Introducing Andrew

I have suffered with anxiety since my early teens, so that’s getting close to 30 odds years now! The anxiety has caused me no end of grief, from contributing to migraines, saying things to friends and loves ones that I didn’t mean and holding back from opportunities, just to name a few quick things. As anyone who has suffered with anxiety will know, there is never any peace or relaxation…ever! I guess over time I found ‘my’ way of coping, such as wearing clothes that hid the sweating and drinking alcohol. Finally I have now come to the point where my body is breaking down due to being 'on edge' 24/7. I have IBS, gluten and lactose issues. I’ve been in pain most days and been suffering bloating. But, on the positive side I have also been growing in the Lord over the last 14 years and He has finally brought me to place where it’s time to deal with this anxiety. I know that the Lord doesn’t want me to continue this way and I trust He will set me free! His plan for my life has been unfolding more lately and it appears to me what He has in mind won’t work well with anxiety! I look forward to a day where I can honestly go to bed at night, or paddle in my kayak or spend time with my wife and kids and feel relaxed!

Andrew72 wrote:

I have suffered with anxiety since my early teens, so that’s getting close to 30 odds years now! The anxiety has caused me no end of grief, from contributing to migraines, saying things to friends and loves ones that I didn’t mean and holding back from opportunities, just to name a few quick things. As anyone who has suffered with anxiety will know, there is never any peace or relaxation…ever! I guess over time I found ‘my’ way of coping, such as wearing clothes that hid the sweating and drinking alcohol. Finally I have now come to the point where my body is breaking down due to being 'on edge' 24/7. I have IBS, gluten and lactose issues. I’ve been in pain most days and been suffering bloating. But, on the positive side I have also been growing in the Lord over the last 14 years and He has finally brought me to place where it’s time to deal with this anxiety. I know that the Lord doesn’t want me to continue this way and I trust He will set me free! His plan for my life has been unfolding more lately and it appears to me what He has in mind won’t work well with anxiety! I look forward to a day where I can honestly go to bed at night, or paddle in my kayak or spend time with my wife and kids and feel relaxed!

Welcome to the site Andrew. I, along with most people here know exactly what you are going through. It seems like you have caught a revelation that you will be receiving your healing soon. I had my anxiety for 20 years and it was truly debilitating, but now I'm healed. If you can elaborate more on your anxiety, I might be able to give some good advice and direction. What do you think the root cause is? And, what exactly does your fear entail? I'm responding to your other post too.

Thank you Statesman63. I guess the difficulty I have had with being confident of finding the ‘root cause’ has been the fact that my mother has suffered from anxiety all her life and she also has obsessive–compulsive tendencies. So I have grown up in an environment filled with anxiety and tension. Of course, this is quite possibly the ‘root cause’ for me(?). What has made things worse I guess, is that I am an only child, so I received all the attention. So obviously a large amount of this attention was driven by anxiety and that produced negative attention due to over-zealous concern and worry.
Anxiety for me has been an inability to feel relaxed, ever. So, even if there is nothing stressful going on, I feel anxious and tense. But, if things get stressful, then I get very anxious and often get migraines, can’t sleep, can’t concentrate and get crabby easily, which is not good for my kids. I’ve lived a double-life pretending to be ‘normal’ and ‘out-going’ on one hand and on the other, avoiding stressful situations, large crowds or being the focus of anything. Anxiety and fear prevents me doing simple things, such as, using urinals!, which sometimes means I hang on way too long. If I try, I just stand there and can’t go! This has also caused embarrassment and resentment in the past for me as my ‘mates’ would stir me up about it. I was always getting in trouble with my friends because I’d often say and do things that I didn’t mean due to the constant anxious feelings. I do get in strife at work on occasions as I over-react to situations, then I look like a twit. I work in a stressful and negative environment delivering IT support to a large Government organisation and to be honest, I’ve started to resent my job, (yeah, I know, not good).

For many years I used alcohol to mask the anxious feelings and to try and relax. Once I got married and had children, I started having a drink most nights, just to ‘take the edge off’. The Lord eventually spoke to me about my drinking and I have now given it away and haven’t had a drop for 14 months.

But, I guess my body started to give way from the constant anxious feelings and tension, so I started getting stomach problems around 2006. I started bloating and getting indigestion. I’ve had cameras down and up, which found nothing. So the doc suggested I had IBS. For the last 6 months I haven’t been able to eat things with wheat or gluten and also milk has started to cause me issues. I must say, that I really, really miss being able to eat bread. I also miss having cereal for breakfast and some mornings I just simply stand in the pantry, gazing into space thinking, ‘what am I gonna have?’. It feels like I have been living in a prison with invisible bars. All this makes me depressed, especially during winter.

It has also affected my walk with the Lord. I don’t feel like much of a witness to my friends and work colleagues while living with anxiety and fear. I play guitar and write my own songs and playing in front of folk has been a nightmare! Once I stand up in front of everyone I get so fearful I forget the words and when I’m playing my mind runs away with silly thoughts and then I lose my place in the song and sometimes just freeze, not a good look!

Basically, I’ve had enough of ‘making peace’ with anxiety and fear and now it’s time to live in the freedom that the Lord wants and has for me! I love the Lord and I love His Word. All the other ‘issues’ I’ve had in the past were destroyed by the ‘Truth’, but this area has been the most difficult for me to tackle, perhaps because it’s been the most difficult for me to ‘quantify’ or understand. I sometimes think and wonder what it must feel like to not be anxious and I just don’t know how that must feel and that’s tuff.

I hope this all makes sense - I find not having food for a couple of days affects the brain!

I look forward to hearing what you think considering your experience - thanks again.

Everything you said makes perfect sense and you conveyed well what you are going through. And you are right: We are to stop trying to be as comfortable as we can in our anxiety and get rid of it all together. I know I can help you, but it is going to take good communication from both of us. From what you wrote, I’ve extracted the following concerns that we need to address:

hereditary problem
can’t handle stress
avoid crowds/speaking in front of people
fear of urinating incompetence
pretending to be someone else
fear of embarrassment
outbursts of strife
can’t control thoughts

I’ll address each of these in the days to come and help you rid them from your life. I am no doctor, but I think the problem with your stomach is the precursor to stomach ulcers. That usually comes with anxiety. I’ve had them and got medication for them.

Oddly enough, anxiety can be hereditarily passed down. My mother also suffers from panic attacks. She’s been doing better lately, but I’m still helping her. We can analyze the whys. The bible gives the reason. Anxiety along with all things bad is the result of sin. Even if one suffers without culpability, Adam’s sin brought such evils into this world. When sin and death are judged into the lake of fire, concurrently all effects of sin and death will cease. In the bible, children may suffer without culpableness because of the sins of their parents or even grandparents because curses of ones sins can be passed down to the 3rd and 4th generation according to the Old Testament. We have a remedy to that today. Jesus Christ is able to break lineage curses. He can stop the curse before you pass it onto your children and grandchildren. Simply praying to Him that He destroys the lineage curse through His mercy, He can and will end the curse if indeed it is a generational curse.

Concerning your fast, the great thing about Isaiah 58 is that there is a promise at the end of the chapter for the one who fasts sincerely. God will grant peace and healing to the one who undergoes such a fast and has set his heart right. Note God does not want us to try to get our hearts right. He wants us to use His grace to get our hearts right and realize that we cannot get our hearts right using our own fleshly strength and efforts. We must not rely on the flesh to cure the flesh. The flesh wants to sin—that’s its nature. We are not to create New Years resolutions because that is relying on the flesh; we are not to go off of will power, rather, we are to go using the power of Jesus to correct the sin that is in us. I’ll give 2 supporting passages: Colossians 1:29, “To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me.” And Galatians 3:1-5, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law [using the flesh], or by believing what you heard [faith in His power]? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?...Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?”

Paul says in that passage that you Galatians received your salvation by faith, and not because you attempted anything. And he asks them why then are they not applying that same power that saved them to eternity to their current lives in accessing miracles from God and power for their daily struggles. If they want a miracle, it is not by works (religion; going to church; praying a certain amount of times per day). He says that our focus should be on the one who gives miracles, not on religious lists of duties. We do the duties because he commanded us and out of gratitude to His goodness, but we are not to put our faith in those duties to heal us. The focus of our faith in the Person of Jesus Christ is the access and key to our power and miracles from God. That power will stop us from sinning and that power will heal us from all fear. From that power we can truly say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We call this the power of Grace: that is, God providing and doing for us what we are unable to do ourselves. When you truly understand this power of grace and how to access it, your healing will quickly come. This and knowing your true identity in Jesus Christ and what that means will guarantee your healing. Once you know this truth, the truth will set you free.

I want you know that when it comes to fear and anxiety, God PROMISES healing to that. No other illness does God promise a healing to but this one. You and I were blessed, that if we have to suffer in this life that we were granted a suffering that God Himself guarantees He will heal those who suffer from it. Read Psalm 85:8 and Psalm 26:3. It’s a promise. That’s why I know you will be healed soon just like I got healed. And I had the darkest anxiety and depression.

Please keep communication of your thoughts and concerns. I will be responding again to the things on the list I extracted either tomorrow or the next day. Good communication is key to getting to discovering the root causes of your anxiety and destroying it at the root. I’ll keep you in my prayers. I wish you a wonderful day.

Statesman63

[This is an edit addition. One more passage I'll add to the part that I just bolded is in Philippians Paul said put NO confidence in the flesh.]

Thanks for you response. Yes, I guess now looking at it I can see the areas you mentioned. I probably should have written it out simular to this before. I just want to make a comment on each area you raised:

hereditary problem – over the years I have had ministry at various times and I have prayed and asked Jesus to cut off curses and hereditary issues – so is it possible to ‘miss’ things?

can’t handle stress – yes, this would be spot-on.

avoid crowds/speaking in front of people – although I mostly try and avoid these things, I do find myself doing them often – either at work or at church, but, yeah I do find it tuff.

fear of urinating incompetence – I assume this is a classical fear symptom? I wasn’t like this until High School, prior to that I was fine.

pretending to be someone else – never really seen it that way, but yeah, I suppose so.

fear of embarrassment – definitely

outbursts of strife – yes, but this has eased significantly and especially so in the last 6 months.

can’t control thoughts – probably give in to easily.

I guess it may help us if I give you a brief understanding of my testimony?
I lived in a Christian home from around 11 years old and was very fortunate to be exposed to strong Biblical teaching. At the age of 18 I told the Lord that I was going to do things my way – I didn’t ‘deny’ Him, just did my own thing. Then for the next 9 years I created quiet a mess for myself. The Lord then called me back to Him and I have been on an amazing journey now for the last 13 years. I love to study God’s Word and I co-lead a Bible study group in my home. We put together the studies ourselves through the guidance the Holy Spirit and this has helped me grow massively.

Before undertaking my fast and prayer I thought back to how the Lord has delivered me from other things in my life and it has always been through the Truth. Once the Truth had dropped from my brain to my heart, then freedom came. I do understand that we can not earn our healing through good works and I also understand that the Lord looks at our hearts and that’s where He judges us. My desire not to sin these days doesn’t come from a place of trying to follow rules or laws, but I simply do not want to grieve or hurt my Lord and God. I desire to follow His requirements because I love Him and fear Him. I rely on His Grace everyday as, like most, I fail everyday somewhere along the line, but I try and keep a “short account” with Him.

Through our candid conversations at the Bible study group we have been looking at the area of healing and working through many issues. It seems to me that many things have lead to this fast and prayer and even finding this forum.

Tomorrow is Good Friday and the first day after my fast plus I have 5 days away from work, so this will help me consolidate what the Lord has been speaking to me about. I may not be able to get on the forum as much over Easter due to church and family commitments. I will be playing guitar at church on Sunday and I am looking forward to worshipping Him.

Thanks for highlighting Psalm 85:8 – it is those verses that help get the Truth from the brain to the heart!

Thank you again and may the Lord bless you over Easter.

Let’s discuss controlling your thoughts. What I am going to teach will sound quite strange. It definitely goes against conventional thinking. Few teach it; few understand it; few know it, but I contend to you that it is not only accurate, but as we will see, also biblical. Learning this will lead you one great step closer to your complete healing from all your anxiety. You’ll have to follow me closely with an open mind.

Before I state this “absurd” truth, let me first point out 1 John 5:9, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed abides in him; he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” The NIV inaccurately renders the clause, “he cannot sin” to “he cannot go on sinning,” but it literally reads, “he cannot sin.” First impression of this verse leads us to the logical conclusion that this verse has to be incorrect. I sin, and I know that I am a Christian, born of God. How then can this verse read that I cannot sin when I actually do sin? We have to realize that this verse is not talking about what we actually do, but rather who we are in Christ. It is indeed true that the Christian cannot sin: that is, a Christian is completely unable to commit a sin. Why? Because they have been born of God, as the verse says. They are completely different and transformed from what they used to be. The moment they have accepted Christ into their heart, they have been immediately changed by God because the righteousness of Jesus becomes the righteousness of the believer, and the believer is now unable to sin. Please stay with me here…I know your concerns.

We have to understand that who we are is not the sinful flesh that surrounds us, but rather we are the renewed spirits that indwells the flesh. The sin that we do is initiated from the flesh of our bodies, not from the real us, the changed us; the new creation us (2 Corinthians 5:17). So here is the absurd truth, and we will be looking at scripture to prove that this truth is true: Any thought that sets itself up against the will or commandments of God are not our thoughts because we cannot sin. What we can do is to choose to take on that thought that did not come from us and we can act on it and that then leads us to sin, but we have to understand that any sinful thought did not come or originate from us. For the Christian, sinful thoughts come from one of two places: they come from either from the flesh, or they come from implantation of Satan or his demons, implanting that thought into our minds. We then do have the choice and freewill to take that thought and act on it, therefore becoming guilty of sin.

Our hands are flesh. They tell us to touch when God says don’t touch. Our feet are flesh. They want us to go places where God does not want us to go. Our eyes are flesh. They tell us to covet, lust and idolize what God says to not covet, lust or idolize after. Our tongues and mouths are flesh. They tell us to gossip, curse, cuss, deride when God says to only encourage, build up and love. Our bodies are flesh. They want us to feel things outside of marriage, when God has ordained His guidelines and restrictions of sex only to the context of marriage. Our ears want to hear gossip and self-narcissistic, prideful boasting of ourselves from others. Our brains are flesh, by which all sinful thoughts come from and by which we act.

Before we open up the bible, let’s just ponder what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were created perfectly without sin. They could not sin because they were created perfect. Sin could therefore not come from them. If only they had eaten from the tree of life instead of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in their perfected states then they would have been locked into their righteous states and would have avoided sin for an eternity. That’s why they were kicked out of the garden and God posted an angel with a flaming sword at the garden’s gates to keep Adam and Eve out after they sinned. God did them a favor because had they eaten from the tree of life in their sinful states then they would have been locked into sin forever and Jesus Christ would not be able to help them or mankind. Luckily for us one day, Revelation 22 tells us that we will once again be able to eat from the tree of life. Why? Because Jesus has perfected us on the cross and now we are once again perfect, so therefore we can eat from that tree without any effort of righteous acts on our part because He sealed us up in His righteousness in Christ and that tree will no longer go against us. It locks the eater into the state they are in, but we in Christ are already locked into righteousness, so that tree will not affect us negatively anymore. So the question I have to raise is where did sin come from? From man? No, God created man perfectly (interestingly, He gave man the commandment to multiply before they sinned. His will was for man to not sin and still populate this Earth with righteous people). But no, sin came from Satan. That is, the thought of the idea of sin came from Satan, and man and woman with their freewill had the ability to choose and act on that idea, therefore taking on the sin themselves and becoming guilty of it.

What are we made of then? We are made up of a spirit, soul, and body. (In addition, God gives the believer His Holy Spirit.) The body is not us. It just houses us. We are really just the soul and the spirit. The body (or flesh) has been contaminated by sin. For everyone who is not a Christian, and to all who are born before they take on Christ, the body, soul and spirit are ALL contaminated by the sin passed down from Adam’s seed. All mankind are born into sin. The moment we believe in Christ we are new creatures, and the soul and spirit (the real us) are purified in righteousness, but the body still houses the sin we were born with and the sin we’ve accumulated up until the time we became righteous. We will see that Jesus put to death the flesh: that is, he killed the flesh. The flesh is inoperative for the believer. What that means is that the flesh only has the sin it accumulated up until the time we became righteous. That is why it is best to save people as early in life as possible because the sin they accumulate is stored in their fleshly bodies and remains in their flesh throughout their lives. Jesus did not die and resurrect to save our bodies. We will drop our bodies when we die (or, as the bible says of the Christian, when we “sleep.” Christians never really die.). When we “sleep,” our spirits and souls will be ushered to Him (Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord). And at the Rapture, those who died in Christ will come with Him in the sky, and the Earthly bodies that rotted in the ground will resurrect, fly up and join the person, and the entire person will be transformed in a twinkling of an eye and the entire person will be perfect INCLUDING THE BODY!!!! What a great day that will be. Those alive at the time will just after that occurs (the dead in Christ rises first), will float up to the sky to join the others and they too will have their bodies changed to be perfect. Our bodies will then be like Jesus’ resurrected body. So there will be no more sinful influences or sinful thoughts implanted into our minds because that only came from the sinful flesh.

Side note here: We therefore, are no longer sinners. We are saints who sin. It is important to know who we are in Christ because if we think we are sinners, we will act like who we think we are. We need to know that we are Saints and therefore we will learn to act according to who we are. It grieves me to hear Christians say, “I am a sinner.” No!!! Jesus changed you!! He did not JUST take away your sin! He also changed you and made you a righteous saint. The accurate statement is “I was a sinner, but now, through Christ, I am a Saint who sins.” Paul, so concerned with this, says in 2 Corinthians 5:16, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” This is the verse just prior to the verse of him telling us who we are in Christ: our new selves. Paul says that we no longer call Saints sinners! In the New Testament Scriptures, Christians are only called “sinners” ONE TIME and that is not in the context of who the Christian is. Christians are called Saints countless times (I don’t feel like counting how many) and only one time are they referred to as “sinners.” And again, where it does call us sinners, it is not talking about our new nature. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that our old nature is gone, and the new has come. What does “gone” mean? It means no longer here. Yet, we hear all the time preachers saying that we still have our old nature. We do not have our old nature. We have a new nature in Christ, a perfected, righteous, nature that cannot sin. The word “Saints” does not just distinguish a family of sinners from God’s family as many take it to mean. It refers to our new nature and state of being.

If you are curious of what one verse calls us sinners, it is James 4:8 (note, it did not come from Paul who said that he no longer regards or calls Christians this anymore.) James is talking to Christians, and he throughout his book speaks to them from a fleshly perspective, and not from the perspective of their new selves. Let me explain by giving examples. He says in 3:8, “no man can tame the tongue.” It’s funny, when I was teaching adult Sunday School, I got into a dispute with a minister in the audience concerning this verse. I said we can tame the tongue and I’ll show you how. He interrupted me and said, “NO!!! The verse says we cannot tame the tongue!!” After trying to calm him down, I went through my explanation, and he still contended that no man can tame the tongue. He contended that we are all evil, and that we cannot control cursing, lying, gossiping, or anything evil that comes from the mouth, and that we cannot control sinning. It is as if he uses this verse as a licensure or excuse for him to continue to cuss, speak evil and sin. I went on to tell him that I indeed have tamed my tongue (I’ll tell you how in a moment). I told him I had not uttered a cuss work in over 10 years. When I stub my toe I say, “Ouch!! Pain!!!” He then said, “What if I was to come up there right now and punch you in the face? I’d bet you’d curse me then.” This shows how crazy this guy was (and he was indeed a crazy man). I told him even then I would not curse him or have it in my heart to curse him or retaliate. I wish I had in mind at the time, I would have told him that such a thing happened to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was preaching at the time on loving your enemies, turning the other cheek when they strike you and to retaliate with love when they hate you and do evil to you. Well, a white hateful racist was in the audience at the time. He got up. Walked up to Dr. King while he was still preaching, and punched him as hard as he could in the stomach. Dr. King’s entourage got up to restrain the man, but when King gathered himself he told them “No, let him go.” He did nothing, didn’t press charges, and continued his sermon.

How does a man tame the tongue? Is it impossible? Yes it is. The verse in James tells us so. But a verse in Luke says, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” The question we should raise is “Is it impossible to God to tame our tongue?” Of course the answer is a resounding no! God can change our tongue when we submit to His power and realize that we cannot do it ourselves. James is speaking from a fleshly perspective, telling us what we cannot do, that is, what the flesh cannot do. Paul elsewhere speaks from the perspective of our new selves in Christ and says, “I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.” Doing all things includes taming the tongue and directly contradicts James’ statement. It does not contradict James’ statement when we realize that James is speaking from the perspective of what the flesh cannot do, and Paul is speaking from the perspective of what our new selves in Christ can do. The flesh and the new self are two distinct entities. There are other examples in James that shows he is speaking from the perspective of the flesh, but I’ll let those go for the sake of time (this is becoming a long write-up).

The other verses uses the word “sinners” refers to the state of a person before he or she becomes a Christian. An example is Romans 5:8, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That is not calling the Christian a sinner. It is calling the person without Christ a sinner, saying that Jesus died for us before we realized that we needed Him to save us, which demonstrates God’s love for us. Jesus died for us while we were still ugly looking and wretched to Jesus and God the Father.

Job 32:8 further explains what we are made up of. It reads, “But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.” If we consider animals, what are they made up of? I’d say, in light of this verse in Job, that animals could only be made up of a soul and body. For only man was given a spirit that gives us the understanding that God exists, and that we need God. All creatures have the soul, including man and animals, that is what gives us life to live and survive. But we have the special thing called understanding that comes from the spirit given only to humankind. God says in Isaiah 43:7 that the reason God created man was to give Him glory. We need the intelligence of understanding to give Him glory.

The NIV inaccurately renders the word, “flesh” to “sinful nature.” As we just saw, the Christian does not have a sinful nature. The word flesh, therefore, should remain rendered as “flesh.”

If I did not convince you in this post, in my next post we will open our bibles and study this concept of our sinful thoughts are not our thoughts. It is throughout the New Testament. And if I still have time after going through it, I will also give the application of what that means for you losing your anxiety. If it goes too long, I’ll give the application in a third post. Then we will move on to something else on your list. Seriously, knowing truth will set you free and this is a great truth to know, and to know how to apply this in your life. Please post any questions, concerns or comments you may have. God bless you. I hope you enjoy your Easter too.

I found a post I wrote where I actually did count how many times a Christian is called a saint in the New Testament. We are called Saints approximately 62 times as opposed to the one time we are called “sinners.” That should tell us something. God wants us to think of ourselves as Saints and not the sinners most Christians like to think of themselves as. Surely it is true that mankind is nothing without Christ. We are all sinners apart from him. Our righteous acts are like filthy rags to a holy God. Before God we are like grasshoppers. Isaiah 40:17 says that mankind is worthless and regarded as less than nothing before a holy God. The reason why God can say we are worthless before Him is because He compares us to Himself. When we are compared to a holy God all mankind fails miserably. We are all sinners not fit for a holy God. But God through His grace and love was able to overcome His holy and wrathful side of His personality with his graceful and loving side of His personality and send us His Son which gives worthless mankind worth, righteousness, and approval before His pure discerning judgmental eyes. But while all mankind are born sinners deserving of death, when we become saved, God does not want us to refer to ourselves in that manner anymore because He no longer refers to us or sees us that way. When God looks at the believer, He sees His Son. He now says, like in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…”

Last time we briefly covered some Scripture to show that our sinful thoughts are not our thoughts. Today I would like for us to do a deeper study of the Scripture to substantiate the truth of this postulation. I won’t have time for application here (though we will naturally cover some application). I’ll have to cover application in my next email. Please follow along with your bible opened.

Let’s make some brief observations in 2 Corinthians 10. Verses 3-5 reads, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” We see here that Paul is saying we are in a war: a spiritual war. He says that we cannot fight a spiritual war using physical tools. We instead need spiritual weapons to have any effect on spiritual enemies. Would I would like to point out is that Paul is taking captive his thoughts that set themselves up against the knowledge of God, and make them obedient to Christ. In any war there has to be at least 2 parties involved. No war consists of just one party. Nothing wars against itself. There are 2 distinct parties involved here: Paul is one party, and his thoughts that set themselves up against the knowledge of God are the other party. In other words, Paul is not those evil thoughts. Paul is the Paul Revere of whenever he spots the enemy of evil thoughts and he captures them and makes them obedient—note, not obedient to himself; rather, obedient to Christ. There is a lot of application here that we will come back to later on. I am just pointing out here the two separate, distinct parties involved in the war Paul is speaking of here. They are not one and the same. It is also important to note here that Paul says that those evil thoughts derive from a spiritual source: a spiritual war.

To thoroughly cover this idea of how our good thoughts and our bad thoughts relate to us requires that we know who we are in Christ. This entire subject is covered in great detail in Romans Chapters 6-8. When we cover those 3 chapters, we will understand clearly our new identity in Christ and where our thoughts come from. These chapters are only speaking of Christians. They do not apply to non-Christians. I’ll disclose this point early: all good thoughts you think come from you; that is, your new self that was made holy in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit also shares with us God’s good holy thoughts and guidance. All bad and evil thoughts are not your thoughts. They come from either the flesh, which is not you, or from Satan or his evil goons that whispered that thought into your mind. Remember, in 1 John 5 we read that we are now unable to sin.

The above passage in 2 Cor. 10 shows that there are 2 you’s. The flesh you, which is not the real you, but evil thoughts can come from the flesh. And the spirit you, which is you. This helps us to better understand a lot of double personality verses in the New Testament, such as “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak (the flesh I) then I am strong (the spirit I).” We will see this double personality in our study of Romans 6-8, and see which “I” is the real “I” for one “I” is not the real “I.” We will see our true identity in Christ.

Let’s start in Romans 6. I’ll try to condense this the best I can. I might have to do this in two posts if it does go too long.

Hey, that was my introduction. I’m going to bed now. I decided to post this incomplete post anyway. When I write again I’ll pick up right at Romans 6, and we’ll look at 6-8, and then consider the applications and then move on to the next thing on your list. When we finish your list, I have some great ideas that I will offer that I am sure will bring your healing to fruition. I am determined to help you because 30 years is too long for anyone to suffer with this terrible ailment, and especially since I know that God cures us from it. I hate panic attacks so much that I don’t want anyone to suffer from them. I suffered too long myself: 20 years!!! Those were dark, dark 20 years. My panic attacks kept me from even walking in public. I would walk, but I would walk so uncoordinated that I looked like a complete fool before everyone. I could not control it. The moment I would step into the house, it would immediately go away and I would then walk just fine. Soon as I step out the house, I would be terribly uncoordinated, like a madman, I couldn't control it, and I panicked greatly before everyone and had great migraines and everything. It was like a demon torturing me. And God blessed me with a complete healing. He will heal you too!!! Good nite!!!

By the way, I hope that I am not typing too much that you bear to read or continue discussing. I know I am tying a lot to read, and I personally wish I didn't have to. But in my mind, I see no other choice. What I have to say must be said and understood for you to see this power God has given us to overcome all the great fear of anxiety panic attacks. Everything I am saying to you has worked for my complete healing, so I KNOW it works. I wish it wasn't long. I feel I have to apologize for that.

After we look at Romans 6-8, just realized that I have to end that discussion by briefly looking at Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1 will be brief. I'm trying to keep everything as brief as I can, but it is difficult because Romans 6-8 is too rich and we need to understand many things that it is saying to understand how to control our thoughts and make them obedient to Christ.

And I really like this paragraph you typed:

"Before undertaking my fast and prayer I thought back to how the Lord has delivered me from other things in my life and it has always been through the Truth. Once the Truth had dropped from my brain to my heart, then freedom came. I do understand that we can not earn our healing through good works and I also understand that the Lord looks at our hearts and that’s where He judges us. My desire not to sin these days doesn’t come from a place of trying to follow rules or laws, but I simply do not want to grieve or hurt my Lord and God. I desire to follow His requirements because I love Him and fear Him. I rely on His Grace everyday as, like most, I fail everyday somewhere along the line, but I try and keep a “short account” with Him."

Your understanding of the difference between grace and legalism is a great thing and is very important to your healing process.

Hi Andrew. I need to know that you are still with me. I'm hoping my long commentary and responses turn you away.

Romans 6:1-2 reads, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase [or “that grace may abound”]? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” This is really a continuation of Paul’s thought from chapter 5 where he said that the law was given so that sin would increase, but where sin increased, grace increased even more. Let’s clear up that confusing statement in chapter 5 where Paul said that the law was given so that sin may increase. He is talking about our awareness of sin increasing. How can I know what sin is if I do not have the law to tell me what sin is? How can I know that I am speeding if there are no speed limit signs posted up? But when I see a speed limit sign and see how fast I’m speeding over the given standard, then I feel convicted because I know that I am guilty of breaking that law. One reason the law of the OT was given was to show us our sin, but it was never given to help us conquer sin. There is no power in the law itself. It is only the mirror. The power is in God’s grace. The speed limit sign does not give me the power to refrain from going over it. Only the grace of my car manufacturer who created brakes in the car gave me the power to overcome the law of the speed limit sign. So in Romans 6:1-2, Paul is saying even though God gives us more grace the more sin we commit, don’t play with God. God is not to be played with. He does not give us power over sin so that we can keep committing it. He did not give us our brakes to our car so that we can go party. He gave it so that we can have power over the sin.

Verse 3, “Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul is breaking down in these chapters what exactly happened at our conversion to Christianity. He is not talking of course, of water baptism. In Paul’s day, conversion so closely followed baptism that the two basically were considered the same event. He is speaking of our spiritual baptism. At our conversion, God joined us to Jesus’ death at the cross. What that means is just as Jesus died and conquered sin, our sin was nailed to the cross with Him. Our sin is no more. We will see what my statement, “Our sin is no more,” means soon.

Verse 4, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Note here that Paul didn’t just say your sin was buried with Jesus, but that we ourselves were buried with Christ. We underwent the whole cross and tomb thing with Jesus. We are talking about our sin nature: who we were before we accepted Christ. We had a sin nature, and sin was literally intertwined within our fabric of being in our spirit, soul and body. We, as I stated earlier (and will see more evidence soon), are not our bodies. We are our spirit and soul housed within our bodies. When we had a sin nature the sin resided in all 3 areas of us. But at our conversion, the sin in the real us (our spirit and soul) died and was buried with Jesus. Jesus left the flesh (or body) as is until He raises up new bodies for us. The second part of this verse alludes to what Paul is about to emphasize soon: we not only died with Christ, but we were also raised with Christ.

Most Christians don’t get the second part of verse 4. They know they died with Christ, but they still think they are in the graveyard. They still think they are sinners and have not been resurrected with Christ. They are still wearing their Lazarus grave clothes and are proudly wearing them claiming, “I’m a sinner!” Not realizing that when we raised with Christ; not realizing Jesus said to us, “Loose them of their grave clothes! and come alive in Christ!”

Verse 5, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” Having joined Christ like that in his death, how much more does God the Father join us to Jesus in the life of resurrection that he raised to from the dead?! What life did He raise to? He raised to a life of no sin. He took our sins with Him to the grave, but when He rose, He got up with no sin at all. God joined us with Him in that resurrection so that now we are raised with a double victory: 1) our sins are dead, buried and conquered in the grave through Christ, and 2) we are also raised with Him in righteousness. Again, this is talking about our sin nature. We ourselves are completely righteous because we raised with Him.

Verse 6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin…” That is a key phrase: “the body of sin.” Paul is going to say, “this body of death” in chapter 7, and “this body is dead” in chapter 8. The body is where our sin remains now that we (our spirit and soul) are purified of sin. Our bodies are still contaminated with sin. Our bodies technically have a sin nature, but you and I technically do not have a sin nature. We will return to this thought soon. This says that our old selves were crucified. Last I checked, crucified means dead. Last I checked, death means no longer living, breathing, or active. Last I checked, a dead person cannot move, talk, walk, or do anything. Our old selves are dead. That means….dead. There is no old self anymore. It has been crucified with Jesus Christ. We have no sin nature residing in us anymore. We are residing in the sin nature if you want to put it that way because we are residing in this body of death until we die and escape it. Consider, soon as we escape our bodies, we are present with the Lord. The bible says, “Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” But if we still had our sin nature, as many Christians like to say we do, then that verse couldn’t be possible because absent from the body, we would still need to get rid of our sin in order to come into the presence of a holy God because we still have our sin natures. But we have no sin in us at this very moment, which is why we can just step right out of our shell of a sinful body and be right into the presence of God instantaneously. If we were still sinners, saved by grace, Jesus would have to die on the cross one more time to finish making us pure before he can usher us on home. We are Saints and only Saints. We are no longer sinners, but Saints who sin because we are trapped in our bodies of sinful flesh.

The term “flesh” in the New Testament literally means “flesh”. It is not synonymous with “sin nature.” It is synonymous with: muscle, skin, organs, bone, brain matter, etc. But in that flesh, sin resides.

Back to verse 6… “we are no longer slaves to sin.” We are no longer slaves to sin because we have been severed from it. Sin once controlled us. Now we just think it controls us, but in reality, we have power over it. Satan wants us to think we are still sinners under the control of sin, when in reality we are no longer under its control because it was buried with Christ in the grave, and as we will see in verse 18 we have also put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and are instead slaves to righteousness!

Verse 7, “because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” It seems to me like verse 7 is a hidden verse to many Christians. They’ll quote to you Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.” They’ll marvel at that verse knowing how short from God’s glory we all stand (in actuality, we stood short of His glory before we believed. Now that we believe, we no longer fall short of His glory. Not because of anything we did or anything in us, but only because of the Righteousness of Jesus that He gave us from Himself. Romans 3:23 is a past-tense verse for the believer. It is only present tense for those who do not know Christ. Christians usually fail to quote Romans 3:24: “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” You can’t quote verse 23 without verse 24 because you would be stopping in the middle of a sentence. So here in Romans 6:7, it says that we have been freed from sin. Why? Because we died to it. Raises the question: If I have been freed from sin, why then do I keep sinning? Why is it so difficult for me to stop sinning? Why am I so addicted to sin? Paul will answer these questions in the following verses and following 2 chapters. Please note that fear and anxiety is sin. I know that we don’t like to think of it as sin because it seems like we would be innocent since we can’t help ourselves; but because God says do not fear, it is indeed sin. Since the fear goes contradictory to God’s word that tells us we can do all things through Christ, fear is indeed a sin. Truth sets us free. We need to look at it as the sin it is and confess it and ask God to take it away from our lives along with all other sin.

Again, I know this is a lot I’m asking you to read, but I can say that there was no one thing in particular that healed me from anxiety. There was no one “do this, and you will be healed” method. It is a combination of knowing the big picture that healed me, along with doing some other things that I’ll also discuss with you. That is why I’m taking the pains to write this all out, so I hope that you are still with me and still are keeping an open mind until you finish hearing me out completely and searching the Scripture for yourself. Hope to hear from you soon God bless for now.

G'day Statesman63 - I'm sorry I haven't responded just of late, but I have been away from home, plus I was getting an e-mail when you posted an update, but that has seemed to stopped? - I will need to read through the last couple of posts in my quiet time. Most days I have been reading aloud the "Spiritual Catharsis" and also since the fast I am feeling slightly better in some circumstances. I have also been ‘processing’ you first post on sinful nature and saints. I am not concerned by the amount you are typing as I guess that’s what happens when we can’t speak in person. I appreciate your time and efforts and will reply again once I have fully read your latest posts.

Take care.

Hi Andrew. It is good to read that you are still here. I was hoping you didn’t read something I wrote, thought I was a heretic and ran away. I know what I’m saying is not exoteric or well-known. I just hope what I say is judged based on what the bible actually says and not solely based on the accepted truth of what one was taught or understood in the past. There is some way to subscribe to this topic so that you receive an email whenever a post goes up in the thread. I’m not quite sure how to do that right now, but if you play with the options, I think you’ll find it.

We are on verse 8: “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” Again, Paul here is highlighting that just as we joined Jesus in His death, we will also not only join Him in the life He raised to, but also in all the benefits that goes along with “life.” The benefits include righteousness, holiness, peace, and blessings, among other things. The term “death” in the bible does not always refer to a person dying physically. For many people are dead today, but at the same time are walking around. Indeed even Christians can be spiritually dead. That is why 1 Timothy 5:6 is able to say, “But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.” God said to Adam and Eve, “In the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and evil you shall surely die.” Satan told Eve, “You will not surely die.” Well, Satan told a half truth. Adam and Eve did not drop dead physically the day they ate of the fruit, but they did die spiritually soon as they ate it, and of course it eventually lead to their physical death too. Adam went on to live 130 years physically. [Just a side-note here: I believe that we will see Adam and Eve in heaven. God made the first animal sacrifice. Genesis 3:21 says that God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. That is saying that God killed/sacrificed an animal and made clothes for Adam and Eve and clothed them with His sacrifice. They already were not naked at this time because earlier in Genesis 3:7 it says that Adam and Eve themselves made clothing of figs and clothed themselves. So I think that the bible is saying that God in His love for His new creation of Adam and Eve, covered their sin with His own sacrifice and saved them to heaven.] Biblical death can be defined as separation from the life of God. Even though Christians cannot lose their salvation, they can live and walk in death if they carnally rebel against God. That means they are out of fellowship with God; away from His grace and blessings, and stand in His wrath, discipline, and judgment; and, therefore will incur trouble in this lifetime because of their sins.

It states here in Romans 6:8 that we will live with Him to life. As we have seen, Paul here is talking about who we now are. We live with Him in life regardless of the lifestyle living because salvation is not based on our ability to pay for our sin. It is based only on a new birth through our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ through the cross. In light of the previous paragraph I typed, it is possible for a Christian, who now naturally lives in life, be given the judgment of death (only while the Christian is alive on Earth) if they physically live a life in rebellion to God. This judgment of death lasts only as long as the Christian is alive on Earth. God disciplines His own in time or history. He does not necessarily punish sinners who do not know Jesus in this lifetime. But to Christians who rebel against Him, God will see to it that things will not go well with such people, even though spiritually they are alive. For the wages of sin is death. That is true for both the believer and non-believer. It affects the believer only in this lifetime, but the non-believer in the next lifetime, and sometimes for the non-believer in both this and the next lifetime. But we Christians will enjoy the “life more abundantly” that Jesus said that He gives if we seek to live in respect to the new righteous people we now are.

I would be remiss if I did not stress the words “we believe” in verse 8 and “we know” in verse 9. Our new life is based on faith; not on how we feel.

I don’t think verses 9-10 are Paul’s real point of what he is about to say. I think Paul states verses 9-10 to lead up his real point he wants to make in verse 11. So let’s look at 9-11 together: “[9] For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. [10] The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. [11] In the same way, credit yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Since I think that verse 11 is the point Paul wanted to really get at, let’s look at these verses in sort of a reverse order. He says, in the same way that Jesus was raised from the dead and cannot die again, and that death no longer has mastery over him, and in the same way that Jesus died once to sin, and now lives to God, credit yourselves dead to sin one time, but alive to God forever. Paul wants us to realize the parallel of what happened to Jesus applies to what Jesus did for us. Jesus only died once to sin. He never has to go to the cross again. If we really understand this passage we realize that we cannot lose our salvation. When we are saved, we cannot die again because Jesus cannot die again. That’s why the bible says the Christian sleeps. The Christian can never die. Because in the same way that Jesus does not have to keep dying to sin but now just living to God, so too He made it so that we only die once to sin (at our conversion) and now live life to God, simply because that is who we now are.

Since this is who we are, we have to live accordingly. He says in verse 12, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” Did you catch that? He is going to make this even more plain in the next chapter, but we see it even here… First notice where he says sin is located. He says that sin is located in our mortal bodies. Notice too that sin is not even us. We and sin are not synonyms. Sin is not us, and we are not sin. As I stated before, sin only comes from demons, or from the flesh, but not from us anymore. It used to come from us too before we got saved. He said do not let sin reign in your body so that you obey ITS evil desires. He didn’t say so that you obey our evil desires. It is really important to know that God does not identify our essence with the sin. This will be even plainer in the next chapter. One reason why we now have power over sin that we did not have over it before we became a Christian is that sin is no longer us. It used to be us (in our spirit and soul), but now it is sin that is in us (the “us” referring to our flesh). These are sin’s desires, not ours, but we can act them out if we accept and adopt them as ours. And God will judge us for them if we do that.

God never commands us to do something that He does not also give us the power to do. If He says “Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies,” then it means that God has also given us the power to pull off His command. This power that we have is in Christ, not in ourselves. Just remember the flesh is sinful. The flesh is sin’s house, and it loves to obey its master, sin. So we must never attempt to conquer the flesh using the flesh. Put no confidence in the flesh!!! The only way to conquer the flesh is accessing Jesus to act on our behalf with His power over our sin. Never use the power of positive thinking. That’s using the power of the flesh. Instead, use the power of Holy Spirit thinking. Remember, it is Jesus that conquered sin, not us. We are nothing without Jesus. Without Him, we can do nothing. Even in conquering our fears, we have to realize that our power to conquer the fear the flesh wants to fear is only in Jesus’ power and not in ours.

The flesh, if we let it can become habitual until it ends up reigning in our bodies and hardening us to God and His Word. Paul goes on to say in verse 13, “Do not offer parts of your body to sin…” Verse 14, “For sin will not be your master because you are not under law but under grace.” With that statement he tells us how to not let sin be our master. We are to let God do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. That’s the definition of grace. We are to submit to God’s grace in order for His grace to work on our behalf. If we submit to sin, that is denying God’s grace. And here is very misinterpreted verse: 2 Timothy 2:12, "If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny him, he will also deny us." People use this verse to try to prove that Christians can lose their salvation. They say, "See, it says that if we deny Jesus, He will deny us so that means we can lose it if we deny Him." And the NIV incorrectly renders this verse as, "If we disown Him, He will disown us." That is an incorrect rendering, and the other versions say "deny" not "disown." God will never disown His own. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit until the Day of Redemption. Furthermore, Jesus said, "I will never leave you; never will I forsake you." John 8:35 says, "Now a slave [I believe this refers to a slave to sin as what Paul is talking about in Romans] has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever." "Forever" means we can never stop being part of the family. 2 Timothy 2:13 says, "if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself." God cannot deny His own word that says that He keeps us saved through Jesus. So even when we are unfaithful, He remains faithful to save us. So verse 12 means that He will deny us blessings and deny our prayers when we deny Him among our friends and in public. Christians deny Jesus all the time under peer pressure or whatever. It is not saying that they lose their salvation, but rather, Jesus will deny them the blessings of heaven (refer to Luke 12:8-9).

Verse 18 is great to revisit, but this concludes to what I needed to cover in chapter 6. We’ll start at Romans 7:7 when I write again (probably tomorrow because I'm off tomorrow).

Hi Andrew. We are looking at Romans 7:7, but we already covered what that verse is saying though we didn’t look at this verse in particular. Basically, it’s saying that the law is just a mirror letting us know what sin is, but the law itself is not sin. It lets us know what displeases a holy God. Verse 8 reads, “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.” This part of the verse shows that the law itself entices us to disobey it. Like the commandment to Adam and Eve, in addition to the deception of Satan, that fruit that God said don’t eat looked good to them because God said don’t eat it. We naturally want what we cannot have. Keep in mind that temptation to sin is not sin. God said He will not give us more temptation that we can bear to overcome. And Jesus Himself was tempted. We only sin when we act out the sinful idea that opposes the Word of God. Jesus desired food. He was hungry. He fasted for 40 days. But he rejected it coming from Satan. And after Satan left, the Angels came and fed him. It is not sin when the thought pops into our minds. It is only sin when we act on those thoughts. Let’s refer to sin as a “thing.” This thing called sin seizes the opportunity of the law to produce in us the desire to disobey it. Satan loves to take advantage of this thing called sin and make it even more desirous for us to fall to it. As we will see, this thing called sin is a thing that is in us, but distinct from us.

Second part of verse 8 reads, “For apart from the law, sin is dead.” Man cannot be judged of sin without the law telling us what is right or wrong, otherwise, the judger would not be just. Romans 5:13 reads, “for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.” And 5:14 reads, “Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as did Adam who was a pattern of the one to come.” These people who lived before Moses gave the law were only guilty of what was revealed to them, but not guilty of breaking the Law of Moses since that had not yet come. But nevertheless, they were all under death because Adam birth death into the world through sin. Sin produces death. The wages of sin is death.

Paul says in 7:9, “Once I was alive apart from law [that is, before he knew the law. This is not referring to before he became a Christian, but even earlier than that: when he became a Jewish Pharisee and learned the law.]; but when the law came, sin sprang to life and I died.” When Paul studied and learned the Law of Moses, he realized how short he fell before a holy God and while he felt alive before he knew it, once he learned it he felt dead and realized that he was dead. That’s why he tried his best to live up to the whole law (Philippians 3:4-6).

Verse 10: “I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.” God’s “do this and don’t do that” did not give power to fulfill it. There is no power in the law in and of itself. The power is found in God’s grace that gives the power to accomplish the law as much as is humanly possible. But Jesus fulfills the entire law for every believer because no human can fulfill the law perfectly, and God’s standard of righteousness is perfection. Note that Jesus added to the law. He said “I give a new command: to love your neighbor.” Now knowing what we know now of the law, we know that there is no power in the do this and do that. The do this and do that is just the mirror. Our power to love our neighbor is found in God’s grace, not merely in the commandment itself. I stated earlier that whenever God gives a command, he also gives us the power to fulfill it. That power is found in grace that is only found in Jesus Christ. To enact this, we must pray and confess our inability to do this in our own strength and ask Him to fulfill it through us with His power in Christ Jesus. When we are weak, then we are strong.

Paul says that the law itself is holy and good in verse 12. He says in verse 13 that the law is not death, but produced death in him (and us) so that we can understand what God calls sin.

Starting at verse 14 is what I really wanted to get to. Verse 14: “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.” We have to closely follow these verses because Paul is going to break up into two Pauls. One Paul he is going to say is him; the other Paul is not him. He starts off with the Paul that is not him. He says that I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. He is referring to the old nature that only resides in his flesh. As you know the bible refers to God as having purchased us through the blood of Jesus Christ. The flesh is sold to sin through Adam. Our new selves are sold to God and His righteousness through Jesus. Sin is no longer our owner or our master. Sin is only the flesh’s master, and we are not the flesh. That is why Paul is breaking into two Pauls.

Verse 15: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Verse 16, “And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.” Verse 16 tells us what perspective he speaks from in verse 15. He is speaking from his new righteous perspective that does not want to do what his flesh wants him to do. This is in contrast to verse 14 where he spoke from his fleshly perspective.

Verse 17: “As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.” Christians who hold to the doctrine that Christians still have a sin nature are very quick to skim through these verses and jump to verse 24 where Paul says, “Oh what a wretched man I am.” And those Christians live life thinking they are still wretched creatures and they revel in their sin thinking they cannot control themselves because they think that’s who they are. Let’s not read through these verses too fast. Verse 17 is not Paul denying his sin and making an excuse for his sin. If you’ve been following closely up till now, you already know exactly what this verse is really saying. It is obvious what perspective Paul is speaking from in this verse. He is speaking from his new perfected nature that cannot sin—this new person where sin is distinct from the Christian. Our new selves do not sin because we cannot sin. We have been made like Christ. He gave us His righteousness. Paul is able to say “it is not I who is sinning” because it is the flesh in him that has the sin. The soul and Paul’s spirit are purified of all sin.

Verse 18, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.” How plainly clear is Paul here? He doesn’t say nothing good lives in him. God the Holy Spirit and his perfected nature live in him. There is good in him. Instead, he says nothing good lives in his flesh. Continuing verse 18: “For I have the desire to do what is good, but cannot carry it out.” It is obvious from what perspective he is speaking from here. I wish I can make this point come off the page and into your life. From this last part that I just quoted we see to put NO confidence in the flesh. He is talking from the flesh’s perspective, and he says that the flesh CANNOT carry it out. We cannot change the nature of the flesh. The flesh is filled with sin and there is nothing we can do about that except die and drop our flesh, or if we are still alive, wait until the Rapture when Jesus will raise up for us a new kind of flesh. Our power is not in trying to reform the flesh. Jesus did not die to reform the flesh. He died to reform our souls and spirits. So let’s stop trying to stop fear and anxiety by trying to reform the flesh. That’s why James said, “No man can tame the tongue.” He said that because the tongue is flesh. God can change our tongue and God can take away our fear and anxiety through His grace in Jesus Christ. Once again, grace is God doing for us what we cannot do ourselves and that is accessed through faith, prayer, and denying the flesh. Those 3 we do. In those 3 things we find victory.

We could really just stop here. You have most of the understanding I wanted you to have. But let’s continue through this chapter and chapter 8 and Ephesians 1 to sap out all the applications we can. And then we can apply this to how to control our thoughts. If you do those 3 things, you can control your thoughts, but there’s more to point out.

Verse 19: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” I know you no longer need my commentary on this, but we see here that he is speaking from the perspective of his new self where he says he does not want to do it, but from the perspective of his flesh where he says that he keeps on doing it. From the perspective of his new self, this verse says he wants to do good. The flesh wants to do evil.

Verse 20: “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” This is a repeat of verse 17 that we looked at. It’s one of those verses that most Christians skim over without thought and quickly jump to verse 24. Paul repeats verse 17 here as if to say, “Please don’t skim pass this verse.” This verse should be highlighted as much as verse 24 is highlighted by the majority.

Verse 21: “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” That’s right Paul. Because you are still in your flesh body.

Verse 22: “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;…”. How awesome is that verse? He already told us at the end of verse 18 that nothing good lives in his flesh, but now he distinguishes his flesh from the real him by saying in his inner being he delights in God’s law. Do you see how precisely particular these verses are?

Verse 23: “but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.” Once again, Paul speaks precision with all of these verses. We think with our mind. Our mind uses the brain to think and deliver those thoughts to the members of our bodies, but even today medical doctors cannot really explain the conscious thought of the cortical part of our brain that gives us our personality. They are unable to explain it because they deny the spirit and soul part that human being are made of. Let’s be clear, the brain itself is flesh, and bad sinful desires are stored there, but truth is, we will have our minds even when we leave our bodies and leave our brains behind when we pass away. So our minds are the true us, which includes our spirit, soul and now our righteous personality. This righteous mind is waging war against the law that the members of his body adhere to. This verse clearly shows that the body is not us, but rather we are the mind that is in the body. The law that tries to get Paul to sin resides in the body, not in Paul.

Now having understood verses 7-23, we finally get to the famous verse 24 that everyone quotes. Verse 24: “Oh what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” This verse should be very clear to you now. The “I” in the first part is the “I” in respect to the flesh. The “me” in the second part is the real righteous Paul that needs rescuing from the body that houses the sin and death. Thanks be to God—though Jesus Christ our Lord, all we need to do to escape this sin and death is to die physically and drop our bodies because the work to purify us completely has already been accomplished on the cross. Jesus does not have to die again to make us perfect.

I sort of quoted verse 25 in my explanation of verse 24, but here it is: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the flesh a slave to the law of sin.” The mind is righteous and is a slave to God’s law of righteousness and obedience. The flesh is sinful and is a slave to sin. Our job is to realize the distinction and not adopt the flesh implanted thoughts, but to be the new created righteous creatures God made us to be in Christ Jesus our Lord. We will look at chapter 8 when I respond again.

G’day Statesman63,

I have been digesting your posts and it has been quiet interesting. My initial response would be, yeah, that makes sense. I can certainly testify that almost every Christian I know has stated, sometime along the way, they are a sinner. Also, since reading your posts I thought I’d ask around and see what response I got and that has been interesting too. When I asked “are you a sinner or a saint?” I got responses ranging from “a sinner” to an explanation of the ‘Ordo salutis’. So, I rephrased my question and asked, “how do you think Jesus sees you?” this seem to trip folk up somewhat. For me, thinking about it, if I have the mind-set that I am still a ‘sinner’, then, yes it makes my failures easier to excuse than taking on the responsibility of understanding that due to my regenerated spirit I can defeat sin, (that’s the flesh), by the Grace provided by Jesus. I guess also thinking about it, it would be difficult for us to be called a “Royal Priesthood” but still be ‘sinners’ as per your definition in the discussions, (we would need a rope tied to our feet as we would be pulled out from the Throne Room dead!). So, I would have to say, that from what you have shown from Scripture, it makes sense. Understanding the separation between our spirit and the flesh makes it easier to make ‘the stand’ against the flesh. I have spent the last 6 years undoing much of the nonsense taught by ‘the church’. I just can’t believe how un-Biblical much of the teaching is today! I guess there are less folk studying the Scriptures, so they just make it up!!

Today has been a rather testing day! There have been issues and stresses in the workplace and I have been trying not to fall into the old habits of over-reacting. It has been one of those days where I can feel the tension bottled up in my chest, my shoulders are killing me and my hands are a bit shaky. In the flesh, I would like lash out severely, but I know that is not how Jesus wants me to respond. I have been falsely represented and the questioning of my integrity has been bandied around in careless emails without the chance for me to defend myself. I guess today is the ‘test’ and so far I have held it together. Probably helped that I went out of the office and asked Jesus to be the head of the situation then resisted any attacking emails for me. Time to go home now, which is a relief!

Thank you for making such a huge effort to help me.

Take care….

Hello Andrew. Thank you for that great response. I think that was an awesome idea of how you asked them that question and then came back and reworded it from God's perspective. Hey, I have to use that one! And yes, it says we are a holy priesthood and the book of Hebrews goes in length talking about how the priest was needed as a mediator to the throne of God, and that no one can approach the holy of holy room without the priest and expect to come out alive because if they bring their uncovered sin there, they die. It says that Jesus is our most high priest and He enables us to approach the throne of God where we couldn't do that before. So now Christians are priests because we now have that same ability as the OT priest had where we can just walk into the holy of holy and approach God face to face in prayer in the temples of our own bodies.

I had to look up the ordo salutis. Salvation is much simpler than that. Whosoever believes that Jesus is Lord and died for their sin through the death and resurrection of the cross is saved on the spot. To do that, one does need to realize that they are a sinner in need of a savior, and they need to know that salvation is free by grace apart from works. All that other stuff comes God works out in the believer. God makes the person more like Himself. God humbles the person through their life as a Christian. It doesn't just come overnight. The main Ordo Salutis statement I disagree with is this: "Perseverance: One's continued true belief—remaining in the state of salvation (Jude 1:24)". It is funny that they even quoted Jude 1:24 to try to prove that false statement because Jude 1:24 says the opposite of what they are trying to prove. That verse is saying that God is the one keeping us from falling, not ourselves. It is God's strength that keeps us from falling, not our own strength. You are right, it is like they don't really pay attention to what they read.

Concerning testing days: I can give you the promise that God will heal your anxiety because that is what the bible says, but it also says that there will be trying and testing days. There will be difficult days where Satan and demons will try to bring you back to feeling defeated. I told you that I have claimed my healing from fear some months ago. Since I've been "healed" there have been a couple of days where I felt that dread of fear trying to come over me. At the moment I sense what is going on, I stopped what I was doing and prayed it away, and it completely went away each time that happened. And then I said a prayer of thanks. When you receive your healing, continuing in prayer will absolutely be required to ward off Satan's attacks and to "stay healed."

I am almost finished writing on Romans 8 on a Word document. I'll be copying and pasting it here soon. Have a great day!

Hello Andrew. We are now looking at Romans 8, and we are only going up to verse 23. Verse 1 states, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” This is one of the greatest verses in the New Testament if I’m allowed to rank it. This refers to our sins of past, present and future. This verse shows that a Christian cannot lose his or her salvation. A Christian cannot lose their salvation because the Christian is absolutely righteous in God’s eyes because they are draped in the blood of Jesus and recreated perfect. No Christian will be condemned to hell because of sin. There is no sin a Christian can make up that God will eternally condemn us with. In Christ all sin is covered.

Verse 2: “because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” The law we are under now is a law of life through the Spirit. All that fear you are suffering with is death. Fear is darkness. Fear is outside of the “life” of God. I did not say fear is outside of the salvation of God. You are saved because you know Christ. But I did say fear is outside of the life of God. God’s life is peace, power, confidence, and includes all the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:12). Now that we are a Christian, we were set free from both sin and death. I keep going back to John 8:32, but it is KNOWING this truth of what Jesus’ death and resurrection did for us that will set us free. Satan does not want us to know that we have been set free from both sin and death. This is not just physical death, but its meaning includes everything that is ungodly. Death means separation from the life of God.

Verse 3: “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh [verse 4] in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

God put our sin on Jesus and He was offered up as the sacrifice that propitiated God’s wrath on all sin in our place; and, no man was qualified to offer that sacrifice because all have sinned. I would like to point out here that God condemned sin in the flesh. That means that sin, which we discovered resides in our flesh, has been judged and conquered by Jesus. In other words, God took away the reigning power sin once had in our lives. We have more power over sin than we realize. Our only power though, is in Him.

Verse 5: “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” Paul is telling us how to live by the Spirit. Let me insert Galatians 5:16 here, “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” We already saw that the mind is the real, righteous us. But we can choose to be deceived and listen to the flesh and do what it tells us and commit sin. But if we set our minds on what the Spirit desires (that’s a choice we have power over) then we will live according to the Spirit and not commit the sins of the flesh. Study Galatians 5:16; it is telling us that we do not have to keep sinning because God gave us the power to stop. Notice in Romans 8:5 that how we live is the outcome of how we think and not vice versa. If we control our minds we control the source of how we live.

Verse 6: “The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;”. Satan and God both battle for our minds. Satan’s only weapon is deception. It is a powerful weapon in his hands, but that is all he can do to us. When we get our minds controlled by the Spirit we have both life and peace. Note what this verse does not say: “the mind controlled by yourself is life and peace.” It does not say that. We are to not even be the ones with the ultimate control of our minds if we want to experience this life and peace. To experience this life and peace, we have to submit our minds completely to the Spirit’s control. That’s a choice we have power over.

Verse 7: “…the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” I’ve stressed this point several times already, but once again, PUT NO CONFIDENCE IN THE FLESH. We cannot buffet the flesh by the flesh to make it do what is against its nature to do. The flesh CANNOT submit to God’s law it says. Our control over the flesh is not through the flesh, but only by submitting to the Spirit’s control over the flesh through Jesus Christ. We ourselves have no power over the flesh. We cannot will-power ourselves over fear, anxiety or depression because the flesh cannot submit to God’s peace. The ONLY way to overcome fear and stop taking the medications is to turn it completely over to Jesus. This verse not only applies to our fear but also to our sin. If we want to put away our sin we cannot do it through the will-power of flesh… Just as much as our new selves cannot sin, the flesh cannot submit to God’s law.

Verse 8: “Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.” Sadly, a lot of Christians are living a life controlled by the flesh and they cannot please God. They go to church and think that they putting in their dues to please God, but no! Regardless of whatever good deed they may add, they cannot please God until they stop being controlled by the flesh. They are controlled by the flesh because they submitted their minds to the flesh and they do not realize that God took away the flesh’s power to control us if only they’d submit their minds to the Spirit.

Verse 9: “You however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” This is a great verse to memorize because the second part of it lets us know that every believer has the Holy Spirit the moment they became a Christian. It says that if anyone is without the Spirit, it means only one thing: that they are not a Christian. The first part of the verse lets us know that we are in the Spirit. Christians are not in the flesh because that is not us. The flesh houses us, but realize that the Spirit houses us first in closer proximity. We are in the Spirit. God sealed us with His Spirit until the Day of Redemption. We are located in that Temple of God called the Spirit that resides within our fleshly bodies. Therefore the Spirit ought to be our only controlling influence and not the flesh.

Verse 10: “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” We already know what this verse means. We talked about this concept in the previous 2 chapters. It is again plainly stated here. Our body is dead because that is where our sin is, but our spirit is alive, because it is pure, righteous and without sin; and, we are our spirit and not our bodies. Let’s connect verses 9-10 as it speaks of our new nature: “We are in the Spirit…and our spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Let’s connect verses 9-10 as it speaks of our old nature that is no longer in us: “You however are not in the flesh…your body is dead because of sin.” We are not in the fleshly body part of us and it is dead and contaminated with sin.

Verse 11: “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” Wow, what a verse! We were already told in the previous verses that our mortal bodies are dead. HOWEVER, Jesus who was raised from the grave is able to resurrect our dead bodies and He is able to buffet our dead bodies and make them act alive in righteousness. Verse 11 didn’t cancel out the previous verses. Our bodies are dead because of sin. But Jesus is able to make our dead corpses come alive and live righteously and obediently before Him. Do you see what this verse is saying? We ourselves do not have resurrecting power. We cannot control our flesh and its dead desires. But God, who raised Jesus from the grave, using that same resurrecting power will also in Christ, raise our dead, sinful mortal physical bodies and make it submit to His righteousness and life so that we CAN in this lifetime, live a life without sin and without fear too! God is able to make sinful flesh submit to Him. That is how we live righteously in this lifetime.

Verse 12: “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh to live according to it.” We are obligated to live righteously. There are many consequences to continuing to live in sin, and thank God that losing our salvation is not one of them. Some consequences include: non-answered prayer (cf. with 1 Peter 3:7); no help from Him in escaping our trials and fears; He may even cause and bring trials to us because of how we are living; He can bring bad health to us and even cause us to die early (cf. with 1 Corinthians 11:30); He can let demons and Satan torment us (cf. with 2 Corinthians 12:7); He can take away our heavenly crowns and rewards (cf. with 1 Corinthians 3:15); and the list goes on. It is not a good thing to live according to the flesh. We want God to fight for us and not against us. He will fight against us if we continue to live according to the flesh.

Verse 13: “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” The first part, “if you live according to the flesh, you will die,” I just explained in my explanation of verse 12. Spiritual death is separation from the life of God, and all those bad consequences that I mentioned goes along with spiritual death. It is clear that Paul is talking to Christians. This means that it is possible that even Christians can live in spiritual death. They are still saved eternally, but while on Earth, they are dead until they repent, receive God’s forgiveness and turn back to Him and serve Him again. It is not talking about physical death here, but spiritual death. 1 Timothy 5:6 says, “But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.” This verse makes it clear that a person can be dead spiritually, but at the same time be alive physically.

The second part of verse 13, “but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,” shows once again that it is by the Spirit alone that we can put to death the misdeeds of the body. God knows we cannot live the Christian life. Here is a big statement: God does not want us to live the Christian life. You should tell that to people to open their ears to what you are telling them. But then say, “No one can live the Christian life. There was only one person who was able to live the Christian life and that was Jesus, and we are not He.” God wants us to submit to Jesus, so that Jesus can live the Christian life through us. He wants us to realize that we can’t so that through us He can. Colossians 1:29 fits here: “To this end I labor, struggling with all HIS energy, which so powerfully works in me.”

Verse 14: “[same sentence]…because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” This kind of goes along with Romans 8:9 where Paul made it clear that only Christians have the Spirit and not non-Christians. But it is saying more than that. If we can skip to the second part of verse 15, it says that we have a Spirit of sonship and can now call God “Father.” I forgot the number of times, and I’m not going to count, but the term Father is mentioned many, many times in Revelation chapters 1-3. But soon as the Church gets raptured up to Heaven in Revelation 4:1, God is no longer referred to as Father concerning those who are left on Earth during the Tribulation Period. There is no mention of the Father after Revelation 4:1 because God only relates to His Own (Christians and the OT Nation of Israelites) as a Father-son/daughter relationship. Everyone else is outside of His family. When it comes to them, He is just referred to as “God.” I heard someone make an accurate assertion. This person said that Christianity is not a religion. All religions demand the person to make themselves fit for God. Christianity instead is a relationship. It is about God coming to us and having a relationship with us as our Father.

Verse 15 [just the first part]: “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear…” In light of what you are going through and what I had went through, we have to pause at this verse and analyze it in detail. Upon first reading, it seems out of place. It seems like Paul was talking about a specific topic and then all of a sudden he gets to verse 15 and drops a verse that totally changes the subject to what he was saying in all of these chapters. It just seems to mess up the ebb and flow of what Paul was saying. But I suggest to you that this statement does indeed relate and goes along with what Paul has been discussing up until now. He mentioned “slavery” twice already in Romans 6. Romans 6:6 says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin…” He says in Romans 6:18, “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” So we learned that we are slaves to righteousness and not to sin; and, this verse emphasizes that we did not receive a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear. That was our old selves that was in bondage to sin.

The Civil War ended on April 18, 1865. But the word had not spread everywhere right away that the war had ended. And some rebelled regardless. Civil War skirmishes continued to break out even though the war was over. Slaves thought they were still slaves even though in actuality they had been set free. They did not have the knowledge of their freedom so they continued to live the life of a slave. Satan does not want us to realize that we are no longer a slave to fear. He does not want us to know that The Emancipation Proclamation has been sign and stamped by God through Christ. He does not want us to know Romans 8:2 that the law of the Spirit has set us free from the law of sin and death. And fear is spiritual death. The spirit that we now have is perfected, without fear, without sin, and with righteousness. We have now have a spirit of freedom. Galatians 5:1, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” When it comes to fear, we have been set free! Once again, our favorite verse goes here: “Then you will know the truth and our KNOWING the truth sets us free.” God does not want our Father-son relationship to be one of fear but of peace and love.

Let’s skip up to our last verse to cover, verse 23. I’ll set it up by also quoting verse 22: “[22] We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. [23] Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” I wanted to end with verse 23 because it kind of sums up what we have been discussing. Notice it says we are awaiting our adoption as sons. But in verse 15 it said that we already have the Spirit of sonship where we can call Him Father. We have been adopted already, but what verse 23 is saying is that we are awaiting for our BODIES to be redeemed and adopted as sons. The real us is on the inside and that real us it says groans “inwardly.” So the real us is groaning because the body is sinful and we are awaiting for our bodies to be redeemed. That is the only thing left for us to be redeemed: our bodies. We ourselves have been redeemed at the cross; our bodies will be redeemed at the Rapture.

I will quickly cover what I want to cover in Ephesians 1 and sum up how we can control our thoughts in my next post. God bless!

Hi Andrew. I hope you are doing well. I would like to quickly cover a great truth in Ephesians 1 that will give you power to become free from all your anxiety. This also has to do with who we now are in Christ Jesus: our new identities and position in Christ. I’ll start quoting at verse 17: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. [Verse 18] I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, [verse 19] and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, [verse 20] which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, [verse 21] far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. [Verse 22] And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, [verse 23] which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

I quoted a lot of text. What I really want us to focus on is Jesus’ position and power. It says that He called us to a rich and glorious inheritance. There is a strange clause in verse 18. I gave you the NIV, but let me give you the NAS, which is a more accurate word for word translation. It reads, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”

The strange clause I was referring to is “the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” It seems odd that Jesus is inheriting anything. It would seem to make more sense if it were talking about us who are receiving an inheritance. Well, the verse really isn’t odd at all. Let’s look at what it is really saying. It is simply saying that Jesus, after He rose from the dead and took His rightful seat at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, that He inherited GLORY in the saints. That means all saints will glorify Jesus Christ. It means that all the praises the church offers up goes to Jesus Christ. What pleases the Father is that Jesus gets the glory. Please note that what Jesus inherits here is what He once had before He came down to Earth as a baby in a manger. All throughout pre-eternity up until the Father decided it was time to send His Son Jesus, Jesus had all glory because He is fully God (always was and always will be). While on Earth He gave up that glory for a little while and relied on His Father in Heaven for his power. But when He resurrected and ascended back to Heaven, He sat back down on the right hand side of His Father, where He reclaimed all the His glory that He had before He came to Earth. That’s why when Jesus was on Earth He could say, “No one knows the day or the hour of His coming, not even the Son of Man.” Jesus did not have full omniscience while on Earth because He gave up His complete glory and authority just for the time while He was down here, but when He ascended to Heaven, He reclaimed His full omniscience, omnipresence and complete glory, and I assure you that He now knows the day and the hour of His second coming because Jesus is All-Knowing God.

Verse 19 says that this power that Jesus has, he shares with those who believe in Him. Verses 20-23 are our key verses. It says that Jesus, when He ascended to Heaven, sat down at the right hand side of the Father. In OT times, for a king to put someone at his right hand side would mean that the king gave that person equal honor, authority, power, and dignity as himself. Because Jesus is seated at the right hand side of the Father, He has equal honor, authority, and power as the Father. Not only that, but the Father placed Jesus far above all rule, authority, power or dominion; and these all refer to angelic and demonic powers. Jesus is above all things and everything. The only one Jesus is subjected to is the Father. Verse 22 says that God put all things under subjection to Jesus Christ. Everything must obey Him, and one day at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, both in Heaven, on Earth, and under the Earth. Verse 23 shows His omnipresence.

Keeping these things in mind, now let us look at Ephesians 2:6: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, [verse 7] in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s put what we learned in Ephesians chapter 1 and connect it to Ephesians 2:6-7. God raised up Jesus and seated Jesus on His right hand side and placed all things under Jesus’ feet and made all things subjected to Jesus. And Ephesians 2:6 says that God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. We are seated with the one who has all things under His feet and subjected to Him. We are also seated on the right hand side of the Father with Jesus Christ. We are continuing our discussion of who we are in Christ Jesus. To fully know who we are in Christ, we must understand where we are currently seated. We are currently seated with Jesus who is seated on the right hand side of the Father and has all things under His feet. All things include all fear, anxiety, depression, Satan, demons, demonic influences, our sinful flesh, etc. One reason why we no longer have to fear is because all of our fear is subjected to the authority of Jesus Christ, and we are seated with Him and reap the benefits of His rule and authority! Satan does not want us to know that we are seated in a place of authority over him and over fear and all things demonic.

If we truly know our identity in Jesus Christ, we can look fear and even sin in the face and say to them that Jesus conquered you, and I’m with Jesus, therefore I am no longer subjected to your rule and reign that you once had over my life. I have been set free from sin and death, and I am now with Jesus who has you, fear and sin, under His feet, and you must submit to Him!!

It is knowing our place and identity in Jesus Christ that sets us free from all fear, sin, depression, addictions, and whatever other stronghold that once controlled us. No stronghold has power over the Christian who knows their identity in Jesus Christ. I will soon be posting some more thoughts and practical things you can do to rid all your fear soon. I want to include a word about our feelings in my next post. We don’t always feel like we have power over fear. Faith is not about how we feel. The reality is we do have power over it because the bible says we do. I’ll be discussing more soon. Have a great day!

G’day Statesman63,

Thanks for the post on Romans 8 and Ephesians. I must admit there is still a part of me that keep’s feeling like I’m not worthy of these things that Jesus says we are. I also know, that in itself is a sin and also considering how far along this journey I am. What it feels like to me is a wrestling match, a hand-to-hand struggle on the inside. The other thing I have identified, which I guess must be apart of anxiety is, what I’ll call, ‘over-stimulation’. This seems to get me at night and interferes with my sleep. It’s almost like an over-anticipation and as silly as it sounds, but the best way I can describe it, it’s like a 10 year old boy on Christmas eve! I also must admit that I haven’t been doing that well. I only had 3 hours sleep last night and that is nearly the worst I’ve ever been! And of course the lack of sleep makes anxiety worse. So, I do feel a little down just now, especially after fasting and praying, but seemly getting nowhere. But, I also know faith is not based on what we see and feel, so I’m hanging in there, but to be honest, I’m afraid sometimes I will never be free of this. I am sorry for saying that, but I do feel rather flat at the moment.

Take care Mate,

Andrew

Andrew72 wrote:

G’day Statesman63,

Thanks for the post on Romans 8 and Ephesians. I must admit there is still a part of me that keep’s feeling like I’m not worthy of these things that Jesus says we are. I also know, that in itself is a sin and also considering how far along this journey I am. What it feels like to me is a wrestling match, a hand-to-hand struggle on the inside. The other thing I have identified, which I guess must be apart of anxiety is, what I’ll call, ‘over-stimulation’. This seems to get me at night and interferes with my sleep. It’s almost like an over-anticipation and as silly as it sounds, but the best way I can describe it, it’s like a 10 year old boy on Christmas eve! I also must admit that I haven’t been doing that well. I only had 3 hours sleep last night and that is nearly the worst I’ve ever been! And of course the lack of sleep makes anxiety worse. So, I do feel a little down just now, especially after fasting and praying, but seemly getting nowhere. But, I also know faith is not based on what we see and feel, so I’m hanging in there, but to be honest, I’m afraid sometimes I will never be free of this. I am sorry for saying that, but I do feel rather flat at the moment.

Take care Mate,

Andrew

Hi Andrew. Thanks for the post. You are doing the best thing you can possibly do at this point in time and that is be completely honest. What you wrote comes as no surprise to me at all. I know exactly how you feel because I was feeling the exact same way every single day even when I knew all of these things that supposedly is supposed to cure me. Even when I realized that God's word promises that by His word He would heal me completely, my healing did not come at that very moment. It took time. In the meantime, I did not feel worthy of his healing. In the meantime, I could not see the light of day and could not even imagine being healed because all I saw was negativity, anxiety, confusion, depression, and a heavy fear and dread. I did come to the conclusion then that if I were to get healed, if it were possible, then only God could heal me because it just seemed so impossible. I assure you that your healing will come. For me it was sudden and unexpected. It was like a complete weight lifted off of me that I thought would never be lifted from me. It came just like God's word said. Note what it says in Isaiah 58:8, "Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will QUICKLY appear...." There was no exact moment that the fear left, but I looked around and realized that the fear was no longer in me.

As far as being worthy of this healing as you mentioned....the reality of it is, NONE of us are worthy of this healing. God heals us IN SPITE of our unworthy selves. We are now righteous because we believe in Jesus Christ, but NONE of the righteousness comes from our own input into the bowl of purity. All of our righteousness comes from Jesus Christ. In Isaiah, it says that our righteousness to God is like filthy rags. On the most holiest person's best day, whoever that person alive today may be, on their best day of reciting prayers, praising God, worshipping, giving to the poor, the best they can come up with before a perfectly holy God is to him like filthy rags. So don't feel bad that God wants to heal you. Don't feel bad that He gave you His righteousness and made you holy. All of us together share the same filth of unworthiness, but God is so loving of His own, that none of our unworthiness matters to Him when it comes to His promises. What God is concerned about is that His promises and His Word does not return to him void. I guarantee you that it wont return to Him void. God gets the glory for healing you and that is what He is concerned about.

What I think you are currently going through is the result of Satan becoming uneasy that he is about to lose you from his clutches. So Satan will attack you when he feels threatened. The Word of God makes SAtan uneasy and he will strike back, but eventually the Word of God will prevail. When Satan tempted Jesus, Satan didn't flee after Jesus quoted His first verse to Satan. Satan didn't flee after Jesus quoted the second verse. It took Jesus quoting 3 verses for Satan to flee from Him. Now if it took 3 verses for Satan to flee the Creator and Son of God, how much more do you think it will take from us to make him flee? We have to just keep bombarding him with the Word and he will flee because he cannot handle the Word.

If it is of any comfort, I will say this to you. I'm am sure that Satan is not even attacking you. When I say that Satan is attacking you, I do not literally mean Satan himself is attacking you, but rather one of his lesser demons is attacking you. Satan is the boss of all the demons and he's the strongest of them all, but he is NOT OMNIPRESENT. Satan can only be at one place at a time, and the chances are really great that he is not with you. Satan only hangs out with the worse of the worse that he can use, or the best of the best that he can attack who is threatening him the most. So lesser demons are our problems. And demons do have ranks of power and strength because you recall the disciples couldn't cast out a particular demon when they were having success with others and Jesus told them that this kind can only come out through prayer and fasting. I don't know if this paragraph is really any comfort to know, but I think it is important to know.

I will say that my anxiety was really great just before I saw my healing. Do not be alarmed by what you are going through, just expect and believe that your healing will soon come to you. Greater is He who is in you than He who is in the world. You will be triumphant and giving God all the glory. Make sure you continue to do Catharsis (recite it aloud) everyday. That is really important to do; I can't stress that enough. And as you do, try to truly believe each statement. All the statements come from the Word of God, so try to get your mind/flesh to believe them. I will be writing soon with some practical things to do and think about.

Hi again. I apologize for not posting in a while. My computer crashed and I had to reboot it, but it is running good now.

What I want to share with you now is what I call “Power Thoughts.” These are thoughts that you will have to come up with. I cannot come up with them for you because they must be personalized to what most appeals to your situation. These are sentences that you will write down on a word document and refer to them over and over again every day until they resonate in your mind and inner being. So your everyday routine should be citing aloud the Catharsis Page, the Spiritual Armor Prayer, and reading (you don’t have to cite these aloud) your power thoughts.

So let me help you come up with your power thoughts. The best way is to pray that God reveals to you the most powerful power thoughts that will change your thinking pattern quickly. I truly believe that God will reveal to you and practically write these sentences for you if you pray and ask Him to. The most effective way of moving God to act on our behalf in all things is to admit our insufficiency in coming up with the best on our own using our own intellect and knowledge and asking Him to bless us in Christ Jesus with that which we cannot come up with on our own. I prayed that God would reveal to me the most powerful Power Thoughts that would help me, and He gave them to me and they really helped me overcome my anxiety.

Secondly, analyze your situation. Try to find the root cause of your problem. What is it that REALLY makes you afraid, and WHY does it make you afraid? Ask God to reveal that to you. When you find the root causes, you can then come up with Power Thoughts that counteract those things. So Power Thoughts are always positive. Power Thoughts always contradict your fear, but is always truth. Power Thoughts initially will contradict how you are prone to thinking, but eventually, after meditating on them every day, it will become natural to think the Power Thoughts without any effort.

I will now share with you my Power Thoughts that helped me. And they may be useful to you to. I wouldn’t know because Power Thoughts need to be personalized to your situation. Here are mine:

You just have to get up with confidence and accept whatever you got as if you were at home.

Do not attribute to another person power they don’t have; power that God did not give them.

Empower no one.

Empower yourself with the power God gave you.

Do not bow down in fear to anyone.

Do not assume others looking at you mean anything or will take away your strength.

To whom of these should I bow down in fear to? To whom of these did God give power over me?

By feeling comfortable in your own skin you win.

They have no power at all.

Your position in Christ gives you power: Jesus’ power.

I have others, but these are on the top of my list, and I highlighted and bolded the best of them. I realized that I was empowering others with power that God did not give them and I put them in a position of superiority in my mind, and put myself in a position of inferiority. I was basically bowing down to others in fear, not realizing that my position in Jesus Christ nullifies any superiority or power that I was attributing to others. These Power Thoughts cancel led out my fear and anxiety. It is absolutely necessary to meditate on your Power Thoughts at least once a day. I always do the 3 things the night before I know that I will be leaving the house. The third thing is reciting the Armor of God prayer:

Taking Up Armor Prayer.....

Lord, by faith here’s what I’m doing right now to prepare myself for the coming day. I’m putting on the belt of truth. Help me to not believe the lies of the devil. Show me truth, enlighten my path, and enable me to speak and act truthfully. And I ask You God, to make it very clear to me what I am to accept into my life and what I am to reject. Help me to see clearly the motives of others as they deal with me and converse with me. Let me walk in Your truth, making decisions and choices according to Your plans and purposes for my life.

I am putting on the breastplate of righteousness. Father, guard my emotions today. Protect my heart. Help me to take into my life only the things that are pure, and nothing that is poison or polluting. Help me to live in integrity and to have a reputation based upon doing, saying, believing, thinking, and feeling the right things. Help me to live in right relationship with You every moment of this coming day.

I am putting on my spiritual boots. Lord, help me to be skillfully and adeptly ready to make swift righteous and wise judgments and decisions. And help me to stand and walk in Your peace and to move forward in ways that bring Your peace and love to others. Help me to have the full confidence and assurance that come from knowing that I am filled with the peace that only You can give to those who are Your children. Help me to be a peacemaker. Show me where to walk and how to walk as You would walk.

I am picking up the shield of faith. Let your shield extinguish every attack of Satan to my mind, body, and soul. God, help me to trust You to be my Victor in every area of life today. Help me to trust You to defend me, provide for me, and keep me in safety every moment of this day.

I am putting on my helmet of salvation. Father, guard my mind today. Please take away all stress and fear and replace them with strength and confidence. Bring to my remembrance all that You have done for me as my Savior. Let me live in the hope and confidence that You are saving me—rescuing me & delivering me—from evil.

I am picking up my sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Bring to my remembrance today the verses of the Bible that I have read and memorized, and help me to apply them to the situations and circumstances I will face. Let me use Your Word to bring Your light into the darkness of this world and to defeat the devil when he comes to tempt me.

Father, I want to be fully clothed with the identity of Jesus Christ today. I am in Christ. He is in me. Help me to fully realize and accept that He is my Truth, my righteousness, my Peace, my Savior, the source of my faith, and ever-present Lord of my life.

God, I want to bring glory to Your name today. I ask all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

I posted this prayer elsewhere on this site. I found this prayer online somewhere, but I added some lines of my own. The bible says that we must fight our spiritual battle using spiritual weapons. We cannot fight our spiritual battle with the flesh, our human efforts, or anything physical (even medicinal does not fully help). When we equip ourselves for our spiritual war, we are ready for battle. And note: God fights for us. We are not the ones doing the fighting. But we must be equipped with His armor. Note that the Word of God is our only offensive tool against the devil that the Scripture gives us. This prayer is based on the Word of God and the Catharsis page is all Scriptures. This is a prayer and it is really powerful to pray God’s word to God. This is a prayer that God will answer. It conforms to His word and will.

I gave you 3 things to do: cite the Catharsis Page, Taking Up Armor Prayer, and meditate on your Power Thoughts. These 3 should all be on separate Word documents that you pull up and do every day. But then there is a 4th and final thing that I do. I have another Word document that I site aloud and I do this after every successful day I have. It is a prayer of thanks to God for blessing me with a good day. Here is my prayer of thanks:

Dear Father, thank you for answering my prayer of distress and blessing me with a wonderful and peaceful day. Thank you for helping me to be an overcomer, and for giving me a successful day free from anxiety. Thank you for providing me the strength to stand and walk gracefully before others in peace and confidence. Thank you for letting me know that you can take my problems of yesterday and turn them into a victorious today. I just want to say thank you Father for answering my prayer and hearing my cry. I rejoice in your peace and love. And please in Christ, take away any residual fear that may still be lingering in me. Help me to not question my new peace, confidence, self-control and freedom. Please increase my faith. And please bless me with the strength and power to remain faithful before you. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

Finally, I wanted to share with you some thoughts about feelings. We talked extensively about how to control our thoughts. But we would be remiss without also talking about how to control our feelings. An important thing to know about feelings is that feelings are DUMB!!! Feelings have no thoughts of their own. Feelings always piggy-back off of other thoughts. If your thoughts are powerful and peaceful, your feelings will piggy-back off of those thoughts and follow suit. If your thoughts are fearful, dreadful, and depressing, your feelings will follow that and it will affect your whole body. Even after you stop thinking fearful thoughts, your body may still be tremoring and feeling fearful because your body will still be reacting to the last thing that you thought. So to control our thoughts is to control our feelings. This means that we must not react to how we feel! That is very important, so let me repeat it. This means that we must not react to how we feel because your feelings are only reacting to our thoughts so we cannot go out and be afraid because we are feeling afraid. Let not your thoughts react to your feelings since it is your feelings that naturally react to your thoughts. If you let your thoughts react to your feelings, you get caught into a circular pattern that just keeps rotating over and over again. Break that pattern by controlling your thoughts, and then your feelings will eventually your new thoughts and your feelings will change. And I know that you know that we are to walk by faith and not by how we feel. Feelings can lie to you. Feelings can tell you that you are in fear when God tells you that He gave you His peace. We are to believe the Truth of God and then the dumb feelings will soon follow our new thoughts.

That’s all that I have, I think, on how to control our thoughts. We could move on to one of the next things on your list, but much of what I have said in these posts applies to many of the other things on your list as well. We cannot control the flesh on our own. We cannot do anything on our own. Keep your prayers in the format of “God, I cannot do this thing. I admit my insufficiency…..Please bless me with your strength and power to do it for me, which your power is much greater than any power that I can muster up on my own…..I ask this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ….”

If you do these practical things, Andrew, you will be healed really quickly. Put away all sin and following these things are guaranteed to work because it is backed up by the Word of God. Sin will negate this process and postpone your healing, so make sure that all sin is dealt with. And of course, we cannot stop sinning in our own strength, so follow that prayer format I just gave you concerning even whatever sin you may be struggling with and God will empower you to stop sinning in the conquering strength of Jesus Christ who conquered all sin for us. These things are what healed me. I know that you will be healed really soon. I’m praying for you too. Please share your testimonies on this site. I know you will be testifying of your peace really soon. And feel free to ask any questions or share whatever comments you have. God bless!!