What changed?

Gen 3:10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. KJV

I was meditating on the Word of God thinking about the lessons I’ve been teaching the last few months on “Perception Of The Believer and His Thoughts“.   While I meditated on those things and thought on the Lord; I begin to plea with the Lord about my own perceptions and ask that He would forgive me and grant me the grace and power to walk in His righteousness.

While seeking to maintain consistency in my thoughts, prayer and fasting; I learned a great lesson last year about my own perceptions.  The more I labored on my knees in prayer and desired all things Jesus Christ, the more  I realized my own challenges and that my own perceptions get in the way of the Holy Ghost and the truths written in the Word of God.  I learned that by nature our perceptions, without regard to God, challenges His authority and His Word.  That’s why Paul mentioned that some wish not to retain God in their knowledge… So the Lord turned them over to their thoughts, ideas, opinions, concepts, philosophies and etc.

It is evident in all of our lives.   When we stretch out our hands to be blessed by the Lord; deep within we struggle with our faith;  within our thoughts we find a conflict between believing what we sense and what the Word says.  Our perceptions hinder us  from believing as we should.  Unfortunately, our churches are filled with unqualified ministers who teach us that God is limited and cannot reach into our lives unless we let him.  Their perceptions have placed limitations on the reach of God because they themselves have failed to live holy.  They use their experiences, feelings, struggles, successes and failures to guide us.   They gauge God’s ability and measure His holiness by their own accomplishments and failures.

I learned that our experiences in life has an overwhelming ability to over write the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ within us.  I’ve seen individuals come to Christ with nothing but the clothes on their backs and get filled with the Holy Ghost.  I’ve watched the Holy Ghost continuously express himself through them, blessing the church as He dances them uncontrollably in praise, worship and tongues around the church.  I’ve watch, and over time as the Lord cleaned them up and begin to blessed them.

It’s a sad commentary when a person is moved by God in such away as this, only to deny at some later time in their life.  Today, I hear them say that shouting and tongues are not necessary.  I’ve heard them say that sanctification comes through more scriptural memorization.  I’ve watched the glory and testimony of Jesus Christ leave them.  The perceptions exercised in unrighteousness have taken over once again.

It is those perceptions shaped in sin that we must give to God through repentance, fasting, prayer and a continual work on our thoughts.  If we don’t a little leaven will leaven the entire lump.  It is those unrepentant sins that catch up to us.  Preachers who have ministered for years fall, because they ignored a thought.  We are draw away towards and into sin from these perceptions.

Many of God’s people are sickly, and held in bondage to their flesh and lack strength to subdue and overcome the fleshes weaknesses, because their perceptions do not agree with God’s.   Paul says, because they discern not the Lord’s Body, they are either sick or weak or dead!  Healing is one of the most difficult challenges for a person who prays for the sick and it is more difficult for the person who is ill.

Despite what Christ did on the cross, our pain or what we see with our eyes can become so overwhelming that it subdues the Word of God working in us.  Jesus says, that Satan takes advantage of this weakness and afflicts us to remove the Word from our hearts.

Born in sin and shaped in iniquity.  It is those perceptions which needs fixing.  Be not conformed to this world… Be ye Transformed by the renewing of your mind… Because perceptions form our ideas, opinions, concepts, judgments about God and Holiness we need to forget those things that are behind and look to Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith.

Our senses have been exercised in unrighteousness; Paul says, in times past Gentiles… the Spirit of Truth has come, because their is no truth in us.  The Holy Ghost comes to challenge and renew our perceptions by working in us, to do God’s will and pleasure.

As I continue to pray and meditate the Lord began to move on me and as always I enjoyed every moment of His presence.  While I delighted myself in Him, He begin to showed me Adam in the garden and that Adam had a perception of God which changed after sin entered the body.

This is what I was shown.  What changed after Adam eat?  Was Adam naked before he ate? Did Adam have fellowship with the Lord before He ate?  So what changed?

What changed? Well, simultaneously Adam’s perception of himself and God changed.  Sin altered Adams perceptions.  The environment was the same, everything around him was the same, but when his five senses, functioning as usual, captured his surroundings, Adam processed that information differently. He saw himself and noticed that he was naked.  He was always naked.

Adam also began to interacted with his environment differently than he did before eating.  Sin changed his perceptions.  His senses were now exercising themselves in sin.  He therefore saw himself and God differently.  Adam responded to the Lord by hiding from God.

In the believer, our thoughts will need change, must be renewed and it cannot be done inside us.  Truth doesn’t come from us, it comes to us.  2 Cor 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; 2 Cor 10:7 Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s, let him of himself think this again…

Rom 7:14-17
14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

Through our senses, sin processes what we draw inside of our mind.  Most people will find it difficult to believe because this process has been with them all their life.  This is why the Law came from heaven, written by the finger of God, otherwise we would not know.  Paul says, Rom 7:7 … I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

Rom 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. Our perceptions are the results of how we processed or drew in everything around us.  Everyone processes the environment around them differently depending on experience, age, health and so forth.  For example, the eyes are the primary sense of the five (5) senses of humanity.  Jesus says, Matt 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

If an accident happened in front of a crowd, depending on certain factors such as age and health, witnesses will describe what they saw and heard differently from one another.  Some will be more detailed than others.  It is human nature to fill in gaps when there are missing information.  That’s why we enjoy magic tricks.  It is in our nature to be deceived.  When we don’t understand something, our thoughts will collect [imagination] our previous experiences.  Then begin to assemble or form our perceptions [ideas, opinions, beliefs, motivations and such].

When Jesus says, …Take no thought for your life…Take therefore no thought for the morrow…  Does His words confuse you?  Thinking is what we do easily.

When we came into this world we had to be taught how to function in this world.  We had no sense of this world, we learn to make sense of what we saw, tasted, heard, felt and smelled.  Once we had a grasp of the basic functions of the world and society around us, such as language, culture, laws, art or whatever; structured our thoughts around that entire system which is founded by someone who was born in sin.  Everything that pertains to this world, we learned from someone else conceived in sin.  The laws that men have instituted outside of God’s laws are designed to control power, taxes, money, information, facts and etc.

Ps 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1 John 1:8.  Means that sin is embedded in our nature.  If we do not walk in the perceptions, ideas, thoughts and ways of God, then the other alternative is to sin, because it is natural to function this way.

We engage and interact with our environment through our senses exercised in unrighteousness.  We use our senses to judge everything.  …even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil…

Our world is full of immature individuals and Pastor’s are no exception.  If a Pastor who governs people whose senses have not been exercised in righteousness as an issue bought before his attention concerning a Holy Ghost filled person who has sinned, but not unto death.  God says, restore… such a one… if he has committed sin not unto death … pray…. and he will be forgiven and the Lord will heal him.

The objective of the Holy Spirit is to deal with sin, not the person.  The child of God needs restoration and strength, not judgment.  How will the Pastor judge?  Will he judge in righteousness?  Can he judge in righteousness?  In the local church, leadership often will rule the church as though God has given men authority over the body of Christ without consulting Him.

A person or a leader in the church should not judge anything after the flesh.  Jesus reserved judgment to the father and He judged sin.  Clearly when we judge the only alternative we have is to judge after the flesh.  Matt 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
John 5:30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. John 8:15-16 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.  John 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. John 12:47-48 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

Rom 14:10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

Rom 14:13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.

1 Cor 4:3-5 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.
4 For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.
5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

The point here is that the flesh should not be permitted to judge the saints.

Every saved or unsaved person’s thoughts and ways cannot please God.  Neither can he know the Lord, Paul says that he is not subject to the rules, policies and guidelines of righteousness.  Rom 8:7-8 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.  So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Isa 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

There is no sin in Him and if we walk in Him we sin not.  But what’s interesting is that we continue to allow sin to decieve us – [For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Rom 7:11] – We continue to allow sin to form our perceptions of God -[But I see another law in my members (our 5 senses form our perceptions), warring against the law of my mind (conflicting with the word of God in my thoughts), and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members (forcing me to listen to my body, my pain, worries, teachers, friends, ideas, concepts, experiences and ignoring the Word of God) Rom 7:23.] [I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. Rom 7:21] – [Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Rom 8:7-8]

What was Paul saying in the above passages?  This is it in summary.

Our thoughts and ways are not God’s thoughts and ways.  Neither can we know them because they are spiritual and spiritually discerned.  We are sold into slavery to sin.  Sin will not allow us the ability to perceive, hear, taste, smell, touch or sin the things of God.  We do not come in the world knowing, we are taught by someone else, who has been born in sin and shaped in iniquity.  We learn to exercise our sense in this world.  The bible says that our senses are exercised in unrighteousness.  Because of senses are exercised in unrighteousness, then everything that comes to us is processed internally by sin.  The output or product of our thoughts, memories, opinions and ideas have its roots in sin.  Jesus says, Mark 7:15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.  Sin rules our senses.  When the Word of God comes to us, sin will process that information and produce death.  Because sin cannot do the will of God.  We are trapped in this body ans subject to death – O’ Wretch man that I am, what shall deliver me from the body of this death?

This is why memorization of scriptures cannot save you.  This is why theological seminaries cannot save you, or singing in the choir or attending bible classes.  This is why Jesus says, John 5:39-40 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

We memorize scriptures only to find that at the times that we most need them, we cannot draw from them.  Our actions, our thoughts or perceptions will not let us.  Men who struggle from this perception are teaching the church.  They claim if you walk in the scriptures, you will have the blessing of God.  No!  you must walk in the Holy Ghost and let Him form in you the mind of God.

Matt 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Matt 19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
John 17:23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
1 Cor 15:34 Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.

It is the same perception that altered Adams ideas, opinions about God that govern our flesh and all of its senses.  When we walk in the Spirit we will see the Lord and we will do as He does and there is no sin in him.

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