Lifetime Guarantee (16 page)

Mom got rejected by her mom. Now she is rejecting her own daughter. The daughter will grow up and reject her own. And where will it stop? I’ll tell you where it can stop. At the cross! This precious sister in Christ can hold a good funeral to all that she used to be and then celebrate the
fact,
not the feeling, of who she
now is.

She
is
a new creation whom she can love and accept. She has always longed to be a new and different person. Well, congratulations are in order. She
is
a new person. She has simply never been taught who she
now
is as the new woman. When she claims these things as her own, agreeing with God’s Word that it is true, and begins to act like it’s all true in her, His beautiful healing process will begin. She will be “transformed by the renewing of [her] mind” (Romans 12:2).

Next to this lady’s car, yet another Christian woman sits waiting in front of the post office. Her child has gone in after the mail from their box. This dear lady was rejected by her dad during childhood. In her case, it resulted from his being a workaholic. He simply never took time to be with her. There was the day she marched in her first parade with the band. She was the fourth one from the right in the clarinet section. She had told him right where to look for her when they came past his store. He missed it. It seems a man had asked him if he could come out to do an estimate, and, of course, he had to go.

There was the time he was going to go out to see some land he was thinking about buying. He promised her she could go along. She had braided her hair all by herself for the big event. She still remembers it. She was seven years old at the time. She sat out on the porch in the swing. She got there ten minutes early because daddy didn’t like her to be late. But he never came. He completely forgot, he said. And he had such a phenomenal memory. Everyone always said so. She never did make much of an impression on him, though. Need I continue?

Out of this relationship with her dad, the little girl learned that she was worthless, unlovely, unattractive to males, unimportant, and non-stimulating, among other yukky things. She felt this way for so long a time that her feeler got choreographed. She had a very low self-esteem. Then she got saved. It was a wonderful experience for her. She
felt
loved for the first time in her life. But alas, the feelings came with a one-year warranty. She slowly but surely gravitated back to her old feelings rut.

Our sister in Christ is now twenty-nine, married, has two kids, is overweight, and is very unhappy with life. When the curvy lady appears on her visual screen, sin says to her, “If only I had been born to look like that. Sigh. Then maybe I’d be more attractive to my husband. Sigh. I don’t see why he puts up with me. I’m such a clod!” And she swallows it hook, line, and sinker. She is now sinning in her thought life. The more she sits and listens to sin’s thoughts, the more depressed she becomes. Then sin says to her, “
I’d
like a doughnut.
I
think I’ll just stop in and have one on the way home.” And she does! In fact, while she was in there, she
received
the idea to have three. Guess where that idea came from? Are you beginning to see how Satan’s agent, sin, works?

If she is to attain victory over her unique version of the flesh, she must recognize that, based on the reality of God’s Word, those are
not
her thoughts. They are coming from her enemy, sin, waging war against her mind. She must claim experientially her true identity. She is a godly woman who has God’s love written on her heart. She is a lovely creature, a princess, the younger sister of the King of the universe, Jesus. This woman is not the same person who generated those old ways through which sin is now attempting to control her. She is to respond to this deprecatory attack against her by thinking,
No! Those are not my thoughts. I am dead to them. They’re being fed to me. I choose to act dead to them because God’s Word tells me that I am dead to sin. I choose instead to “set my mind on [the reality of] things above,” the way things
really
are
(see Figure 6.3 again).

You can see from the development of this biblical perspective that each Christian’s flesh is essentially his self-image that he has generated while walking as a rebellious, lost person and then later as a deceived and controlled saved person. If he has been successful at getting his need for self-esteem satisfied, he has generated USDA Choice Flesh; if moderately successful, he has an average self-image—Plain Vanilla Flesh. If he’s been unsuccessful, he has Yukky Flesh with its low self-esteem.

What is the successful person’s self-image? Great! In his life, he has completely accepted certain “givens” about himself: “I am as good as anyone else, indeed better than average. I am successful. I am lovable and worthy of respect. I respect myself. I am secure. I have my life together. I accept myself.” I do not intend to imply conceit. He’s just secure.

Well, isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Isn’t this what our culture says is the ultimate goal? Moms and dads pray their daughters will marry such a man. I want him for a next-door neighbor. He would probably mow my lawn if I got sick. So why knock him? I do not knock
him.
I disapprove of his
method
for attaining the above. It was all a product of his effort to gain self-esteem as he
used
the resources over which he was made steward, the ones God entrusted to him to bring glory to Jesus. He expended his life to get his need for love and self-esteem satisfied, perhaps even by living for others, but his covert goal was to feel good about
himself.
He has successfully played Lord of the Ring.

Just like Saul of Tarsus, this dear “successful” person’s self-esteem is of his
own
doing. It is a righteousness of his own, a house of cards built on the sandy foundation of his own misuse of the resources that were entrusted to him by the one who owns all things, including him. He is to count all his fleshly building as loss, not having any righteousness that can be called his own based on his performance (see Philippians 3:7-9). His self-esteem must now be based on entirely different criteria: 1. who he is as the new man in Christ, and 2. letting Christ express His life through him as a “living sacrifice” to do
His
will (see Romans 12:1). Only this will bring solid satisfaction. Only this will enable a person to build a self-image that will be totally impregnable to anything this world can throw at it. This is a self-acceptance built of spiritual materials, not fleshly ones. It is an esteem based on our “righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Philippians 3:9).

The “Ordinary Christian” type of flesh is the result of win-some, lose-some experiences with which most of us can identify. An example of this could be the possessing of talent in a specific area such as athletics, music, or mechanical repair. We also have some Yukky Flesh patterns that produce a low yield or even a negative yield, such as being too quick to speak and thus alienating people with whom we would like to establish friendships. This results in loss of love from others, and also loss of self-love.

Whereas Captain Christian up there in the previous example would be scoring himself 8 to 10 on all the positive characteristics, Ordinary Christian is going to give himself 5s and 6s.

The difference between low self-esteem and humility is that low self-esteem concentrates totally on
self
: “What are people thinking about me? How do they think I look? Why am I so dumb!” Humility, on the other hand, concentrates on the welfare of others: “I’ll take this back seat so others can sit up there. I hope she’s chosen instead of me because I feel she needs that.” Low self-esteem and humility often look the same on the outside, but they are poles apart.

Jesus had a healthy self-esteem, but He was humble. Embracing a low self-image is one big fleshwalk. It’s concentrating on self constantly. Though it may pass for humility in the church, it’s seen for exactly what it is by God. If the shoe fits, you must hold a good funeral to that, dear one.

No matter which general category of flesh you may fall into, it is all of this world system, not of God. If you keep on listening to those familiar thoughts that seem to be your old sin nature, you will be a pawn in the Evil One’s hand. You will be neutralized in the spiritual warfare.

Figure 6.4 depicts the believer’s being controlled by indwelling sin. I have drawn a full circle from the devil, who is in authority over the power of sin in the believer’s body, through the flesh in the brain, into the mind to: 1) deceive the believer, who then 2) chooses with his will to 3) set his mind on the deception, which 4) results in heightening the emotions, which 5) increases the pressure on the will, which 6) chooses to “do the very thing I hate.” This behavior then cycles back through Satan, and he thus keeps the believer under his domination. But remember: We do not have to act on these thoughts that are now foreign to us. We are no longer under sin’s control.

I am going to call this “Channel #1.” Stay tuned to Channel #1 and be deceived. That’s the way the Evil One works, especially on a Christian who believes he has two natures. Satan is capable of talking that Christian into some pretty raunchy behavior and then justifying his failure by giving him thoughts like,
Well, my old sin nature took over, and I did it again. But that’s normal for us Christians.
No, it’s not! It’s abnormal for us Christians, but unfortunately, as old Brother Schofield said,
it’s the normal experience of most Christians
.

Tragically, many high-profile Christians are falling and bringing great harm to the name of Christ. They seem powerless to “life out” the victory they teach. Somehow their Christianity is not working. The reason it’s not working is they do not understand their
true identity
and how to offer themselves as a living sacrifice to Christ to live the victorious Christian life
through
them.

Answers in “Answers to Questions for Further Study”.

The changes in my marriage since Anabel and I began to let Jesus live through us are astounding. Listen again to Anabel:

How in the world can Anabel say those kind things about me after the way I’ve treated her? It’s a result of God’s giving her the grace to forgive me; the result of her being able to “set her mind” on how secure and accepted she is in Him, which means she can consistently rest in Him; the result of Christ’s living through me to radically change my behavior; and the result of my resting in my total acceptance in Him, being freed from fighting for survival in my role as a male. Oh, yes, we still struggle at times, but we have entered into God’s rest (see Matthew 11:28,29).