Choose wisely students of life! “Learn the lesson or retake the course, it’s that simple.” – Nate Elarton
Introduction:
Let us go deep! Examining ourselves can be very deceptive because we may be blind to certain hindrances in our lives. These hindrances can get involved in the examination process, thus we deceive ourselves. We desire to grow in understanding life and grow in wisdom, but our mind’s eye needs new glasses – the scales need to be removed for a better choice to be made. I urge any seekers of truth to be watchful, pray, take your time, do not trust yourself, and examine everything. When I say do not trust yourself, I say it for very good reason. Allow me to explain -
In my experience, as well as through discussing with others, something very interesting has been revealed (Wisdom). The things we are about to discuss can be foolishness and/or may not be seen because they are contrary to humanistic molds that are upon us (the blinders of self/pride). As mentioned, the very thing this article speaks about is the very thing that will prevent someone from seeing clearly. The blinders, which do not want to be removed, will do whatever it can to stay in tact. If the blinders are removed, we will see that the truth we had once believed is actually a lie. This can become very disturbing to our conscious. We have always worn the these same glasses when viewing the world, it is all we know. Often, our thoughts of life are derived from what the world has taught us. Because of this, it is all we have seen, all we have known, and all we believe in. As far as we’re concerned, what we currently know and experience in life is the truth.
When the blinders are removed (a new choice), there could be a disturbance that feels like we’re on the brink of insanity, but then great peace comes in. The justifying statements we make in life, the blaming of others, the excuses we make to protect ourselves, the foolish stress, depression, etc., all will come to light and be exposed. The blinders will be removed and this causes us to see the real truth, thus everything we thought we were is revealed as a complete sham and a new choice is born. Pride does not want that to happen. The blinders mentioned are our ego, pride, self, flesh, etc. Keep this in mind – Pride does not want to be discovered. Pride will protect itself at all costs. The only way pride can start to crumble is through humility. Once we can admit that we don’t have all the answers and that there are possible challenges in our philosophy, bam, doorways have cracked open. Pride/Man/Flesh/Satan birthed pride, and humility died. It is time to reverse it, turn things back upright, and get this truth revealed. Wisdom and Choice.
Please keep in mind that I’m spiritual and believe in the Son of man. I’m revealing what the Lord has revealed to me. I speak on behalf of spiritual things and not things of man or self. There is a spiritual war going on for our souls and He has helped me in this fight, which I pass on to the reader. If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking “this is a joke”, then I urge you to put to death the pride and force yourself to continue reading. Freedom is around the corner. The only way to see the kingdom of God is to be born again. Put to death self, and revive righteousness. Only God can do this for you through the His Son the Savior. I do not believe for a moment that this transformation can be fully accomplished without God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit helping us. Prior to the acceptance of Jesus Christ, I was blind and had scales on my eyes, thus these things were foolishness. I tried to help myself and that surely didn’t work out to well. We may think that we can accomplish this without God’s help, and that is each person’s individual choice. In the end though, it is a ploy of Satan to keep us from our Father. See, this is not self-help, which is another deception. This is revealing the real truth – The bondage of Adam (man, self, pride, ego, flesh, etc.) and the freedom in Christ Jesus. If a non-believer continues to read, then I truly believe that their soul is interested because the Spirit is ministering to you. Why do I believe this? Because I have prayed for you and He answers prayer that is inline with His will. It is God’s will that all are saved. I pray for eyes to be opened, ears to be unlocked and hearts to receive His truth. If you have not accepted Christ into your life, I suggest doing so at this time so that these things will make sense and start ministering to you.
Examination: Let us first look at our beings and then explain each of the 3 parts. (As a side note, this is an area that is debatable in the church and please let the Spirit of God guide you on this topic. This is my current understanding. Regardless, please view the context of the message and not allow doctrinal reasoning to cause the context of the message to be missed): – The soul, which consists of our mind, emotions and our will (our character). The Spirit, which is aligned with God’s mind, emotions, and His will (the character of Christ). The flesh, which is aligned with a worldly mind, emotions, and will (the character of Satan). There is a spiritual war going on and they are fighting for our souls. The battleground is the mind. “Choose this day who you will serve.” In order to choose wisely, we have to examine very closely the thoughts, emotions and will that we are addressed with. Is it mine (which has been molded by worldly things) or is it God’s? Then we choose wisely once this knowledge is gained. Let me reveal further -
Pertaining to the Spirit’s thoughts, emotions and will, these are revealed in the Word of God, which is Jesus Christ. Our souls are trying to be held captive into an image of Satan (Adam, me-first, ego, pride, being like gods, in control, humanism, etc). Jesus came to save us from this mess. He is revealed in the Word of God and the Word (Christ) guides us to the real truth. When the Spirit ministers to us, it will minister things that are in-line with the character of Jesus Chris. The benchmark of whether it is the Spirit ministering to us or the old-self is determined through the Word. Thoughts of the Spirit are God first, others second, and ourselves last. This is a revival of humility (Christ) that was once dead but has been made alive by being born again. It is a complete reversal of pride and humanism (Satan/Adam). The emotions of the Spirit are contentment, peace, joy, patience, caring, compassion, and everything else that lines up with good good peace. The will of the Spirit is revealed in God’s word and through the ministering of the Spirit of God to our souls.
The thoughts of Satan should be easily recognizable. It is what we have experienced our entire lives. Pride was Satan’s fall, it was Adam’s fall, and it is our fall. The thoughts are me-first. God and others will be placed in second or third place. They are typically thoughts of how I can benefit, thoughts of judging others, thoughts of how I’m bothered, etc. They are basically selfish thoughts. This is where the conscious gets seared and as an animal does, we will dodge such attack on our character, run and hide, cause a distraction, or fight. Thus, we will get thoughts like “He just called me selfish. It is far from me to be selfish. Who do you think you are?” That my friend is the deception I was speaking of early on. Because it is pride/selfishness that is actually responding. The thing we are revealing here does NOT want to be revealed. The emotions that are part of Satan’s plans for us are the ones we are so use to. Hurt, pain, frustration, anxiety, worry, stress, depression, fear, anger, and so on. The will of Satan is to be like the Most High God. To set oneself up as the most important being, trying to become like a god, and be in control of things in the way that we like them.
The thoughts, emotions, and will of our characters are a direct result of which one of the above-mentioned we end up choosing. This is why it is very important that we examine these things from the Spirit. We have to get out of ourselves, the ways and thoughts we are use to, the emotions we are almost addicted to, and analyze outside of such things. Our minds are constantly bombarded by both sides, assuming the Spirit of God is with us. If we do not have God helping us, we can’t see these things. If that’s the case, we accept the thoughts we have always had, we say it is who we are and it’s okay, and these things are foolishness. We will fight, take offense, dodge and weave, or just run away when addressed with this topic. As in the Wizard of Oz, “Whatever you do, do not look behind the curtain, I cannot be revealed.” It is very sad for me to see people in this state. It breaks my heart. We end up fully accepting that we are the only intelligent being, there is no God, and we can do as we like to do. This is glorification of self, which is the exact thing we are speaking of, and the thing that Jesus wants to set us free from. Even believers of God will fall into this trap. They will justify their actions with things like “God just wants me to be happy!”, “I’m not hurting anyone else”, and/or “God put it here for a reason, for us to enjoy it!” Again, this is glorification of self. Believers, if you have had any thoughts like this, be very careful. It is deception. If that’s the case, please check out my website and find the article: Who is God?
Gaining further knowledge: I may have used the phrase “Wisdom and Choice” in the title, but I think a better understanding would be: “Wisdom is making good choices with learned knowledge.” I think Wisdom is the application of learned information. If I touch a hot stove and get burned, I have knowledge that the stove is hot and it burned me. If I do it 10,000 times, I have a lot of knowledge. When I choose to apply that knowledge as to not get burned, that is wise. To touch it again for the 10,001 time, well this is what we will be talking about. We’re ignorant to the knowledge that has been at our fingertips all along because we were once blind. Let’s bring it to light.
I recommend reading this topic of Thought. If someone doesn’t understand their self talk and emotions, then in my humble opinion, this will be difficult to put into practice. Please stop now and at least read that post. There is a lot of thinking, reading, and praying required. We should spend time with thought on our thoughts as well as watching what they do to the emotions. Examine yourself. It is a process of transformation and reading this entry will not accomplish much without putting it into action. In some, if not all of us, there is a terrible cycle that must be examined and understood. As a friend once said “Play attention!”
I decided to start this topic because of an email I once received from a friend. I will get to that in a minute. I wanted to reiterate, what I went over in my posting about thought. If someone has a negative emotion, such as hurt, sad, anger, frustration, guilt, depression, greed, ashamed, embarrassed, offended, etc then examine the self talk that triggered those emotions. Listen to what it’s saying. Write down the self talk, the triggered emotions, and how it affected additional thought patterns and/or our outward circumstances. We have to go through this in order to determine where these things are coming from, Flesh or Spirit.
See, we must realize that we are animals. Ever since we were born, we were learning what it is to be a human being. We are trained to be a human being like Adam (like man, the world, flesh, etc). We should examine who our teacher was. Society, friends, siblings, parents, TV, bad role models, etc. Who was the teacher that taught us to get angry, to be sad, to get depressed, etc? Basically, we were molded/taught by society that we must think certain thoughts in certain situations. Our souls (mind, emotions and will) have been formed into the image of Satan. Christ is now breaking these molds and transforming our souls into His image, assuming we choose Him.
When we keep evaluating our thoughts (the main battle front), we will eventually find the triggers to our emotional state and it will be a phrase that we say in our head – the first phrase, the initial trigger. Write it down. When we see the trigger, we will know immediately where it came from. Then watch the steps after the initial words – Watch what it’s doing to the body. Does it line up with God’s character in-Christ or does it look like the rest of the world? When we pay very close attention to the things going on in our body, we will recognize how an emotion flushes our body and rational thinking is out the window. If that happens, it is all emotionally based from this point on. For instance, my emotion was anger. I watched self-talk triggered an emotion, then I felt a warming sensation start at the hips and watched it flood up my body. Even though I knew it was of the flesh, I agreed that I should not be angry in this situation, and I knew it was of the old-self, I couldn’t stop it. Emotions are a powerful powerful drug. If this happens, I highly recommend duct tape over the mouth. lol
Now to that email my friend sent.. The Two Wolves:
“One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
This is the Holy Spirit vs flesh. Christ vs Satan. Good vs Evil. As the story goes, the winner is our outward actions – an addiction, stressed, depressed, happy, joyful, peaceful, etc. It is the difference between the secular world and spiritual world. Salvation vs hell, etc. Now to actually talk about this topic of wisdom/choice, haha.
Wisdom and Choice: Wisdom/Knowledge will help our lives by leaps and bounds. I see knowledge as those things that are repetitive in our lives whereas we gain knowledge and start to understand them. Ever feel depressed, angry, frustrated, sad, worried? Ever run back to an addiction over and over again? Think about it. How many times has the same bad emotion or event played itself out in our lives? After the aforementioned is analyzed and we take the time to write things down, we will see things we have done 100s, 1000s, tens of 1000′s of times in life. Guess what, we’re going to get the same results the next 1000 times this situation comes up – unless something changes. Oooh, did you get that? If not, re-read it. A good word of knowledge. Learn the lesson or retake the course, it’s that simple. It was kind of funny that I had this knowledge slapping me upside the head for years, and I didn’t even see it. I pray your eyes are being opened.
Here is my example in the next 2 paragraphs: My ex-g/f and I had a common argument. The topic would be different, but outside of the specific topic, it was always the same circle of events. I started jotting down the steps of our arguments because we went through the same general scenario every single time. I thought – “Man, I’ve been here before. Same results. Not talking. Talking of break-up. Feeling terrible.” The end result that I just mentioned always started with someone’s thought, then an emotion, more thought, more emotions, words coming out of the mouth (the outward action), and then a full blown argument. At the time, I didn’t realize these things I were writing down were good good knowledge. I was writing down, step by step, what happened during a repetitive situation. For example, on my piece of paper I had written down something like: Step 1: I was upset. Step 2: I said something stupid. Step 3: It affected her. Step 4: She responded in like-kind. Step 5: repeat steps 1-4. Step 6: not talking for timeframe. Step 7: talk about break up. Step 8.. you get the idea. One day while we were in the midst of a disagreement, I looked at the notes. I said to myself – “Hmmm, we’re on step 5.. She’s gonna mention break-up in the next day or so.” Yep. I had written down knowledge…and knew where things were going. huh. HUH. Seeing it yet? 10,000 times..100,000 times. At this point, when a disagreement started, I knew every step along the way. I knew the beginning, the middle and the end result. It was the same cycle over and over, in which I had experienced 100s of times.
If we have have this knowledge, then we can change the outcome for the good by making a better choice. Wouldn’t that be wise?? If something does not change with this knowledge in our hands, we are now accepting the fact that things will go down that path again. Here’s where it gets good and deep. Take the list of events, and we’ll use mine above as an example. See that trigger on step 1 (Step 1: I was upset)? Analyze it and break that sucker down. I asked myself, why am I upset? I realized because I thought something. Then I asked “Why do I think these things?” (analyzing/examining!) Then I came to a determination, “Hmmm, I can choose something else outside of what the world taught me to think in this situation. What else is there to choose? Hmmm, I could choose this, or I could choose that.” So then I examined deeper.. let us go deeper and see God. I questioned, “What is at the root of each of the possible choices? What is the spark?” (dwell on this, seriously..) – Whoa.. Hello God.. Hello Satan.. Zing!
At this point, we are now standing at the doorway of freedom, assuming Jesus is with you and the Kingdom of God is on the other side of that door. 
This ended up understanding to many other challenges in my life. It was realized that if my soul chose a humanistic/trained thought, I was in the same boat.. same worldly emotions would come up, and the resulting action was the same. Not wise.. If my soul used the knowledge wisely, I chose the morale governing law of God.. Jesus.. the Spirit. After going through specific negative feelings such as hurt, frustration, worry, stress, depression, etc 1000s upon 1000s of times in my life, I knew them inside and out. I just never could see them! I had knowledge all along and it wasn’t being used, very unwise. Time to get wise.
See: These things that happen in our lives.. repetitively.. “Learn the lesson, or retake the course.. It’s that simple”. Like the wolf story above. We keep feeding the negative self talk and negative emotions. So guess who will win the battle? Our reality is a result of what we think, and what we think is a result of our choice to think it.. Set your minds on things above. Again, we have these habits and molds that are formed throughout life. When we are born, we are informational gatherers. We are learning what it means to be “human”. So as we are learning, what do we experience? Who’s teaching us? We are taught via society, our surroundings, friends, family, TV, and have marketing materials in our face constantly. We are trained to act a certain way, believe certain things, get upset when certain things happen, and so on. We must realize as a society that we don’t need to do these things, we have a choice. Choose to set our minds on things above, not things below.
Jesus will break the chains. The Truth shall set you free indeed.. How do we break these molds? Re-training. We are now adults, and have new knowledge in us, in-Christ. This is called being born again – Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. By utilization of our Helper, we are now retraining ourselves to make a better initial choice on Step 1 – to think a different thought. His thoughts. Then everyting flows from there. We speak differently, we feel different, our relationships are different, and so on. Instead of looking like the rest of the world, we start looking like Jesus Christ.
Now that we know these things, if we don’t spend the time making a change and going deeper, we will be in the same situation again. What did Einstein say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. Duh. I’m betting that there are many readers that prefer to not be in some repetitive situations again. Our souls scream out for change. Take a look back throughout our individual lives, and remember the negative situations we go through. See any repetitiveness? Anything look familiar? Been through similar situations 100s and 100s of times? Boy, it sure did for me! We experience certain things so many times that we know them like the back of our hands, and we just think “That’s who I am!”. No.. That’s who you were trained to be. Make a change. Don’t accept what society made you to be. Be something better for your family’s sake, for your own sake, for the sake of society, and most importantly, for the sake of our Father God. He loves you and wants you in His arms. Choose wisely student of life!
Possible challenge: Sometimes we can’t get out of the rut at all because we are concentrated on being in the rut. We get consumed by the rut we are in, and we may even say something like “I’m in this rut and I want to get out. I can’t though.” <– Stop. We are what we think. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. If you say it, it’s because you felt it, and you felt it because you thought it, and you thought it because you chose it. Our outside actions and emotions are a result of what we are thinking. Our reality, the things in our existence are born in our thought process. If we think it, we make it so. Choose wisely! As we keep thinking we can’t get out, we won’t. As in, the effort and thoughts are focused on the actual challenge. Let it go. Stop. It’s a trap of Satan. Keep looking at it, and the challenge continues. Put the effort into looking to Jesus, calling out for Him to save us, grab the bible, pray! He will rescue us immediately if we look at Him. Take the mind’s eye off of the situation (remove the blinders) and look at Him.
Sometimes, I still could not get out of the rut with this knowledge. I forced myself to call out to Jesus: “Save me!”. And then I forced myself to pick up the bible, even though the emotional disturbance was saying no. He will immediately reach down and grab us, just like as Peter was sinking in the water as he looked at the waves crashing in around him. Where is our mind’s eye? On the challenge at hand? Well, that’s where we will be. Change what the mind is looking at. Put it on Jesus, Peace will overcome us immediately, His character guarantees it.
Summary: We have been trained by society, who also does not know any better. It is not their fault, Satan is to blame. We have a generational challenge and someone must break the molds. We don’t have to get upset, frustrated, depressed, we don’t have to worry, we don’t have to turn to an addiction, we don’t have to argue with people. We can turn a new leaf and start looking at things differently. We can place these wordly things on the Cross in Christ-Jesus, and in return, we get His Mind, His Heart, His Eyes, His Ears.. We get His Righteousness in return. This means we see things totally differently.
Remember, however old we are, we were trained for that many years to be the person we are today. If there are areas that need adjusting, it’s going to take time to burn the stuff out of us. Eventually, we start to make better choices and wisely exercising knowledge. After evaluating for a while, will will start to see a battle going on inside of us. We will desire to make better choices, but we will not at times. We will still choose things of the flesh that we wish we were not doing. If we get to a point of thinking we are going insane, we are on the right track and we are ready to bust loose. This will happen because we see both sides of the coin (recognizing the good vs bad thoughts). We may still make unwise choices, and this is the Spirit revealing these things in us. Then, there is no other place to go but the ultimate choice. Choose God or choose this world. The Word of God will help us in this transformation. Everything that the self-help books have, this has, but it ultimately reveals the real truth and does not mask it/hide it.
Let us always consider the opposite of any negative area we are addressed with (Looking upon the Spirit). What is opposite of frustration? Peace. What is the opposite of sadness? Happiness. There are 2 sides to everything and the sides are: in-Christ or in-Adam, Self or God, Sin or Righteousness, Pride or Humility, etc. They are both warring for our soul, and our free-will/choice decides who we stand in agreement with. In the end, there is one Truth, and His name is Jesus Christ, God, Lord, Holy Spirit, and Father. Remember, we put ourselves wherever we may currently be via our own choices. No one “makes” our choices for us, we have free-will. The unseen are things that are eternal. The things we see are temporal.
If you’ve made it this far, then check out the following article when you have time. It continues to head to greener pastures. Enjoy and God be with you, always: GO DEEP!!!
joseph
October 15, 2010
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Posted by joseph
Categories: Bible Study, Christian Resources, Salvation
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Tags: Joseph, serious things, truth, Word of God, Word of God is Truth
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