Lifetime Guarantee (18 page)

You’ve already “made it” with God. You are complete in Christ. How are you going to improve on perfect? I didn’t say it; He did: “
In
Him, you have been made complete” (Colossians 2:10).

Are you guilty or forgiven there in heaven? Can anything guilty be in heaven? “And when you
were
dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh [lost], He
made
you alive together with Him,
having forgiven us all
our transgressions” (Colossians 2:13, emphasis added). You
are
forgiven—totally!

You are no longer inadequate but more than a conqueror. You
are
victorious through Him (see Romans 8:37). The circumstances may not always support this view, but the Word does. Whose scorecard are you reading, anyway? We are resting in
His
victory. It’s a mind rest, not an emotion. Meditate on it! Appropriate it!

“There is therefore
now
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, emphasis added). You’re not condemned! Yes, the Lord will condemn your sinful performance, and you will experience the accompanying conviction. This must be dealt with in a biblical manner, but the verse clearly states that God will never condemn your person, your identity; He only rejects your sinful performance.

Do you see who you are? I understand that you may not
feel
like this. Your feeler won’t agree with the message, but your mind can. God’s Word says that these beautiful things are now the fabric from which the new you has been cut. You must simply accept God’s statements about “any man in Christ” at face value and step forward as if this were all true about
you
.

Don’t be intimidated by your emotions and the “logical arguments” that are continually being served up to your mind by indwelling sin.

The Word says in 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 that all Christians died in Christ and were reborn as different people who are not to live to get their needs met, but for His service. It says that we are no longer known by our old identity, but by who we
now are
(2 Corinthians 5:16). “We are ambassadors for Christ” (verse 20). Ambassadors are citizens of their home country who reside in a foreign land as representatives of their homeland. That’s us! We are spiritual citizens of heaven who live on Satan’s turf as representatives of our Father God.

In essence, God says in Colossians 3:1-4, “Now then, Son, I want you to understand what your true identity is and the method I have designed to enable you to live it out. If you
have been
raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, because you’re
in
Him there, too, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”

What “things above” should you think about? Well, don’t dwell on golden streets and mansions. That won’t transform you. Rather, see yourself relaxing there in Christ. All your needs are met. Your Father has everything under control. He is totally accepting you and loving you. You are a son or daughter in the Father’s forever family. You are holy and blameless before Him. You have become a “partaker of the divine nature.”
Think
on these things. Pump this truth through and through your mind. It’s reality!

“When Christ, who is our life…’’ (Colossians 3:4). Wow!
He is
your life! Right now, He is the only life you have. If He were ever to leave you, we’d know it right off, because your earthsuit would fall over dead. Your soul and spirit could not reside in it without His life, because your old life died in Him at Calvary. So much for losing your salvation.

Since Christ is your life, wouldn’t it be a normal thing for you to let Him express His life through you? Jesus is the only one who ever lived a victorious life, and the indwelling Holy Spirit is the way He can now express that life through you. That wouldn’t make you another Jesus, as some teach, any more than you were another Adam when you used to be in Adam. It’s just that now, instead of Adam’s life of self-service, you have Christ’s life of other-service. It’s His
life
we have, not His personality.

On the other hand, if you don’t let Him live through you, you are “presenting the members of your body to [the power of] sin” (Romans 6:13). Your motivation will be to get your needs met. You will be depending on yourself. That’s the same “life” a lost person lives.

Don’t assume, either, that Christ’s living through you means you’re to be passive. You’re not to sit there until you
feel
Him take over. He will express the same life through you that He lived through His own earthsuit and personality, a life of obedience to the Father. He lived a life of service, not survival. But we have to
act
it out, believing it’s Christ doing it through us, by faith.

First, His life must manifest itself in and be most noticeable in your
own home,
to your family. Next, it must be obvious to the brethren. Jesus said, “Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35
TLB
). Finally, it must be demonstrated to the lost. Unless the lost can see Christ in and through you as you interact with your own physical and spiritual families, your words to them will be a brass gong. As you allow Christ to live through you, you can actually be victorious in this. You can
act
lovingly.

Please listen. Such a life of victory is open for you to appropriate as your own. God is in fact
commanding
all Christians to “set their minds” on the way things really are. That’s not optional; it’s a direct command from your God to you.
Think,
meditate, attend to, contemplate. You are a new person resting in heaven (side B), while simultaneously here on planet earth, Christ is expressing His loving life through you (side A). We’ll represent this “mind set” with a series of lines and label it Channel #2, the
reality
channel. (See Figure 7.1.)

“Setting your mind”
must
be attainable or God wouldn’t command you to do it. In fact, you do it every day. Let me illustrate.

Imagine you are walking down a gravel road in Arkansas. Put a cool creek bubbling alongside the road. Hear the water gurgling? Let’s make it an early morning in the month of May. Put a red bird in a tree and have him singing. Imagine a light ground mist on the meadow across the road. Now put a couple of cows in the pasture. See how easily you can choose to let your mind get caught up in this scene?

Now let’s change the imagery. I want you to set your mind on eating a hamburger at your favorite burger restaurant. It needs just a tad more seasoning. Put some on it. Now take another bite. Ah, that’s better. Take a swig of your favorite beverage. Let’s make it a really hot summer day, and you’re dying for a drink. Feel it going down? Um, so refreshing.

Change the scene again. Set your mind on driving your car down the freeway. Let’s make it night, and you’re out in the country. A truck is stalled on the shoulder ahead. See the flares? Smell the diesel fumes as you whiz by? You constantly set your mind, don’t you? It’s a daily practice.

Perhaps it will help you to picture yourself seated in heaven if you can think of it as a place much closer than “somewhere out beyond the stars.” The Scriptures teach that the direction of heaven is upward, but there is no indication it is 40 million light-years beyond Pluto. Quite the contrary, Abraham and the rich man carried on a conversation from heaven to hell within sight of each other (see Luke 16:19-31). I don’t know how far up heaven is, but it’s not going to be heresy for us to pretend that it’s only one inch above the earth. That’s up!

Study Figure 7.2 to see yourself at rest in heaven while facing life on earth simultaneously, allowing Christ to express
His
life through you. This is “setting your mind on things above” in a practical sense. Set your mind (by faith) that you are holy, blameless, righteous, and accepted, with all your needs (not greeds) supplied. Simultaneously set your mind that Christ is expressing His life through you to meet your daily circumstances. You and I are not to worry about life: “Be anxious for nothing” (Philippians 4:6). That’s not something to be
felt;
it’s the act of setting your mind. You can’t set your feeler, but let your feeler be God’s problem.

Now let’s build on our new picture of where heaven is. You are in heaven (one inch off the floor). You are relaxing in Christ near the right elbow of God the Father. How many troubles do you have there? How nervous are you? How badly do you hurt emotionally? How rejected are you? How worried are you about what tomorrow holds? Isn’t it peaceful there? While you are resting there, imagine the Father reaching around you with His strong right arm and snuggling you up to His chest. Can you smell how clean His robe is and feel its texture on your cheek?

Come on now, you guys with your feeler stuck so much that you’re uncomfortable with the picture I’m painting. If your feeler won’t cooperate, rain on it!
Set your mind on this scene anyway.
Let God worry about taking care of your stuck feeler in His own good time. Just set your mind on this scene because this
is
reality, Channel #2. Pause now and “set your mind on things above” for
five whole minutes.
Go! (Sin just said to you, “Oh, I won’t do that right now. I get his point. I’ll just read on.”) Come on now. Do what I asked you. Please. You’ll love what will happen inside you.

Friend, what if you set your mind on the reality I’ve described for about three or four hours each day? Not all at once, but fifteen seconds here, a minute there, and so on. What would happen to you? You’d be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Because, you see, this process would leave you four hours less time to set your mind on Channel #1. And what would happen to those green highways in your brain because of that disuse? The same thing that happened to your high school algebra. They would dissipate. Tell me, by what process did you forget your algebra? Did you try to “overcome” it by attacking it, or did you simply “set your mind” on something else and the forgetting took care of itself?

Do you see it? One of the critical keys to victory over your flesh is consistently “setting your mind” in the reality of Channel #2. Don’t concentrate your energies on fighting against setting your mind on Channel #1. That would be concentrating on “death,” which would effectively cut you off from your life, Christ. You are dead to Channel #1, so why fight against it? Simply
act
as though you’re dead to it.

Being dead to sin, however, is not sufficient by itself. You are simultaneously alive to God. Victory lies in concentrating your energies in generating Channel #2 thoughts with your sound mind. Start ’em up! See yourself seated in Christ, resting while in this circumstance. See yourself loved, totally accepted, godly, and holy. This is
your
life, “for… your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Your obedience to truth will result in light conquering darkness.
This isn’t a world-system, counterfeit power of positive thinking, or Eastern religious meditation. It’s the Bible. Nor am I teaching man-made psychotherapy with Scriptures attached to help you play Lord of the Ring more effectively. This is the Bible. God didn’t give you an option of setting your mind or not as you choose. He has commanded you to do it.
And when you do it, you’re walking in
reality.
When you choose not to do it, you are walking in
deception,
controlled through the thoughts by the Evil One in Channel #1.