Principles of Position Lesson 20 week 3

So I listened to the classroom last week. I thought J.D. did a really good job. And he got down to, I think, question seven or eight. Question seven is, how are the discrepancies between our position and our condition manifested by our many failures in growth and service taken care of? Understand the question? We talked about, I know that you talked about confessing sins in specific rather than general. You talk about that? You did. So there are discrepancies between our position and condition. And I know that's true because I watch you very closely. And I watch myself very closely. And someone else watches. That's right. And manifested in my many failures in growth and service. How does God take care of that? That's a nice way of saying, what do you do about your sins? What do you do about your sins? What are you supposed to do about your sins under grace? Pass them and move on. Yeah, that's really right.

There is, in every believer's life, on an actual daily basis, there are these... your condition does not line up with your position. And hopefully, and thankfully so, there's enough understanding of what my position is so that I know there's a difference. And that my condition is not necessarily reality all the time. Because living in sin is not normal behavior for a believer.

You agree with that? Sinning is spiritual insanity. How do we define insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. You sin over and over again, you're expecting a different result. You're expecting to be satisfied. You're not.

And so God has provided for us this mechanism to confess and be cleansed. And we talked about confession in the light and how important having the light is. One of the things, in listening to JD last week, he was doing a really good job of, you know what the word repent means? What's the word? Repent. What's it mean?

He needs to have a change of mind. You know what he was doing? He was trying to change your mind last week. And some of you got your mind changed, some of you didn't. What was he trying to change? What was he trying to change your mind about? Come on, you were there, I heard your voices. He was trying to change your mind about what God expects us as believers under grace to do about sins. And what an incredible blessing the light is for us. The light comes and shines on our condition. It exposes our sins and it exposes Christ at the same time. Do you realize what a blessing it is to have your sins exposed? It's huge!

Because if it didn't happen that way, you'd never get rid of them. You'd walk around with a bag full of guilt hanging on you all the time. So here comes the light, the Spirit of God opens up, and you see, and yeah, okay, you're disappointed, but like Newell says, to be disappointed in yourself is to have trusted in yourself in the first place. You're able to confess and be cleansed right now, immediate, and stay in the light of fellowship with the Lord. Confession in the light is such a blessing for us, we should always run towards it, never hide from it.

You see that? It's okay to be exposed. And you know what's cool about it? As we grow up in that, we're not affected by what people think about us. There's nobody as a big rotten dog as I am. Because I've been exposed to me by the light of God. And it's okay. You see that? It's okay. As a matter of fact, I'm thankful that it's that way. Because, I mean, if you're like me, Every once in a while this thought will go through my mind about what I did 35 years ago. And here comes the guilt. Wait a minute. That's not what's right. That's not what's real. Did Christ take care of that sin? Is He taking care of me as a sinner? Have I been crucified with Him? Do I thank Him? Yeah, I do. And I'm not going to follow that rabbit down the hole. I'm not going there. Because I don't have to. I'm free.

So, by what means does the Lord keep us dependent upon Himself? And I wrote down the answer to question 7, which is the same as here. How does the Lord keep us dependent on Him? just by what you were saying, by exposing our sins. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. He does it.

Christ is, we have, we've talked about this, we have two advocates, right? Advocates and a lawyer, an attorney. We've got one internally, who's the Spirit of God, who's the one who shines the light, and we have the other one who's Christ at the throne of God, who's our advocate about our sins. So we've got a pretty good defense team, don't you think? So our position and our fellowship are maintained throughout the progress of our spiritual growth.

I think one of the big pitfalls to growing spiritually as you begin to understand some of these growth truths is the fact that You fall back, you sin. I'm hanging out with a young guy now and we're going back and forth and he's kind of hit that point when good old sin nature has reasserted itself in his life and he's starting to duck and do the defensive maneuvers.

I said to him, just stand there in the light, let God expose you for the rat that you are. And then you'll find out what he's done in terms of your position is so overwhelming, you won't ever have to go there. And there's that issue that if I'm the opposition, if I'm Satan and I can keep you looking at yourself in the darkness, I got you. As long as you're thinking about yourself and how wonderful you're not doing, I got you. You're of no use to God at all. So here he comes with this environment of confession and cleansing.

The dependence is really important here because you are not smart enough and I'm not smart enough to be awakened about my sins all the time, are we? I mean, don't you cruise along and sin and then the Spirit of God goes, Oh yeah, and you wouldn't even know it. You wouldn't even know it. I'm so struck these days how you talk about sin missing the mark. If you feed into the world's environment in any form, you're essentially sinning because you've fallen for what is selling. That's right. Because Paul said, whatever is not a faith is sin.

So if I watch the news tonight and I get wrapped up in the politics, guess what? There's no faith involved in that deal. There's a lot of emotion involved. There's a lot of this and a lot of that involved. I mean, if this election has done anything, it's making us believers more dependent on God, more dependent on Him all the time. Because do you really think that we can fix this cesspool?

Give me a break! This is a world that's run by people who are godless. I read an article by Max Zero of his own, Fox News, and I had to look at it. He says, Wednesday morning, God is still sovereign. He's still in command. It doesn't matter how it came out. That's right. Really right on. That's exactly right. Now, granted, we in this country have lived pretty soft, easy lives, most of our adult lives. We do worry about what our kids are facing.

Christianity got its beginning in probably the worst moral and social decrepancy ever. Can you imagine becoming a Christian in the Roman Empire? Go talk to Vern about the history. If you were a politician, you probably were a pedophile. Homosexuality was rampant, especially if you were in the military. They had to order Greek soldiers to procreate children because their population was decreasing so fast because there wasn't any male-female marriages. If you were a thief or a murderer, they had these sanctuary cities. called temples, and if you got within the boundary of the temple, they couldn't touch you. You had to stay there. So all your buddies living in the temple, they're pretty nice fellas, right?

And so here comes Christianity, and what happens? It prospers. Because of the opposition, it prospers. I think, it's my own opinion, I think that the direction that we seem to be headed is because God wants to prosper us. Because we're going to get more and more dependent on Him. We're going to have to. Because all of the worldly props that have been holding us up are going to be gone. We have to trust Him. And Miles Stanford's greatest saying was, we have to trust the Lord has come to that. Oh, by the way, it's got to come to that. The Lord keeps us ever dependent on Himself and at the same time fully confident in Him.

We are needy, but we're bold. You see that? There comes a time in our spiritual growth where we really are thankful that we have needs, because if we didn't have them, we wouldn't move. We'd get complacent in Christianity and cruise. Wouldn't we not? And there's nothing worse than a 40-year Christian who's in cruise. There's no life in him.

So here comes the Spirit of God, He's so faithful and He creates needs, and they can be created in all kinds of ways, and the way that we're studying now is He does it by exposing our sinfulness to us. Wonderful. Really a good thing. It's really a good thing. So be thankful, I think, that God is always keeping us needy and dependent on Him. I like that. So what are the advantages of walking in the light? I'm at nine. What are the advantages of walking in the light? Now worship with Christ.

Okay. What else? Rest. Rest, okay. Think of it in terms of the topic we're talking about. The light that reveals our sins ever reveals our perfect position in the Lord Jesus. There we go. How about this one? It keeps us honestly aware of our sins. It keeps us honestly aware of our sins. Is that an advantage of walking in the light? I think it is. I think it is. If you're like me, you've always tried to cover up your sins because you think of yourself as better than what you really are in your condition. But unless the sin issue is resolved, we're not going anywhere.

One of my minors in college was psychology. We learned about these things called defense mechanisms. You know what a defense mechanism is? It's something you do to keep the cover on yourself so people can't really see that you're a dog. That's right. That's the mask that we wear. And the light of God exposes that, takes that mask away, and we stand in front of God honestly aware of our sins. We're honest about it. And it's okay. It's okay because the sin issues have been resolved by Him. But He doesn't want us walking around ignorant. He wants us totally aware of what He's done and the value of what He's done.

And when it comes to just me, I cannot, as a servant of the Lord, and you cannot as a servant of the Lord, sit down and seriously help some other believer deal with their sins, unless you've been exposed. I'm glad you said that. Because when I'm with this one friend, I get caught up in all this. world. And then I think, I need to say something to her. Well, how can I say something to her? I mean, we both, she knows that I'm a believer. She knows that I go to church. She knows those things, but... She doesn't know you're a sinner though, right? Yeah, she knows. That's a good thing. Yeah, she knows. So what should you say, I think we should avoid some of these subjects, or some of these...

Well, you know, if I'm standing and looking you in the eye, you know, and you're somebody that's done a despicable thing, and you got exposed, right? If God has had me walking in the light, There's no chance that you're as exposed as I am. I mean, I look at guys like Hitler and think, the guy's a piker compared to me. Because how many people have I murdered in my mind? A lot of them, you know. How many times have I thought really evil stuff about people that nobody ever knew, or I was envious, or I was angry, or I was lustful. Nobody knew about that, except for me.

So here God comes and does me a favor, exposes all of that to me, and so I'm sitting in front of you and you're telling me about stealing five bucks out of somebody's purse. I'm thinking, okay, we can deal with that, it's not a problem. God took care of that too. I can deal with any circumstance that anybody finds themselves in, who haven't had their sins exposed to them, because I have. And God's grace has taken care of me. And if He can save me, and if He can reconcile me, and He can restore me to fellowship, you're easy. It's not hard. He did it for me.

I've always thought that. If He could save me, He could save anybody. Right. And then I think, well, I'm judging some of... I mean, she can make friends just like that. Sure. Yep. Sure. We can be somewhere, she starts talking, suddenly they're her friend. Right.

But I'm just as crazy in other ways, but I don't know how to sort of... Well, again, what does that make you? Make you dependent. They make you dependent on the circumstances of your life, on the Lord, and what He's going to do. Because you have certain gifts that she doesn't have.

It's like people admire evangelists because they're the recruiters of Christianity. Well, if you look at the spiritual gift, there's only one recruiter. All the rest of them have to do with edifying the body of Christ. All spiritual gifts are to edify the body. There's only one where you go out and recruit. And so the emphasis is on recruiting and not on edification.

And within the body of Christ there are all these gifted people and those gifts are way more important than evangelization, I think, because we're all to grow in Christ. And he's put these people in place in the body of believers to help us all be edified I think that's more important than evangelizing, which evangelizing is fine, but that's the wrong emphasis.

How about the advantage of enhancing our appreciation of His grace? The question was, what are the advantages of walking in the light? It enhances our appreciation of His grace, right? When Courtney and I started teaching that grace class, we were kind of surprised how ignorant people were, including ourselves, of what grace is.

It was like we were walking around blinking. Did you see this? Did you see that? Grace, is it really like that? And one of the ways that you learn conditionally and your experience grace is walking in the light. Because the light exposes your sinfulness but it also exposes Christ himself, both at the same time. Another advantage is that realization that our sins don't cripple us because his cleansing frees us.

Who were we talking to? Oh, we were talking to somebody a week or so ago. They're a believer and the whole tone of the conversation is how guilty they felt about something they did 15 years ago and how it seems to be affecting their family now. My thought was, well, that person needs to get in the light.

Because guilt is not only our sins taken care of, but the guilt too. You see that? How is the guilt taken care of? You're forgiven. And what's the rest of it? You're cleansed from all unrighteousness. All of it. There is no guilt. See, when Christ paid the penalty for our sins, He also took the guilt on Himself. He took all the guilt. And it's so subtle how guilt is the tool that is used to keep you hiding in the dark. Could you say that guilt is really just... I just lost my train of thought. If you have guilt, then you really thought you could have done better? What's the difference between Satan exposing your sin and the Spirit exposing your sin? What's the difference in those two? How can you tell the difference? One points up, one points down. Satan goes, you're a dog and you're guilty.

And I don't think God likes you anymore. And here it goes. Right? And all I got to do is I'm going to fix this. The Spirit of God points you to the light. And what? Reconciliation and restoration. See? I think a lot of this goes back to the root of the application, too. Yes, it is. You know, for the person who has something that did 35 years ago. We've been separated from that, from the identification.

Our life is now Christ. Does Christ have guilt? Is He guilty? Does He feel guilty? No, we're in His life. It's not like Galatians 2.20. It's not I who live, but Christ lives in me. And when we start focusing on the guilt, we're losing the identification. We're looking at the old man. I agree. Focus on who you are in Christ, our position, as we talk about. All that goes away. So if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold, everything has become new.

Wayne and I talked a long time about which side of the cross do you live on? Which side? Now think about it. What side of the cross do you live on? Is it the crucified side or the resurrected side? Which side? Resurrected. On the resurrected side, let's see now. Crucifixion took care of it all, didn't it? It took care of it all. All the sin, all the guilt, all the old man, everything.

My position before God is in Christ. I'm a new creature. And I cannot in good conscience and in reality look before God and say I'm a safe sinner. Can I say that I'm not a safe sinner? Why? I'm a new man in Christ. I'm not a sinner anymore positionally. Do you see that? I'm not a sinner. I may commit sins, but it has nothing to do with who I am. It has everything to do with this other nature that's mine, and I'm responsible, and it's going to cause me to lose fellowship or have the lights go out. But it isn't who I am.

The second step there, besides unification, is the other thing which is really good from our last class, which is faith. All of this and all the things that I'm looking at is a testing of your faith. Do you believe what you just said? Do you believe what Christ, what the word has told you you are? You believe it. As I look at more and more verses, James, consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter the testing of your faith. And then you look at all these other ones that are, stand firm in the faith. That's what's going on. And the faith is, do you believe what God told you? That's exactly right. And you know what's so subtle about that?

If you don't know this, There's no trying of your faith. Because what is he trying? There's nothing to try. You don't know who you are. You think you're a safe sinner. You think the best thing you have is hell insurance. I don't have to go to hell. But I haven't changed. I'm still the same old slug I've always been.

I don't understand who God says I am and what He's done. That's the focus of my faith. So I learn position. You think that the opposition is going to say, oh, now they got it. I'm not going to pick on them anymore. No, it gets worse. Because if I can convince you from the opposition side that this isn't true, I got you. I got you. So what does God do? He allows the testing so that you'll be like Job. You say, I don't care if you slay me. I still trust you. I trust you no matter what. Trust what?

What I'm learning about my position. I know who I am. The shrinks would probably think you're nuts, but it's position. It's position. Everything revolves around the object of your faith, which is Christ and the position you have in Him. And it has to be tested. If it's not tested, it's just theory.

So I always run into trouble when life in nature harms someone else. Oh, I know, I know. Because they may not have that same understanding of the grace that I live under. You know, personally you think, okay, I know who I am, I know, you know, etc. But nevertheless you harm somebody in the going.

That always seems to be difficult for me in this year. Yeah. And the question is? Is that's where the guilt seems to kick in. Oh, I see that you've harmed somebody. Yes. Okay. Well, it's personally something that I've done or greed or envy or whatever. Yeah. The Lord works with those internally. Sure. Well, go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say I'm at which, you know, I deal with, you know, saying the wrong thing, doing all that. I always go back to the thing that I stressed before this board meeting. Did he allow that? He did. And is he working on you and working on that other person? And I always go back to, he allowed me to do that. And if he allowed me to do it, he's using it for his purposes and he loves me. I was at the board meeting. You can't be on a board meeting.

I said a dumb thing. I thought, Lord, you allowed me to do that. I'm not going to get chewed up by this, because I said something stupid. And I thought, OK, that's for me, working on me. And I may have used it for the seven other board members and that. And I thought, OK, he's using it for his purposes. I'm not going to be chewed up by it. And I always go to the fact that he's in control of all things and he has an eternal, inseparable love for us. He allowed that to happen. Sure he did. And by the way, you're responsible. But you're responsible. The consequences, you know, if I shoot somebody, if I trip somebody, there are going to be consequences. understanding that he allowed that.

I always go back to you, you say the wrong thing at the right time, the right thing at the wrong time, whatever. And the pointing, I do the pointing. I'm pointing there, but there are three pointing back at me. He's working on both. That's right. At least for me, I get it. I think that's right. Here's the other thing it does.

I think it frees you up as a believer, say you really did harm somebody, to assess how to reconcile with them. Sometimes it's fine to go and say, look, I recognize that I've harmed you. Will you forgive me? Other times not. Other times not, because doing that would even harm them more. But the Spirit of God will lead you in that kind of thing. But you know, how hard is it? It's easy for us to go to somebody and say, I'm sorry I smacked you in the nose. And they look back and say, I wonder how sorry he really is. But if I go to you and say, will you forgive me for smacking you in the nose, what have I just done?

I moved it from me to you. Now you decide. I'm forgiven by God, which freed me to ask for forgiveness from you, but now it's you. See, and that's the cool thing about it. And you say, no, I'm not going to forgive you. As a matter of fact, if you're not looking, you're going to get it back. Okay. Okay. You see that? And I think sometimes the Spirit of God will say, you need to go talk to them and ask for forgiveness.

Other times He'll say, no, I had a situation years and years ago where I wanted to get in a guy's face and he deserved it. And I called up Miles and I said, look, I want to get in this guy's face. He's being unreasonable and unjustifiably blaming someone else for something I did. And if he's going to get in anybody's face, he needs to get in my face. And he said, don't call him because he's too fragile. Boy, that's the first time somebody ever said to me, don't fix it because they can't handle it.

I think the Spirit of God will lead you that direction too. I can't fix this. I just need to let the Spirit of God do His thing. I know that if I try to do something here, it's going to get worse. Go back in time, did you choose to be offended? And I know that this person would choose to be offended if I went to him. I don't want to cause that. One thing, because we're in Christ and we're sealed in the Holy Spirit, we're bound for heaven. There's no question about our salvation.

And I think, when you were mentioning that if you had done something wrong, the same thing 700 times, and you go to God and tell him one more time that you've done it, it's like you did it. But it takes, it's about faith to go, and he says he'll forgive you, and he's faithful and just, and all and righteous. He really said it. He's not a liar. It's true. But you think to yourself, how could he continue forgiving? How could he keep failing like this? But he does, he's believing that. Yeah, he does, because on the cross, all 700 of those were covered.

And 800, if it takes that many. You know, I'm the one that gets exacerbated, and myself, God isn't, because he's done. One of the other ones is where we are most detected, we are most protected. How cool is that? And there comes a day with the 700 sins, whatever they are, when you finally think, you know what? I finally learned the lesson. And the lesson is, I don't have to do this anymore. I'm free. And I'm just going to go on and live my life and trust God, and I'm not going to do it anymore. The last one was, upon this basis, the sins that are committed are immediately dealt with and we are able to continue in fellowship and growth on the basis of convention. Last question, how does the ministry of the Indwelling Spirit keep me from being lax in my walk or our walk? Well, He prays for us. He prays for us? The Holy Spirit does indeed.

I think he's way more active than that. Or does he take a stick and... Well, no, you're right, but let's change the stick to child train. It's not that he wants to harm us, but he's going to child train us. Let me read it. Our father's counteraction of being lax, you know, being lazy, is the indwelling spirit of life. To have our sins so freely forgiven doesn't make us lax as to our walk. And the reason is, for one thing, forgiveness, there's often his faithful child training. Child training, King James calls it chastisement.

He may leave you in the circumstances. He may have you suffer all of the consequences of your sin. Other times you don't. You don't suffer the consequences. His grace is and you can see it. A good conscience is cherished too much for it to be lost by license. As you begin to rest and your conscience is clear, you're not going to take advantage of that.

And one of the reasons you don't is because you're learning. You're learning your position. And that's why it's critical that as I teach and you teach those in your sphere of influence, you're always teaching them grace. Because if you are, what you're doing is keeping them in the light and their consciences are clear.

I would much rather have a clear conscience than enjoy my sins or sit on my butt and do nothing. There is a time when I think in every believer's life where you have to go to the Lord and say, well, I don't feel like doing, but I'm dependent on you, whatever you want me to do, and the next thing you know, there you are, moving along.

We admit that we all often stumble and fall and offend in many things, James 3.2. But there need be no fear of facing up to each offense and confessing it. Now, true or false? We've got a minute. We're going to finish. If I don't ask for forgiveness, I won't get it. True or false? False. Amen.

And notice in 1 John 1.9 it doesn't say to ask for forgiveness. Ever notice that about that verse? If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we ask. No. No. It's like I listen to these idiots in the morning when I'm working out that are giving out the gospel message and they're saying things like, ask God to forgive your sins.

No, he's already done it. You just have to believe that he has. So you're saying confession is where they're putting ask into place as part of the process of confession? I don't think you have to ask. That's what you're saying, they're applying ask to that word. Yeah, they are. And the word confess just means to say the same thing.

What does God say about you? Well, if you don't know what your position is, you don't know what he's talking about. See, I don't have to ask for forgiveness. I have to, by faith, rest in the fact that I'm already forgiven. That's what he says. Now I'm getting confused because I thought that we'd been talking about confession. Yeah, what is confession? If you come out of Catholicism, like I did and you did, you make a list of your sins and you go tell them to the priest and you hope he's going to forgive you.

But if you study the word confession in 1 John 1.9, confession means to say the same thing that God is saying. Well, what does he say? He says in his word, you are identified with my son in his death-bearing resurrection and now seated with him in the heavenlies.

You've been acting like that's not true. You're now confessing it is true. You can't go before God and say I'm a dirty rotten sinner, because you're not. You can say I've been acting like I am, but that isn't who I am. That isn't who you say I am. You see the difference?

Our present experience is greatly inferior to our eternal position, no matter what the stage of our spiritual growth. True. Where we are most detected, we are most protected. Okay, cool, we're done. 21 next week. Yeah, I think you have to. What did I do? I think. Oh, I got 22. You got 21, 21. Oh,

21. A next week. Oh, the question. The first question is, why should there be no fear of facing up to each offense and confessing it? That's the first question. I'll correct and send it all out so we have the right sequence. I was on vacation, I forget. Let's close.

My dear father, how thankful we are that you completed and done all the work and that we can just rest in your provision for us by faith. How grateful we are as we learn more and more what all of that's about. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.