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Have you ever felt like you are struggling to drag a weight around with you? Do you struggle to keep God’s word in the forefront of your mind? Do you question who you are? Your worth? Whether you are good enough? These all come from our old nature, what we were or are before accepting Jesus. The Bible calls it the old man, the sinful nature etc. The Bible also says that all things are made new when we accept Jesus. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
II Corinthians 5:17
When we accept the sacrifice Jesus paid by dying on the cross it means he literally took all of our sin, sickness and struggle and replaced it with all of His blessing, acceptance and love. The Bible tells us that we become co-heirs with Christ, meaning we have all access to everything that was his. Because of His sacrifice we are restored to relationship with the God who loves us.
So how do we walk away from the old self? It will surely be used by the enemy to try and trip us up if we let him. How many times have you felt the accusations? The enemy loves to remind us of our old nature. “You are always hot tempered”, “You aren’t good enough “, “No one likes you because...” and on and on it goes. Satan likes to keep our old self front and center because it keeps our eyes on us and not on Jesus. It keeps us from walking in all the forgiveness, freedom and blessings He has restored to us.
We need to continually refresh our hearts, minds and spirits with 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 Isn't that amazing! We are to be the proof of His good will toward man!
However, that old nature will try to clutch on to us any chance it can so we need to continue to study and speak the Word in our lives. “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” II Timothy 2:15 NKJV
Now God doesn’t tell us to be diligent as a way of earning approval but rather so that we are rightly dividing the truth, meaning that we stand in the power of the truth and represent His kingdom love well. In order to do this we need to leave the corpse of our old nature in the grave where God put it and be clothed with the word of truth that He speaks about us.
Just as Jesus rose from the grave so we are called to rise into all that He has for us! Let’s leave the corpse where it belongs, stop dragging it around with us and walk in the freedom, power and authority that comes from being made new in Jesus.