Trust and obey or… On how to walk after the spirit

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discerning the spirits, entering his rest, entering the Kingdom of God, experience, feelings, heart, inner man, intuition, joy, mind, new life, obedience, outer man, pain, soul, spirit, the dawning of a new day, the new self, the promised land, thought life, walking by the spirit, Watchman Nee

“Blessings to those who are doing his Commandments; their authority shall be over The Tree of Life, and they shall enter The City by the gates.” (Rev 22:14 Aramaic Bible in Plain English)
Photo by Susanne Schuberth

Just lately God both nudged and even urged me to do several things which, to my own reason and habits, did not make any sense to me at that time. I saw no real danger, I only felt uneasy in my belly region about certain people and their way of thinking and believing. However, more and more every day, I felt that God wanted me to obey Him without understanding in advance WHY I should follow Him. In order to make me do so He caused great pains in my heart, severe sorrow and deep grief so that I thought I could not endure it any longer. As I eventually gave up on my own ideas of how life should turn out, how people should be, and on my own habits of dealing with and thinking about people, God gave me the strength to obey Him in a way that was not possible for me before. As I finally did several things He wanted me to do, my heart was all of a sudden flooded with such an intense supernatural joy that I even had to cry out loudly. “Wow!!!” 🙂 Oh, how quickly heartfelt obedience that seeks the approval of God and no longer the approval of man is rewarded by our Father in heaven who is ALWAYS pleased when His children ask Him for His wisdom and guidance in all things! In order to bring my joy home to you too, I posted  that photograph above. I would see that beautiful tree on my prayer walk yesterday and I KNEW I had to take a picture.  😉

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A Spiritual Self Check

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ads, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, flesh, following Jesus, fruit of the Spirit, God's love, pornography, salvation, Satan, spirit, the devil, the fear of God, worldly spirits

A Biblical Self Check
(Picture taken from https://goffwilson.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/self_check.jpg)

We should be aware that the devil does not sleep. Last Thursday as I checked my blog “Entering the Promised Land” on the cell phone when I was sitting at the hairdresser, I saw four ads popping up beneath one of my articles which I normally do not see when I am logged in on WordPress. One of these ads showed a sort of pornographic picture. We who may use WordPress for free, that means, all who are logged in on WordPress as bloggers ourselves won’t see those often offensive ads other visitors might be confronted with.

All Good Things Come From Above

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divine inspiration, empty mind, experience, following Jesus, fruit of the Spirit, God, God's love, inspiration, Jesus Christ, peace, spirit, thought life

Blessed by Divine Inspiration
(Source https://500px.com/photo/3328126/hunting-by-sasi-smit)

Here’s another lesson regarding divine inspiration for me.
Even the day before yesterday I wanted to write a new blog article and yesterday it dawned on me that there might be a topic on which God perhaps wants me to write. So I was waiting for more information from His Spirit. However, another day passed and God remained silent.

What is inspiration, then?

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empty mind, experience, fun, humor, inspiration, love, spirit, thought life

An Uninspired Pic
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

This is one of those days when God directly has been showing me what divine inspiration is all about.

I awoke with wanting to write an article about “The Temptations of Spiritual Gurudom”. Thinking about that very issue for a certain time, I felt losing interest in it (yaaaaawn…..) and sensed God pointing me to another topic dealing with practical tips for deepening one’s prayer life.
After a few hours and some “normal” work I had to do, the prayer thing was completely gone and there was a strong rebuke on my mind regarding those who continually commit thought theft by processing ideas and spiritual content from others on the web.

And now?

Good morning, Church, are you still sleeping?

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church, following Jesus, happiness, John Wesley, joy, light, love, peace, sin, spirit, spiritual power

Wrong Side Up
(Painting by Susanne Schuberth – watercolors)

“Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. ” (Eph 5:14-18 KJV)

Could it be possible that we are still sleeping? And if so, how should we realize it if no one wakes us up by shining Christ’s light into our very hearts?

Some thoughts on our thought life…

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Carl Gustav Jung, darkness, flesh, God, Jesus Christ, light, psychology, sanctification, Satan, Sigmund Freud, spirit, thought life

Light and Darkness (Photo by Paul Schuberth)

During the years before God freed me completely as regards to my thought life, I struggled a lot with my self-made mind control, which, honestly, never worked at all. Thoughts come and they go. They always “go together” with those good and bad feelings they cause. And they don’t ask me, “May I stay or should I go?” Instead, they seemingly do what they want. The reason for their impertinent “behavior” lies in the fact that every recurring thought or dream has an invisible root that is hidden deep within our hearts. Recurring thoughts use to bother us and therefore we are often lost in them or speak about them if possible and appropriate. If we don’t have anyone with whom we can share the thoughts which grieve us for example, or which reveal our deepest longings, then the thoughts will ”reveal themselves” somehow automatically by coming out of our mouth in inappropriate situations as well. Here I am reminded of Jesus who said that the mouth speaks “out of the abundance of the heart” (Lk 6:45).

INTRODUCTION

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adultery, being born again, divorce, ecstasy, flesh, Jesus Christ, poems, spirit, the Kingdom of God, the promised land

In advance, some thoughts on exploring the idea of walking in the spirit vs. walking in the flesh …

As for walking in the spirit, indeed, there will be no ordinary days any more because I know for sure that He brings the unexpected things. And there’s something new about His Love that will catch you by surprise (it’s all about those extra things personally provided by Him). What I mean here is in particular the unexpected experience of being transformed from a fleshly-minded person into a spiritually-minded being without doing anything yourself in order to get there. It is the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit to give birth to a new creation in Christ (Jn 3:3-8; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).

I guess that God chose the picture of “birth” to remind us of our own helplessness during that process of being born again. We are like babies who are born when it’s time to experience a completely unknown, new world outside the comfortable womb. Another thing which is fully consistent with the image of a newborn baby is that we, too, forget everything about our experiences inside the womb as soon as we have learned to survive in the spiritual promised land (i.e., the Kingdom of God). We learn to walk by the spirit, and we learn to speak another language that not necessarily needs words which could be heard by anyone. But most of all, we learn to forget, namely our past sins, the sins of others, our past pain, our previous likes and dislikes – and last but not least, we forget the desires of the flesh.

In order to illustrate that experience, I’d like to choose a situation taken out of the Bible but described in my own words.