Everything in creation operates according to the fundamental law of nature, the Law of Life, which is taking to give. Even your mind operates according to this law. Your mind cannot produce any information itself. It can only bring in (take) the information, use it, and then do something with that information (give). As we were made to govern ourselves, we were created so that the information we need cannot be forced into us. Only we can reach out for it and bring it into ourselves. But how do we reach out for it and bring it into ourselves? It is by faith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faith is the capacity of your mind that reaches out for the spiritual information you need and brings it into yourself. But, before you can bring information into yourself by faith, you must first bind yourself to the source of that information by trust. So, what determines what source you bind to? It isn\u2019t your will, your reason, your heart, your intellect, your conscience, or your imagination. It is your identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I mention your identity, I don\u2019t mean what answer you would put on a test if you were asked the question, \u201cWho are you?\u201d Your identity is what drives your self-government. It determines how you relate to God, whether you take from Him as your source or not. It is how you view yourself in relation to God and others, and it drives how you relate to them. You can consciously answer on a test, \u201cI am a child of God,\u201d and at the same time live and respond in a way that is in harmony with the false identity that I am a god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your identity is that you are a child of God, you will automatically bind yourself to God as your source, and then by faith you will take into yourself the information that comes from Him. You will have His standard of evaluation (His law) as your standard, and your conscience, reason, intellect, imagination, and heart will evaluate all things correctly according to that law. As a result, your will then takes the conclusion of that evaluation process and decides what good you are going to do or evil you are going to avoid, and it puts (gives) that decision into the body, which will then act according to the decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you can see, your will, or choice, is at the end of the channel. It takes the information that has already been evaluated and puts it into action. If you have the correct identity, you have the correct source and the correct standard; therefore you will make the correct decisions. You are free to choose and do the good, but you are not free to choose and do the evil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your identity is that you are a god, you will automatically cut yourself off from God as your source. In turn, you will bind yourself to Satan and others as your source. Then by faith you will take into yourself the information that comes from Satan and others. As a god, you will make yourself the reference point, and you will take your own worldview (which is built upon Satan\u2019s perspective) as your standard. Now, you will use your worldview as the standard for your conscience, reason, intellect, imagination, and heart. Your will then takes the conclusion of that wrong evaluation process and decides what evil you are going to do and good you are going to avoid (all while thinking that you are doing good and avoiding evil). The will then puts (gives) that decision into the body, which will then act according to the wrong decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you have the wrong identity, you have the wrong source and the wrong standard; therefore you will make the wrong decisions. You are free to choose and do the evil (which at times looks good on the outside but is always tainted by wrong motives), but you are not free to choose and do the good with the right motive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your identity is wrong, is there any way for you to choose yourself back to a correct identity? No! Your function doesn\u2019t allow it. What your will can choose is predetermined by your identity\u2014your nature. If your identity is correct (if you have the unfallen nature) you are free to choose and do the good. If your identity is wrong (if you have a sinful nature) you can never choose and do the good, because you are a slave (a prisoner) to sin. With the correct identity\/nature, you have access to choices outside the prison. With the wrong identity\/nature, you only have access to choices inside the prison. So, how do we get out of the prison? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only way for a prisoner in prison with a life sentence to be set free, is for someone with sufficient authority to offer them a pardon. Imagine you are sitting in your prison cell, and a letter from the president is sent to the prison warden. The warden reads the letter, then gives it to an officer to bring to you in your prison cell. When you receive the pardon and realize what is being offered to you, you now have a choice. You cannot choose to get out of prison by any of the ways you had tried before. But you can accept the pardon. If you accept the pardon, that very moment you begin to enjoy the privileges of a free person. If you reject the pardon, you remain a prisoner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why would anyone reject the pardon? If you grew up in the prison, then everyone you know and everything you know is inside that prison. It is familiar. It is \u201cnormal.\u201d It is comfortable in a way, though it is not good inside the prison. You may have heard of freedom outside, but you have never seen it. You have never experienced it. You don\u2019t really know what it is like. There is so much uncertainty in the thought of being free. Yes, you have always desired to be free, but now you start to think about what you have to leave behind. There are many reasons why someone might not accept the pardon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But let\u2019s say you accept the pardon. Where are you? You are still in the prison. But are you in the prison as a prisoner, or as a free person? You are in prison as a free person\u2014like the chaplain who may minister in the prison. As a free person, you have the right to go out. As a prisoner, you don\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The officer then tells you, \u201cCome, follow me. We are going to the left.\u201d If you sit there and tell him, \u201cI\u2019m not going anywhere. I\u2019m staying right here in my cell.\u201d Are you going to go free? No! If you burst past him and run to the right, are you going to go free? No! If you burst past him and run to the left, like he asked, and run up to the door and bang on it and yell, \u201cGet me out of here now!\u201d Are you going to go free? No! If you tackle the officer, grab his gun, put it to his head, and tell him, \u201cGet me out of here now!\u201d Are you going to go free? No! What is the only way you are going free? It is by following the instructions of the officer, not just part of the way, but all the way out of the prison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
God is the One with authority that can offer you the pardon. The pardon was infinitely expensive to secure, for it required the infinite, eternal sacrifice of Christ. The gift of salvation\u2014freedom from the presence, penalty, and power of sin\u2014is offered to each of us as a free (but very expensive) gift. We don\u2019t deserve it. We can\u2019t earn it. We can\u2019t do anything to equal the gift throughout all eternity. We can simply accept it. Why? Because we need it, and He wants it for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How is the choice for good restored to us when it was lost \u201cforever\u201d because of the fall? It is partly explained in the enmity that God put between Satan and mankind in Genesis 3:15. It is advocated by Joshua when he calls Israel to \u201cChoose you this day whom ye will serve.\u201d Joshua 24:15. And it is expanded upon in the book, Steps to Christ, page 47, \u201cYou cannot change your heart, you cannot of yourself give to God its affections; but you can choose to serve Him. You can give Him your will; He will then work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Thus your whole nature will be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ; your affections will be centered upon Him, your thoughts will be in harmony with Him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n As you can see in the diagrams above, the will is at the exit of the channel. You can never fix what is coming out of the channel by trying to fix the exit of the channel. You can only fix what is coming out of the channel by fixing what comes into the channel. The exit of the mind is where we have the will\/choice. The entrance is where we have faith. It is by faith that we take into ourselves what we need. How can one with their will captive to that fallen nature, automatically making choices in harmony with that fallen nature, ever bring anything else inside of themselves? It is only by faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God supernaturally gives to fallen mankind a capacity of faith, which we may call a \u201cchoice.\u201d It is not a choice according to the normal way we function, but a capacity provided for us outside of our normal way of functioning. It is a function of God\u2019s grace, intervening in our seemingly impossible situation. And it must address the entrance of the channel, not just the exit. It must affect what comes into the channel (the mind). This God-given capacity gives us the ability to take God as our source, to accept our identity as a child of God, and to begin to function as a free person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This supernatural \u201cchoice\u201d allows us to access the sinless nature of Christ by faith, and to take that nature as our very own. Jesus always knew who He was\u2014the Son of God. He had the correct identity, governed Himself according to that identity, was always bound to the Father by trust, always took from the Father what He needed by faith, evaluated all information according to the correct standard\u2014the Law of God, and made choices in harmony with the law. He always did good and never did evil. By this supernatural intervention, you and I have access to that nature. By faith, we can now operate by Christ\u2019s nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a prisoner to our sinful nature, we only have access to captive choices inside the prison. But by faith, accepting the gift that has been freely offered, we now have access to Christ\u2019s nature and His free choices outside of prison. Now, with His nature and His free choices, we can follow the prison officer\u2019s instructions as he leads us out of the prison. And as long as we keep following the officer\u2019s instructions, by faith in the nature of Christ, we will come to complete freedom. And even if we die in the process, we will die as a free person, not a prisoner. And in the resurrection, we will have a free person\u2019s reward\u2014Christ\u2019s reward. This is good news!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I accepted the pardon\u2014the grace of God given to me to set me free from sin\u2014I had no choice but the captive choices of the sinful nature. After I accept the pardon, I now have access to free choices through Christ. But the old nature isn\u2019t completely dead. In fact, very little of it has died. Now comes a battle\u2014a battle of natures. Am I going to live by the old nature? Or am I going to live by the nature of Christ? And how do I know if I am living by the one vs. the other? <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are things that we can \u201csee\u201d in ourselves, and things that we cannot see. We cannot \u201csee\u201d the taking. We can only see the giving. We cannot see the entrance of information and the evaluation of it. We can only see the choices or decisions that are made as a result of that evaluation process. We cannot see the function of our heart (part of the mind). We can only see the effect of its function. We cannot see when we are taking God as our source by faith or when we are taking others as our source by faith. We can only see when we give (in thoughts, words, and actions). The taking is the cause, and the giving is the effect. It is the effect that reveals to us what the cause was. If we are taking from God, then the effect will be a life that resembles Christ, with self-sacrificing love as our motivation. If we are taking from others, then the effect will be a life that resembles others, with selfishness as our motivation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we have accepted the pardon and are in the process of going free from the prison, what happens? We fall. We fail. We mess things up. We have temper tantrums along the way. We fall into self-sufficiency or despair. We get cocky or crushed. The old nature manifests itself. You see, we are not set free from the prison all at once. It is a process\u2014a process that must reveal to us, by our wrong giving (wrong thoughts, words, and actions), where we are still a prisoner. Then, when we see (by our failures) that we are still a prisoner in that area, we can, by that supernatural capacity that is still freely offered to us, choose God as our source, by faith accept the nature of Christ in this area, and make free choices through Christ\u2019s nature to get back up and continue following the prison guard out of the prison. This process, repeated over and over again, will finally result in us living constantly by faith in the nature of Christ and no longer by the nature of a prisoner. \u201cA just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again.\u201d Proverbs 24:16. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can you imagine what your life would be like if you had no capacity to choose? There would be no joy, no purpose, no meaning, and no love. But what would it look like if everything anyone chose became a reality? What if your next-door neighbor chooses to put a large pile of trash in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,67],"tags":[101,114,52,119,116,115,121,77,84,120,117,118],"class_list":["post-8758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mental-health","category-spiritual-health","tag-choice","tag-choose","tag-faith","tag-identity","tag-information","tag-limits","tag-prison","tag-prisoner","tag-self-government","tag-sinful-nature","tag-standard","tag-worldview"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9231,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8758\/revisions\/9231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/npmin.org\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/figure>\n\n\n\n