Everyone has a perspective on just about everything. The question to ask is if our perspective relates to the facts at hand or if our perspective is out of sync with reality. Today, many people process their perspective on life by how they “FEEL” far more than by the facts before them. Reality has a cruel way of hitting us right between the eyes when we least expect it because facts don’t lie but feeling do.

This is the third article on walking in the blessing and power of the Holy Spirit. This subject has many aspects but I wanted to address what I think is lacking by many believers, especially by pastors. Walking in the Spirit is far more than walking in the gifts of the Spirit. It should also encompass the knowledge and freedom of walking without the hindrance of demonic spirits that still operate on the earth as they did in biblical times.

All too often we grow up listening to others around us in order to build our concepts about our self worth and identity.  The world builds the idea of their identity and self worth measured by what they look like or what they can accomplish and this produces a terrible platform for building self-esteem and identity. Christians should be developing their identity and self-worth from the word of God and why he made us. Mind you, I have heard some really twisted ideas in sermons about a persons lack of value.  It makes me wonder if these preachers ever read the bible as a whole because they paint the picture that people have no redeeming value in themselves at all and God only saved us because he felt sorry for humanity, not because God valued humanity even with our brokenness.  

Receiving Jesus into our lives was always meant to be a transformative experience, not just a transitory one or a one-time experience. With that in mind, Jesus ultimately came to set the sinners free by revealing the Father’s heart for humanity. Scripture says that all of us are being ruled by the spirit of this age that is working in the world.

So many professing Christians know that real life is found in an intimate relationship with Father God and yet all too often we exchange our loving relationship with Him for rules and memorizing verses or portions of scripture. We exchange our intimacy with God himself for God’s word, which is filled with God’s thoughts rather than God himself. The pharisees of old are a good example of this exchange. For Christians today, we do the same thing by becoming more loyal to a book than to the one who wrote the book. 

Many Christians who believe in the forgiveness of Christ often struggle with guilt and shame, even after coming to a saving experience in Christ. Shame is that awful thing that hinders our trust in the Lord and becomes a roadblock to intimacy with God. In a previous article, I dealt with guilt, but in this article I want to deal with the fruit of guilt, which is shame. Shame is the emotional feeling that can stop our development emotionally, physiologically and practically as we seek to develop our God given abilities. If a person has unresolved guilt, or what I call “Shadow” guilt, shame chains us to our yesterday. 

God designed us to have and desire good relationships with others but finding good friends can often be a challenge. Unfortunately, when we are young many parents don’t teach their kids what to look for in friends and so we tend to find or make friends based more on our geographical location rather than being selective about who we invite into our inner circle of relationships. Finding good friends can be a real challenge!

Ask anyone who has had a disease or crippling physical problem and they all will say they would loved to be healed and would do almost anything to get healed. Yet there are millions who have never received what they longed for or prayed for. People in many different age groups from young and old will tell you the doctors and medicine don’t seem to be able help them even with all our advanced discoveries. Some sicknesses and problems in life we don’t seem to recover from, so people have to live with chronic illness for the rest of their natural lives. I know this isn’t a popular thing to say but many people, Christian or not, will not receive their healing. In many Christian circles, especially if you believe prayer makes a difference, this seems contrary to what they have been taught in scripture.

As we grow in our trust of God in our daily walk there are some  things he may choose to hide from us. The reasons for such actions I’m sure are many, yet to understand the basic reasons would be helpful to us so that we can know if God is withholding truth because we are not prepared for it, like the early disciples who walked with Jesus in ministry.

I think many Christian’s struggle when reading the Old Testament because so much of it is about fighting God and the consequences of such behavior. Adam and Eve fought God and his will and chose to do life on their terms, or at least they thought that’s what they were doing, rebelling against a loving provider. Moses fought God about his will and his calling and Israel was constantly either fighting God, their own countrymen or their neighbors.  I think all this fighting in mankind’s history in the Old Testament persuaded many believers today to only read the New Testament, because Jesus seems to be all about peace and love, or at least it seems that way.