Removing Unnecessary Boxes
Removing Unnecessary Boxes:
Overcoming the Enemy Within
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” John 8:32.
This is a profound statement from Jesus. It's a groundbreaking and revolutionary statement. It's worth looking at its context. In the NIV bible the passage is titled “The Children of Abraham.”
Here is the main part of the short passage. If you read the whole passage from verse 31 to the end of the chapter you'll fall of your chair laughing. The Jews, Jesus' fellow people, were very stubborn to Jesus' teachings. I don't blame them because his teachings were too much to bear. Most of what he said only started making sense after he died, resurrected, and ascended.
“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
33They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"
34Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37I know you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.” John 8:31-38.
This is a passage about freedom versus bondage, truth versus deception (falsehood), genuine versus counterfeit. The Jews, particularly the religious leaders, thought their Jewish biological identity was all that was required to make them God's children. Jesus challenged his own people by stating that they were wrong. They were living a lie and he came to set them free from that lie.
The truths he shared with them were intended to bring freedom to them. He was the one to take them out of their self-made box of traditions which they assumed were fitting. He was sent to set the Jews and every other ethnic group in this world free. His freedom of humanity is primarily centered on deliverance from spiritual and religious bondage or boxes.
Religious people have a way of assuming they have it all together. Try witnessing to Muslim Imams. You're likely to receive lengthy lectures about Islam's rightness you'll find yourself looking at your watch wondering how long the lecture will last. Their spiritual blindness makes them not see the truth. This makes them believe the lies they've received as if they are pure truths.
Jesus' scenario with the religious leaders and the scenario of Muslim Imams happens in the body of Christ as well. Each of us ought to watch for such areas to avoid clinging to beliefs that have no sound biblical basis. They may look as if they do but a deeper inquiry shows their falsehood. They are mere boxes keeping us away from walking out into the truth.
It takes a lot of our input to ensure such boxes are removed from us. Our Christian identity is not all that matters in this life. While we're still here on earth we have a life to live, a Christian journey to travel, battles to win, trials to overcome, storms to weather, areas of ignorance to replace with understanding, and so on.
None of these will be attained just by wearing a badge “I'm a Christian.” It takes seeking, work, persistence, and inner strength. These are the areas that are part of our input. God has his role of giving us the grace to do our part. We take over from that point and sweat it out.
It takes our entire inner spiritual makeup to be involved while powered by God's grace through the Holy Spirit. Our minds diligently apply the mind of Christ, our emotions produce the faith, the needed fruit of the Holy Spirit, and our will produces self-control, the needed fruit of the Holy Spirit, to keep us focused on what matters most.
“We have the mind of Christ,” 1 Corinthians 2:16.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,” Galatians 5:22-23.
I have resolved never to accept matters in my Christian faith just because they feel good or simply because they are followed by my affiliated evangelical denomination. This is blind faith. It's not healthy.
I have to know the truth on why I believe in something. I've been fooled not once but twice for just accepting matters because they were what my church or denomination taught. You probably know the old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” It was shame on me the second time. I didn't take the first wakeup call to ask questions and find answers on matters that were accepted without question.
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” John 8:32.
Opinions, feelings, false beliefs, preferences, personality inclinations, fitting in, and emotions are not the truth. They are subjective perceptions. They are a good start for a Christian when accepting Christianity but only in the beginning as spiritual infants. When we're newly born-again and embrace Christianity our feelings or emotions dominate. Later on we're to graduate and grow into informed Christians. Otherwise we'll be tossed from here to there by every Christian fad or trend that comes along.
“The body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming,” Ephesians 4:12-14.
Our biggest enemy is therefore not Satan. It is each of us as individuals. We have to deal with our selves. Remember on Judgment Day there will be no excuse to blame matters on Satan. Adam and Eve tried it and it didn't work. God says we have to take 100% responsibility for our lives. He has given us the power of choice to choose between good and evil, blessings and curses, life and death, understanding and ignorance, faith and fear, forgiveness and resentment (unforgiveness), and so on.
“This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live,” Deuteronomy 30:19.
Satan and his fallen angels only try to influence us to choose the wrong sides. They do not control what we ultimately choose after they present their deceptive offers. We're in charge of our own lives. If we decide to take the wrong choices we're our worst enemy. If we decide to make the right choices we're our best asset.
To step out of being enemies to ourselves we start dealing with the enemy within. We start investigating our spiritual makeup of our patterns of thinking, our emotional patterns, and our willpower drive in focusing on certain matters. We therefore start investigating our inner spiritual makeup.
We then start to work on the areas we identify as dysfunctional, as weaknesses, as self-destructive tendencies, as internal strongholds, as detrimental boxes, or as spiritual strongholds.
The enemy within each of us therefore ought to be a concern more than external enemies. External enemies are negative or hostile forces other than ourselves. They are external factors. External enemies we deal with in life include in the earthly realm: some people who may not treat us well, certain circumstances at odds against us, and time. Time is both a friend and an enemy of our limited existence on earth. In the spirit realm there is Satan and his fellow fallen angels. All these put together comprise external forces endeavoring to work against us.
However if our internal makeup is spiritually well grounded none of the external forces can hinder us. The only area they may succeed in hindering us is in the area God allows, for a good reason. Beyond the permitted area of hindrance they can never be a barrier against us. The rest of the areas that God has given into our hands are therefore determined by our internal makeup and not by the external. The negative external factors keep losing their ground against us as we work on consolidating what it takes internally to overcome them.
We've many biblical and historical examples of people who overcame major external obstacles due to having a well grounded inner makeup. God is able to do the same through us if we're able to cooperate with him in ensuring our self-made inner obstacles are eliminated.
Back To Breaking Spiritual Strongholds