When I became a born-again Christian, it never occurred to me that “HOW I came to believe in something” needed to be reborn too. I needed to become a born again BELIEVER in not just Who Jesus was, but Who I was in HIM!
…to put off your former way of life, your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be renewed in the spirit of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (BSB, Ephesians 4:22-24)
Up until that point in my life, I simply went on feelings. If someone made me feel unimportant, I believed I was not important. If my dad made me feel he didn’t love me, I believed he didn’t love me. When people made me feel a certain way about myself, I believed it. I also assumed how they felt or interpreted their own feelings and this created a false identity of them in my mind.
I believed I was unworthy, shameful, rejected, and not important. And because of all I believed my feelings, I often hated myself, life, and people.
When we are born again and Adopted, we now have a new Person, Jesus Christ, not only teaching but leading by example and showing us a new way to believe.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life]. (2 Corinthians 5:17 AMP)
But most of us are set in our ways. We have lived our lives one way and are not willing to change. Not willing to tear down. Not willing to destroy sophisticated arguments. We have been taught to believe what we see; believe in what we feel; believe in our own logic and understanding. We have total faith, trust, and confidence that everything up until that point has been the right and only way to live. We strongly learn if we feel it, then it’s the truth. And that makes us a playground and stomping ground for the enemy. We are easily bullied and intimidated until we realize we MUST relearn how to believe.
When you become a Christian, everything must go! Everything you have learned up until that point must be understood that it was flesh, carnal, self. You learned to believe through what the carnal man said to believe.
Now you are born of the Spirit and must learn to believe through the Spirit!
How? You need to learn how to change your false reality.
For though we walk in the flesh [as mortal men], we are not carrying on our [spiritual] warfare according to the flesh and using the weapons of man. The weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood]. Our weapons are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses (false reality). We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Christ, being ready to punish every act of disobedience, when your own obedience [as a church] is complete. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 AMP)
We need to learn what is acceptable and okay; to be allowed to teach and influence our beliefs.
We are to seek God’s Word above all else; His wisdom and truth. The wisdom He promises to give will guard and protect us from false beliefs,
“Do not abandon wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will keep you safe.” (Proverbs 4:6 GNT).
We are to always be on guard against the snares of the enemy and his false messages to cause us to stumble. We must no longer walk as immature children being persuaded by every doctrine or advice that comes our way.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:14 New International Version)
We must unlearn being gullible and falling for traps that have always snared us in the past, pressing forward to mature in our faith.
Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers; The snare is broken, and we have escaped. (Psalms 124:7 NKJV)
Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger