Welcome to New Life Design

Well, let’s fill in that blank that we left off with! If you have gone through the coaching process with us then you can fill in that blank for yourself. It is a word that is tough to get out and if you paid attention to the tittle of this blog you can see where I am heading with all this.

Let’s recap….our Flesly strategies (patterns, coping mechanisms etc…) will always lead us into trials & adversity. As Dr. Phil says, “How’s that working for you?”. The reason why he asks that question is to get the person to realize that their coping strategy doesn’t work and only makes things worse – a.k.a. more trials & adversity! Those trials soon bring us to a place of brokenness that we discussed last time. This week we will see how that brokenness pushes us over the edge to surrender – complete abandonment. I like the term abandonment because it reminds me just how serious it is that I completely let go of my Flesly ways/patterns and the False Beliefs that fuel that behavior.

What is Abandonment or Surrender? Here are a few points to consider….
1. Surrender is yielding self-will, one’s independence from God, or one’ own way of trying to control life, to the Life of Christ within.
2. Surrender is to relax and cease from our internal struggle to satisfy our neediness by self-reliance and self-effort. Ps. 46:10, John 15:4-5, Heb. 4:10
3. Surrender is ongoing. We choose surrender regardless of our emotions. We surrender ourselves-our life-to God’s control.
4. Surrender is not by efforts to put away old ways-flesh patterns.
5. Surrender is not passivity. It is ceasing from our own works.
6. Surrender is like focusing on (setting our mind on) learning a new language (truth). The mind that is set on the Spirit is life and peace. Rom. 8:5 Set your mind on things above. Col. 3:2 It is to have one’s mind “set like a flint” on the Lord. Isaiah 50:7
7. Surrender is “to faith” – to intimately focus on the Spirit and truth, depending on the Lord.
8. Surrender is “faithing” as an ongoing process of choices which are, often moment by moment disciplines.
9. Surrender is to delight ourselves in the Lord and commit our way to Him. (To delight in the Hebrew meanse to be bendable, pliable.) Ps. 37:4
10. Surrender is warfare.
11. Surrender is HUMILITY.

Consider today absolute abandonment to the Abba Father – Daddy who loves you with His unfailing love. With surrender usually comes great relief.

Dana

I left off last time talking about Trials & Adversity and the purpose of it in our lives. I shared with you that it’s ultimate purpose is that Trials & Adversities are to break our dependencies on our flesh. Once this happens we experience what many have come to call “Brokenness”. If you have ever really been to that place then you know exactly what I am talking about.

Brokenness is the place where you quite literally come to the end of yourself – your strength, resources, ideas, power, influence, options, opportunities etc…. are all gone and there is nothing left but you and God. You may feel as if you are sitting in an emotional heap of nothingness and there is absolutly nothing else you can do to fix the situation or circumstances. You have hit the preverbial “brick wall” and most likely have colapsed.

The principle rests in God’s marvelous design. God’s design is that my outward man (my reliance on my fleshly strategies to make life work for me) be broken so that the inward man (Christ in my spirit) may be manifest through me, that I might receive from Him and display His Life through me. Sometimes things that may need to be broken in us are our ways of trying to avoid the very things we fear most. We may need to be broken of our ways of trying to get what we need and want or our love affair with these familiar beliefs, laws, ways that are most precious to us a.k.a. our false beliefs. I have found that brokenness is absolutely necessary for experiencing Life in Christ, victory, or a walk after the Spirit. It is necessary for our experiencing His sufficiency and our needs being met. Romans 8:13 tells us that if we live according to the flesh we shall die. But according to Matthew 16:25 and Luke 17:33 if we lose this fleshly life we will find Christ’s life and whoever seeks to save his fleshly life will lose it.

So the purpose of brokenness could be summed up in several key points:
1. To realize my fleshly efforts are futile; that I can not live the Christian life nor get my needs met by my own strength, by my own resources or strategies and controls.
2. To realize that I have no ability in my self-life; that without Him doing it, I can do nothing.
3. To give up on trusting my fleshly way, my false beliefs, and the resulting behaviors and damaging emotions.
4. That my outward man might be conformed to the image of Christ.
5. That I might depend on God.
6. That the life of Jesus might be manifest in my mortal body.

So, if we find ourselves at this place of brokenness as a result of trials & adversities what do we do? We receive the trial & adversity….as the Bible says, we take up our cross. Receiving that trial & adversity with the attitude or mind of Christ – with a mind of humility. A beautiful display of this is found in Phil. 2:5-8. “Have this attitude in yourselfves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Christ received His trial with an attitude of humility, not trying to regard His equality with God so as to try to preseve His Significance. He could humble Himself to accomplish the task because He knew WHO He was and WHO He belonged to. We can now experience the joy of New Covenant living in relationship with Him and that transforms everything!

Fleshly Stategies = Trials & Adversities = Brokenness = ______________________ we will fill in the blank next time!

Dana

Do you really understand the meaning of adversity and what it looks like? If you have thought like I have for a number of years, I put anything that hurt in the category of adversity. If it hurt-it was adversity and I didn’t like it! Even going to the dentist! My apoligies to the Dental Comunity out there that takes care of our oral hygiene. We are glad you do what you do….except when we are the ones sitting in that chair! 🙂

On a serious note….let me see if I can clarify our thinking. An adversity or trial is anything designed to break our control-our reliance on our fleshly strategies. You know, our New Testament friend Paul exhorts us to walk in the Spirit and not after the Flesh. Just in case you are wondering what flesh is…flesh is more than just “smoking, drinking, carousing and hanging out with those who do.” Yes, that is Flesh, but it is more than that. Flesh is any way that we are living independently of God attempting to get our needs met in our own way. By needs I mean Contentment (peace, fulfillment satisfaction in life, happiness, forgivenss), Security (love & acceptance, emotional connectedness with others, safety) and Significance (identity, worth, value, feeling important). We have these needs and it is not wrong to have them. God created us with these needs but His intent was that we would look to Him to meet them. Our problem comes when we look to others and other things to get these needs met. Things like other relationships-a girl/boy friend, a spouse, a parent, a friend, a boss, other employees etc…. and things like careers, materialistice things and money. That is flesh! Often times these “fleshly strategies” or “flesh patterns” as we call them are outside of our awareness. For many years I sought out love and acceptance-security from relationships from others and I sought out Significance from my career-ministry. I had no idea that this was fleshly living. I mean, by all outward appearances I was doing the right things and even being consistent in church and Bible Study for many years. Guess what….when others didn’t respond to me with that love and acceptance I felt like a failure. When suceess in ministry seemed elusive for many years, I felt like a failure. As a matter of fact, up until just a few years ago if you would have asked me with regards to my ministry if I felt successful, I would have said, “Absolutly not-I am an utter failure!” My “stinking thinking”, as my friend Phil Mason would say…didn’t always produce productive behavior. As a matter of fact, it made me quite insecure and insecurity breeds all kinds of fleshly controls and that in turn reeks havoc in our relationships.

It is interesting to me when I see in Scripture that the very nature of the flesh is that it produces trials/adversity in our lives. It leads to our death and destruction. So….as our fleshly ways naturally bring on adversity, we see that it is uniquely orchestrated by God to break our control-our reliance on our Flesh so that we might rely/depend on Christ in us to meet all our needs. FYI…you know how a lot of people say, “Oh, yea…I’m a control freak for sure!” Well, we all are control freaks! Attempting to make one’s fleshly way work to get needs met, makes everyone a “controller”. I know….sounds like a lot of bad news. Well….let me see if I can give you some good news.

We all want relief from our pain and struggles don’t we?? It is when we receive our trial/”take up our cross” and surrender reliance on our fleshly strategies that relief will come from our pain and stuggle. I will talk more about how to receive the trial/adversity next time and what it means to have the attitude of Christ, but it is through all this that we are conformed to the image of Christ. You want to know what the will of God is?? Well, that is it – that we would be conformed to His image. We seek so hard and wonder what His will is for our lives – well, we make it way too complicated. The bottom line is that we are to be conformed to His image being broken of our reliance on the flesh. If that is His will it sounds like we all will have some adveristy and trials from time to time.

More later!!

Dana