Deny Yourself – Today – Suffer Well
Today
(#034 from Suffer Well Devotional Series©)
Today
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“Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3:15)
This will help you beloved. Yahweh has already told you that the unredeemed “carnal mind” will always be at enmity with His Divine mind (Romans 8:7). “So, if the carnal mind will never perceive His mind, how can I rejoice?” you might ask. Within this brilliant question, which can only be generated from a renewed mind, is the key to understanding the answer. It is not by your own intellectual understanding, nor by human might that you can rejoice. The carnal mind can’t ever rejoice. However, as the redeemed of Yahweh, you do not have to identify with the carnal mind any longer.
How do you get there? The way is to decrease! Your “self” will always be at enmity with Yahweh as it (the unredeemed mind) always desires to increase its influence and domain. “Father, allow me to decrease and may it be Your Spirit that praises and rejoices in and through me.” This is the mindset that dominates the conscience of the truly redeemed.
A predominant blueprint throughout the scriptures from “In the beginning,” in Genesis 1:1, to, “So be it,” in Revelation 22:21, is the recognizable pattern within the repeated warning to “lose” oneself. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life [carnal mind] for My sake will find it [the Divine mind]. (Matthew 10:39) For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world [carnal pleasure], and is himself [Divine mind potential] destroyed or lost? (Luke 9:25) Yet, for many, their proclamation that “I believe and therefore I rejoice,” comes across with a smug pride, as if there was anything good enough in them to inspire such a declaration. The arrogance simply screams “I.” To the contrary, it is only “Messiah in you” that can rejoice and be glad; any claim otherwise resounds of “self.”
Why then can the mind on its way to expressing its full redemption praise and rejoice? Because once the indwelling of the Spirit (Ruach) has commenced, the consciousness of sin (Hebrews 9:14) comes face-to-face with a competitor; it no longer has “unobstructed” rights to itself. This idea is further elaborated on in Romans 8:5-9; “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against the Mighty One; for it is not subject to the law of the Mighty One, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please the Mighty One. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of the Mighty One dwells in you.”
This is the day Yahweh has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24) In other words, this is the day Yahweh has made; and only the redeemed can be glad in it.