Category Archives: power of sin

The New Life is a Life Cleansed From Sin

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A few weeks ago I introduced the topic of the New Life. This is the life that Jesus suffered, died on a cross, and then rose from the grave so He could give it to us. It is a life of freedom from the chains of sin and darkness. It is a life no longer marred by the emptiness of our sinful choices to follow ourselves and our own way. It is a life full of God’s love.

We come to God well aware of our need for forgiveness. It is plain to see how short we have fallen of His holiness- His purity, His goodness. We know we have done wrong. We have the precious promise that when we ask for His forgiveness, He will forgive. BUT there is another part to that verse. He will “cleanse.” To cleanse is “to purify; to make clean; to remove filth” Webster’s 1828 Dictionary.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 ESV

God’s promise is not only for forgiveness, but to make us clean- free of sin! This enables us to be like Him, the very thing for which He created us.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

1 John 1:5-7 ESV

There are many who come to God wanting to accept the forgiveness He offers, but they neglect to walk as one who has been cleansed. They walk away from a time of asking forgiveness for their sins unchanged because they simply want to be free from the guilt they feel for the wrong that they have been done. But our God wants us to walk free from SIN that caused the guilt and darkens our life with its impurity. He longs to cleanse us! The question is “Do we desire to be cleansed from sin?” If we do, He gives us the power to walk free from the slavery of our sinfulness. May we not only accept His forgiveness, but walk as those who have been set free from our sin! May we live as those who are cleansed from our sins and full of His life and light!

Jesus Breathe on Me

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“And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
‭‭John‬ ‭20‬:‭22‬ ‭NIV‬‬

There is a scene in the movie “Narnia” where the lion, Aslan, breathes on a hard and stony statue that Mr. Tumnus had become. The breath of the lion caused the hardness to melt and Mr. Tumnus to come to life. This hardness and stoniness came about by Edmond’s sin.

“Narnia” was written as an allegory or a story example for the real truth. This truth is about Jesus, whom the lion Aslan represents. After Jesus resurrected from the dead, He appeared to His disciples, the ones who abandoned Him in His worst hour. They were the ones who failed Him miserably. They were behind locked doors in a room hiding in fear when Jesus appeared. Jesus did not spend extensive time recounting how they had failed. Instead He breathed. It is His breath that melts hearts of stone. Jesus’s breath is life! He also instructed them to receive the Holy Spirit, the power from on high the very wind and fire from Heaven.

Jesus still breathes on us today. Each of us are hardened by our sinful choices. Each of us are dead inside. There is only one way to come to life! That is to allow God, Yahweh, to breathe on us! We need to receive the promised Holy Spirit to live within us. He longs to change us from death to life! But we must choose!

Every choice we make to follow our own ways will only lead to death, darkness, and destruction. It is only when we stop living our lives after ourselves and allow Jesus to breath His breath of life upon us that we can be transformed. We can live the life free of the sin that hardens and destroys us.

May our hearts cry be, Jesus breathe on me! I receive Your breath of life!

The New Life is a Life of Forgiveness of Sin!

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Confession of sin and repentance of sin is like frequent weeding of a garden.

Sin is not a fun topic. In fact, I believe I’ve been harping on it a lot lately, but there is a reason for that. It is not to make us feel bad. It is to gain an understanding of how dangerous sin is. The simple fact is God hates sin. He hates it because He knows sin separates us from Him. He longs for us to be connected to Him. Sin makes us unhappy and miserable. Because the one thing we were created for was to be connected to God through relationship. Sin keeps us disconnected. We will never know our life’s purpose when we are bound and tied up in sin.

There is joy in coming to God with our sin and confessing it. There is joy in receiving forgiveness.

“Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!” Psalms 32:1 NLT

There is joy in turning from sin and loving God with all our heart all, our mind, and all our strength, displaying that love with our obedience to all He has commanded. (Matthew 28:20)

In fact, recognizing our need to be free of sin, coming to God regularly and asking God to show us anything that is not of Him within our lives so we can be close to Him is imperative.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalms 139:23-24 NIV

Confession of sin and repentance of sin is like frequent weeding of a garden. It keeps the sin, that destroys the goodness of God growing in us, from taking root and reaping havoc in our lives.

God’s desire for us is freedom from the slavery of sin!

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 NIV

The New Life is Loving and Being Loved by the Savior

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Growing up in a Christian home, my parents taught me that loving Jesus was a good thing. It is easy to have the understanding that loving Jesus and being loved by Him is good! Sometimes there is a lack of understanding of what exactly loving Him and being loved by Him means.

In order to understand what being loved by Jesus means, we need to understand why He came. The Bible talks about that reason:

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”” Matthew 1:21 NIV

Jesus’s mission was to save us from our sins. Why is this so important? Sin destroys! As Andrew Murray said, “Sin is the cause of our misery.” If you are miserable inside, there is sin inside of you! You can be free!

The problem is we come to Jesus wanting to get relief from the misery of our sin or its destruction, but not necessarily the freedom from sin itself.

Jesus loves us dearly. He wants us to experience what He freely offers, a relationship with Him. This relationship will not only free us from sin. But it requires one thing that we often find very hard to do because we try to do it on our own. This requirement is that we love Him in return. That sounds easy enough… but to love Him is to give ourselves entirely, totally and completely to Him.

This means one more thing- obedience to Him and His Word.

Jesus said:

““If you love me, keep my commands.” John 14:15 NIV

Obeying Jesus commands is hard if we do it on our own and in our strength. It is only when we depend on Jesus that we can live free. How do we do this? We come to Him knowing He loves us. We want to love Him and obey. We give ourselves fully to Him each and every day. Surrendering our thoughts, desires, and wants to His thoughts, desires, and wants that we see in His Word. He empowers us by the Holy Spirit to live Free and to love Him fully.

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 NIV

He loves us, we love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is our obedience to what He says.

The New Life is a Life Free From the Power of Sin.

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We were created to be united or one with God. Before Adam and Eve chose their own way above God’s way, they were one with Him. Sin entered our world when they made the choice to follow themselves and they were separated from God. That separation is death.

“And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”” Genesis 2:16-17 NIV

With death, or separation from God, comes darkness and destruction into our lives. That is because God is the author of Life itself. We cannot truly LIVE apart from Him.

Sin Destroys!

For those of you who have attended an Ashes to Beauty Encounter weekend, the testimonies of sin’s destruction, in the lives of the women, are proof of that point. Truly if we examine ourselves, we can see it in our own lives. Anytime I have chosen my own way instead of God’s, I have experienced the misery of sin in my life. That is why God repeatedly warns us of what exactly sin is.

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21 NIV

God does not speak of sin because He wants to be a cosmic killjoy. He want us to walk free of sin so we can be close to Him, united to Him once again.

Although the consequences of our sins are painful, we often find ourselves not willing to repent from them. Because the truth is, we love to sin. We want to do our own thing. We do not want to obey God. I say this from my own personal experience. I had to get my fill of sin in order to see how desperate I was for the New Life that God offered to me.

I needed to see that the fruit of this New Life that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, the very things I longed for, could be in me.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

I had to get sick of it! I had to get desperate! That is when I determined that I needed to love God with all my heart, mind, and soul. That is when I repented from my sin and asked God to cleanse me and empower me to live free! That is when I began to experience the New Life in it’s abundance!

Are you where I was? When you look deep inside, are you living in peace, joy, and love? Or is your heart full of fear, anger, rage? Do you run to God with life’s ups and downs or are you trying to deal on your own and in your own way? This can be through self effort, self medicating- alcohol, drugs, self help books, etc. Are you sick of it?

There is New Life in Jesus that frees us from the power of sin!