 1. growing in my new identity as a heterosexual male having left behind the old gay self.; 2. sharing the gospel, leading others to Christ; 3. teaching and equipping others for ministry; 4. praying for healing. However, I couldn't account for the ongoing bombardment of negative, critical, condemning, destructive thoughts in my mind. Why was this happening??? I was in Christian ministry!! I was born again, confessing and repenting of sin, [As one of our leaders says, "I GOT the sin part"] but was still being harassed by destructive thoughts in my head. Worse still...I was too embarrassed to share about them because I was in ministry! From what I perceived, I shouldn't be experiencing that. My conclusion: I just had to live with it. Be quiet about it. Learn to to accommodate it. It was my cross to bear.
Wrong conclusion.
When we keep accommodating those thoughts, we can eventually become inert, that is..."incapable of moving or acting" as the dictionary defines the term. The only way we can get freedom from becoming inert is to act, to choose life--gain and again and again. Jesus said: "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say this mountain [of internal lies], 'Move from here to there' and it will move."
Deuteronomy 30:19,20 states: "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him." In other words this kind of freedom can't be done for you or prayed over you. Previously, in Dt. 30:14 it says: "No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it."[emphasis mine] Obedience to His call is renouncing the lies that are plaguing us and seizing hold of the promise of fulness of LIFE offered us.
