I had an experience with the Lord years ago that I think will help some people, so I will share it. It took me years to understand what the Lord was teaching me through this experience. Still, I have found it to be one of the key revelations that should govern the life of every believer.
The Lord woke me in the middle of the night and said, “Get a pen and paper and write down everything I tell you.” I quietly rolled out of bed and did as He instructed.
As soon as I sat down, the Lord began to speak to me about my life and ministry. After a page and a half of correction, instruction, and exhortation, the Lord made this final statement to me,
“Don’t let sin distort your reflection of Me. I will confirm this word with a sign following to seal it in your heart.”
Seven days later, while starting my daily routine, I took a prayer walk around a nearby lake. It was summer in central Florida, and the sun was coming up. As I walked around the lake, the Lord instructed me to sit on a specific bench facing the lake. As I sat down on the bench and looked across the lake, I was mesmerized by what I saw.
The lake was eerily still, not a ripple or a wave of any kind. It was a perfect mirror. Having been an avid fisherman, I have been on many bodies of water early in the morning and seen water so still that you almost didn’t want to touch it and disturb its beauty. This was something more. It was still like a glass of water sitting on the counter. I have never seen anything like it before or since.
As I looked across the 20-acre lake with the rising sun behind me, I could see the shoreline on the other side. I saw the rich green grass rising from the water’s edge with gigantic Live Oak trees on the other side, topped off by a beautiful blue sky with a few puffy white clouds. As I looked at this scene, I saw that the reflection in the lake was a perfect mirror image of what I saw on the shore.
As I focused on the absolutely perfect reflection in the water, I realized that this reflected image perfectly represented the real thing. If I didn’t know this was a reflection from the lake, I would not be able to tell the difference. It was as if I was looking at a reflection in a spotless mirror.
As I was having this thought, amazed at this perfect reflection, a tiny fish jumped in the middle of the lake, right in my line of sight. I sat there for over ten minutes and watched as the ripples from that tiny fish slowly spread over the entire lake, distorting that perfect reflection that I was admiring.
Then the Lord spoke the exact words He said a week earlier, “Don’t let sin distort your reflection of Me.” This was the sign that He promised me, to seal the things He had said to me in my heart. This was a prophetic word to wage spiritual warfare. It changed my life.
I won’t share the other things He said to me, but they were precise in defining who He called me to be and what I needed to correct. I focused on the things that He said to me about my identity instead of focusing on the sign and trying to gain understanding. A grave mistake on my part and it cost me years of struggle with sin.
Not only have we been freed from the consequences of sin, but we have also been freed from wrestling with sin as well. Our only responsibility is to embrace the truth of who we are, a new man in Christ Jesus. Holy, acceptable, and above reproach in His sight.
We must believe our old carnal man is dead. Otherwise, we carry a distorted image of Christ to the world.
1 Corinthians 15:56-57 (NKJV) The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ gave us victory over spiritual death and sin. It is a gift! It was easy for me to believe that I had the victory over spiritual death and was going to heaven, but having faith to believe that I was completely freed from sin was just too hard to swallow. After all, I know myself. I know my weaknesses. I know how many times I have fallen in the same area, so I battled against sin in my life for years, not realizing that the battle had already been won.
In the past, I would get so worn out and so frustrated from trying not to sin that I would lose hope and give up, letting sin reign in my body and remain a slave to it. I am so thankful God never gave up on me.
Romans 6:6-7 (NKJV) knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
I was free from the slavery of sin and didn’t know it. My old carnal self was crucified with Him when I made Jesus the Lord of my life. The enemy made me believe that I would never be free from sinning and tricked me into fighting a battle that Jesus had already won.
A wise spiritual warrior knows when to fight and when to rest in victory.
I know I am not alone. I see this problem in the lives of many believers. Hopefully, this will shed some light on why some of us struggle with sin.
God’s grace will transform us and restore us into His image. If we make a mistake and fall into sin, we must quickly repent and forget it just like He does.
Hebrews 8:12 (NKJV) For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.
Isaiah 43:25 (NKJV) “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.
Notice that God blots out our sins and chooses not to remember them. He does this for His own sake, not ours. He sets the example of how we are to behave toward sin and calls us to do the same, for our sakes.
1 John 1:9 (NKJV) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Admit it, quit it, and forget it. If we diligently practice this, we stop the ripple effects of sin before it distorts the reflection of His image in and through our lives.
There is an old saying, “Sin takes you farther than you want to go, keeps you longer than you want to stay, and costs you more than you can pay.”
When we dwell on sin and our propensity to sin, we acknowledge its power and give sin a voice and a platform for expression. Dwelling on sin produces sin consciousness. Eventually, it builds a stronghold of wrong thinking and wrong believing in our hearts and minds, making it even harder to break free of this cycle of unbelief.
It is impossible to reflect the clear image of God with a sinful consciousness. Sin has been dealt with by the only one ever qualified to deal with it, Jesus Christ. We must start our Christian walk where He finished on the cross or we will never run our race well.
We must no longer think like slaves to sin. Instead, we have the privilege of waking up daily in Him, understanding that we are righteous in His sight, and allowing His amazing grace to reshape us and mold us into His image.
A modern paraphrase of the bible called “The Message. The Bible in Contemporary Language” was written by Eugene H. Peterson, an American theologian. I understand that he wrote this paraphrase so his young grandchildren would have a more easily understood translation of the Bible. While this is not a word-for-word translation and many people reject his writing, I believe he captures the heart of God and the spirit of truth on revelations concerning sin and righteousness. Here is a beautiful passage in Romans that teaches this truth beautifully.
Romans 6:1-14 (MSG) So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!
3-5 That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.
6-11 Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer captive to sin’s demands! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of “death-as-the-end”. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
12-14 That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
We can’t let sin distort the image of God in us. We will never experience the freedom from sin that Christ died for if we keep it in our language and thoughts.
Suppose we take all the energy we expend on struggling to clean ourselves up, stop sinning, and do the right things, and use it to pursue Him in an intimate relationship. In that case, He will do what we are unable to. He will remove all things that are not pleasing to Him and cause hurt to His children.
We are dead to sin but must also be dead to the Law. When we live by legalism and try to keep the letter of the Law, we empower sin and keep it alive.
Romans 7:4-6 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
He is a good Father. We can be confident that He will complete the work He started in us if we just cooperate and believe what He said is true.
Philippians 1:6 (NKJV) being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
JESUS IS COMING!
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