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HEAVEN’S PLAN for Life on Earth
“What It’s Like Living According to God’s Plan”
His Plan for Giving Life – Ephesians 2:1-10
The fruitage of sin indicates that we are apart from Him.
“The wages of sin is death”—Romans 6:23—“but the gift of God is eternal life.”
Romans 5:12
Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned:
v. 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Before this new birth took place, before we were made alive, we were a victim of THREE ENEMIES:
1. the “WORLD,”
2. the “FLESH,” and
3. the DEVIL.
This world system! This is the SATANIC REALM. This is living by the philosophy of selfishness. This is “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”
Now when we become a Christian, what’s our attitude supposed to be toward the world?
The attitude is to be using it but not abusing it.
1 John 2:15, 16
Stop loving the world. Don’t let it be your top, consuming passion and priority…[He says] and all that it offers you, for when you love these things you show that you do not really love God; for all these worldly things, these evil desires—the craze for sex, the ambition to buy everything that appeals to you, and the pride that comes from wealth and importance—these are not from God. They are from the evil one.
So our heavenly Father runs counter to the course of this world.
God doesn’t all of a sudden when Jesus Christ comes into our life, scribble His name on us and throw us in the world and hope we make it! He SEALED us by the Spirit! Protects us where we carry out the environment of Jesus Christ and the world doesn’t get into us. There’s no leaks in our ship!
The problem that believers have is when the world does get in the inside it carries all kind of horrible consequences because Satan is the god of this world.
He’s the god of this world! He doesn’t want the saints to be blessed! He doesn’t want the sinners to come to Christ! He knows us and where we’re most vulnerable! He’ll just tear our hearts out!
Well that’s what we were before we became a Christian. That’s the nature we were born with. It’s the rebel nature that wants us to “do it my way.” It’s the nature that doesn’t care to pray until everything else fails. It’s the nature that doesn’t want to read the Bible. It’s the nature that wants to be well thought of, no matter what. That’s that nature.
When we become a Christian, that nature is still in us.
What happens when we become a Christian is we get a new divine nature placed within us that cannot sin. And it’s that new nature, when we’re under the control of it, that produces victory over sin and allows the life of Christ to flow through us.
(Taken from Don's messages in Ephesians)
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