The Reigning Life
I have come to realise that the world, the society, the home and the Church today is full of the notion of what is 'reigning'.
We have the reigning cars, the reigning clothes, the reigning music, the electronics, which took the world into the computer age, and in the Church we have the reigning or the "moving" gospel style or praises and the new wave of worship, all in the spirit of what is "reigning" at the time.
I want to actually bring to light what it truly means to reign to life.
No one can say that the present Church does not know how to praise God or how to box up and punch up the devil; no one can say that the Church does not know to counsel; no one can say that we do not know whom we are, what we are, and where we are in Jesus.
But I discovered that we are not reigning as God intended us to reign.
The Church has fallen to that which reigned this morning but the next morning they are down.
In context of this article, I looked up from the Bible where the apostle Paul was addressing the Roman brethren on issues of righteous living.
And to make it clear, he explained that they must consider their old life and yield their new lives to God in righteousness.
This implies that the Bible actually recognizes "fashion" but not more than "two", the one is an "old fashion" (living in sin) the other is the "new fashion" (living in Christ).
And anything short of these is manufactured from the pit of hell, to deceive, confuse and perpetuate a self-centered gospel.
For the Church to reign in life, that is, the believers' reigning life must only come when they begin to do the following things: 1.
Remove Sin From Your Life (Romans 6:14) - There is nothing we can use to explain away that sin is killing.
It has destroyed many lives in the Bible days, beginning from the devil, I mean Lucifer, the one who was leading the orchestra in heaven.
What about the great men of history, ministers and reputable believers alike? We must remove sin away from our lives if we must reign.
God has made a way out for us already, He said, there is no condemnation for those in Christ, who walk not after the flesh but the spirit; who have the knowledge of Christ, serving Him, loving Him, and accepting Him as Lord and Saviour of their lives.
He went on to say that, even when you are internally feeling condemned, claim the promises of God in Romans 8:2, confess the sin and point it to the devil's face, that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you free from the law of sin and death.
You'll surely be free and become the one that's reigning.
2.
Yield Yourself To The Spirit Of Righteousness (Romans 6:13) - Many "Christians" have given wrong interpretation to the word "righteousness" so that it has lost its meaning in the Church today.
Some people have gone to the extreme in their interpretation, while others under-interpret it.
For the extremists, righteousness is only in the manner of dressing, walking and probably talking in a particular accent (American or Briton).
To them, a message is not "anointed' or "inspired" when the preacher did not preach with strange voice accompanied with the frequent/intermittent noise or clapping away of the weight of the message.
The shouts of "Uuh! Yaa!!", "ride on!" and the numerous "Alleluia!" have taken the place of the Holy Spirit in the lives of many.
Well, some of these things we do may be good, but we should be careful because they seem to have robbed the Church of the glory of God.
At most, we are not ignorant of the fact that carefulness and consciousness of the spirit in our daily activities have been gradually overtaken by worldliness as a result of misinterpretation of righteousness.
Those who under-play righteousness, are only righteous when they come to Church.
They carry the biggest files in the choir with melodious tunes that carry no power to influence or change lives.
They are the most quiet Church members but are always guilty of one type of sin or another.
Wrong interpretation of righteous life has bundled the Church of today into the spirit of "it doesn't matter" with its attendant evils emanating from shabby dressing, "see-me-through", "show-me-your-back-or-front-contours", etc.
Putting on what belongs to men by women or vice versa in the name of modernity has taken the place morality.
Somewhere in the Bible, there was an injunction like this: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God" (Deuteronomy 22:5).
But does this new experience, this new view of dressing, spring out of the Word of God as well? We are warned that whatever originates outside the scriptures should be suspected until it can be shown to be in accordance with them? However high the emotional content, no experience can be proved to be genuine unless we can find chapter and verse authority for it in the scriptures.
Quite a number of unscriptural notions have gained acceptance among Christians today by claiming that they were among the truths that were to be revealed in the last days.
The truth is that the Bible does not teach that there will be new light and advanced spiritual experiences in the latter days; it teaches the exact opposite.
Beware of any man who claims to be wiser than the apostles or holier than the martyrs of the Early Church.
What is good in believing a thing which God Himself did not permit? Beloved, error in this day has been so skilled at imitating truth such that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other.
Let us beware that the Jesus we "accept' is not one we have created out of the dust of our imagination and formed after our own likeness.
To believe savingly in Jesus Christ is to believe all He has said about Himself and all that the prophets and apostles have said about Him.
We Christians must look sharp that our Christianity does not simply refine our sins without removing them.
Yes, many times we have been delivered from our sins.
When, in reality, we have only exchanged one kind of sin for another.
Our repentance should not simply be a change of location.
Take for instance, many of us have sinned in far locations but now are in the good books of today's religious persons, considerably cleaner and much morel respectable in appearance, to be sure, yet there was no nearer to true heart purity than we were before.
You see, pride may by religious influence be refined to a quiet self-esteem, skillfully dissembled by a neat use of Bible words to disguise a deep self-love which is to God a hateful and intolerable thing.
Most people today play at Christianity as they play at games.
You see a gossip or a trouble-maker who at conversion turns into a "Spiritual Counsellor" but a closer look at her will reveal the same restless, inquisitive spirit at work.
She is still running the same stand, only on the other side of the street.
This is Satan's most successful ways of getting into the Church to cause weakness, backsliding and division.
This tells us that sin may alter its appearance without changing its nature.
The will of God is that sin should be removed, not merely refined.
Righteousness is right relationship with God.
It carries along sanctification or holiness.
Anything apart from this, even when you dress like an angel (without genuine repentance) you will end up in hell fire.
God wants us to be modest in all things, not half-way modesty (1 Peter 3:3-4).
Let us believe the word of God and enter into His blessings.
Then we'll be reigning forever!
We have the reigning cars, the reigning clothes, the reigning music, the electronics, which took the world into the computer age, and in the Church we have the reigning or the "moving" gospel style or praises and the new wave of worship, all in the spirit of what is "reigning" at the time.
I want to actually bring to light what it truly means to reign to life.
No one can say that the present Church does not know how to praise God or how to box up and punch up the devil; no one can say that the Church does not know to counsel; no one can say that we do not know whom we are, what we are, and where we are in Jesus.
But I discovered that we are not reigning as God intended us to reign.
The Church has fallen to that which reigned this morning but the next morning they are down.
In context of this article, I looked up from the Bible where the apostle Paul was addressing the Roman brethren on issues of righteous living.
And to make it clear, he explained that they must consider their old life and yield their new lives to God in righteousness.
This implies that the Bible actually recognizes "fashion" but not more than "two", the one is an "old fashion" (living in sin) the other is the "new fashion" (living in Christ).
And anything short of these is manufactured from the pit of hell, to deceive, confuse and perpetuate a self-centered gospel.
For the Church to reign in life, that is, the believers' reigning life must only come when they begin to do the following things: 1.
Remove Sin From Your Life (Romans 6:14) - There is nothing we can use to explain away that sin is killing.
It has destroyed many lives in the Bible days, beginning from the devil, I mean Lucifer, the one who was leading the orchestra in heaven.
What about the great men of history, ministers and reputable believers alike? We must remove sin away from our lives if we must reign.
God has made a way out for us already, He said, there is no condemnation for those in Christ, who walk not after the flesh but the spirit; who have the knowledge of Christ, serving Him, loving Him, and accepting Him as Lord and Saviour of their lives.
He went on to say that, even when you are internally feeling condemned, claim the promises of God in Romans 8:2, confess the sin and point it to the devil's face, that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you free from the law of sin and death.
You'll surely be free and become the one that's reigning.
2.
Yield Yourself To The Spirit Of Righteousness (Romans 6:13) - Many "Christians" have given wrong interpretation to the word "righteousness" so that it has lost its meaning in the Church today.
Some people have gone to the extreme in their interpretation, while others under-interpret it.
For the extremists, righteousness is only in the manner of dressing, walking and probably talking in a particular accent (American or Briton).
To them, a message is not "anointed' or "inspired" when the preacher did not preach with strange voice accompanied with the frequent/intermittent noise or clapping away of the weight of the message.
The shouts of "Uuh! Yaa!!", "ride on!" and the numerous "Alleluia!" have taken the place of the Holy Spirit in the lives of many.
Well, some of these things we do may be good, but we should be careful because they seem to have robbed the Church of the glory of God.
At most, we are not ignorant of the fact that carefulness and consciousness of the spirit in our daily activities have been gradually overtaken by worldliness as a result of misinterpretation of righteousness.
Those who under-play righteousness, are only righteous when they come to Church.
They carry the biggest files in the choir with melodious tunes that carry no power to influence or change lives.
They are the most quiet Church members but are always guilty of one type of sin or another.
Wrong interpretation of righteous life has bundled the Church of today into the spirit of "it doesn't matter" with its attendant evils emanating from shabby dressing, "see-me-through", "show-me-your-back-or-front-contours", etc.
Putting on what belongs to men by women or vice versa in the name of modernity has taken the place morality.
Somewhere in the Bible, there was an injunction like this: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God" (Deuteronomy 22:5).
But does this new experience, this new view of dressing, spring out of the Word of God as well? We are warned that whatever originates outside the scriptures should be suspected until it can be shown to be in accordance with them? However high the emotional content, no experience can be proved to be genuine unless we can find chapter and verse authority for it in the scriptures.
Quite a number of unscriptural notions have gained acceptance among Christians today by claiming that they were among the truths that were to be revealed in the last days.
The truth is that the Bible does not teach that there will be new light and advanced spiritual experiences in the latter days; it teaches the exact opposite.
Beware of any man who claims to be wiser than the apostles or holier than the martyrs of the Early Church.
What is good in believing a thing which God Himself did not permit? Beloved, error in this day has been so skilled at imitating truth such that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other.
Let us beware that the Jesus we "accept' is not one we have created out of the dust of our imagination and formed after our own likeness.
To believe savingly in Jesus Christ is to believe all He has said about Himself and all that the prophets and apostles have said about Him.
We Christians must look sharp that our Christianity does not simply refine our sins without removing them.
Yes, many times we have been delivered from our sins.
When, in reality, we have only exchanged one kind of sin for another.
Our repentance should not simply be a change of location.
Take for instance, many of us have sinned in far locations but now are in the good books of today's religious persons, considerably cleaner and much morel respectable in appearance, to be sure, yet there was no nearer to true heart purity than we were before.
You see, pride may by religious influence be refined to a quiet self-esteem, skillfully dissembled by a neat use of Bible words to disguise a deep self-love which is to God a hateful and intolerable thing.
Most people today play at Christianity as they play at games.
You see a gossip or a trouble-maker who at conversion turns into a "Spiritual Counsellor" but a closer look at her will reveal the same restless, inquisitive spirit at work.
She is still running the same stand, only on the other side of the street.
This is Satan's most successful ways of getting into the Church to cause weakness, backsliding and division.
This tells us that sin may alter its appearance without changing its nature.
The will of God is that sin should be removed, not merely refined.
Righteousness is right relationship with God.
It carries along sanctification or holiness.
Anything apart from this, even when you dress like an angel (without genuine repentance) you will end up in hell fire.
God wants us to be modest in all things, not half-way modesty (1 Peter 3:3-4).
Let us believe the word of God and enter into His blessings.
Then we'll be reigning forever!
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