2Cor.5:17(Amp) says, "Therefore, if any person is ingrafted in Christ Jesus (the Messiah), he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old previous moral and Spiritual condition has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come."
We'll never have the confidence in our prayer lives to believe God will hear and answer our prayers, until we realize who we've been created to be in Christ Jesus. We must believe that in Jesus, God has made us righteous and in right standing with Himself, so we won't live in bondage and condemnation of the lives we lived before knowing Him. Satan will try to deceive and discourage God's new creation family, by bringing up our past. We must look into the Perfect Law of Liberty, which Paul describes as a "mirror," so we can who we are now in Jesus and not who we once were.
When looking into most mirrors, we see the flesh, with the failures and weaknesses we made in our lives. We see ourselves growing older and weaker, and identify with him/her. When we look into the mirror of God's Word though, we see a new creation who was made again in God's Own Image and without sin or failure. The outer man/woman is perishing, but the inner man/woman (the new creation person), is renewing him/herself daily and is learning and growing by God's Word.
We mostly identify ourselves by the flesh and the old man/woman of the flesh, because we've never truly realized what Jesus has done in His Sacrifice and Resurrection on our behalf. The new creation man/woman wasn't just forgiven, but we were created new, without sin or fault. We've become the Temple of God and the Holy Spirit has considered us pure enough, to make His Home in us.
Our strength comes from within us, by the indwelling Holy Spirit and not from the strength of our flesh. We continue relying on the flesh, with it's weaknesses, and are unable to lay hands on the sick or cast out demons, because we know we're too weak on our own to do so. We spend more time seeing the old man in our mirror, instead of seeing the new creation man/woman in the reflection of God's Word and the Finished Work of Jesus. The only thing we're lacking today in this world, because of Jesus, is the "glorified body," which is still to come, according to 1John3:2(Amp), which says," Beloved, we are, even here and now God's children: it is not yet disclosed, made clear what we shall be hereafter, but we know that when He comes and is manifested we shall as God's children resemble and be like Him, for we shall see Him just as He really is."
Most of us still see Jesus more after His fleshly Body, when He was here on earth. Jesus told us that, "It is not Me, but the Father in Me Who does the work." We need to see how Jesus didn't depend on His flesh, but the Spirit Who was within Him, during His ministry. The same thing is now true about every new creation man and woman on earth today. It's not us, but the Father in us Who does the work. This is a Super-natural force that abides in our natural body, in order to transport the Presence of God from one point to another.
The more we look into the natural mirror, instead of the mirror of the Perfect Law of Liberty, we will only see the weakness of the flesh and it's inability to take care of spiritual forces that surround us in this earth. Today in America, we're facing a spiritual warfare that can only be defeated by Spiritual strength and not the flesh. We must defeat the wicked spirits that are now behind what's occurring in our nation, before we can do what's needed by and for the flesh.
It's time for God's Church to recognize who we are in Christ and what our purpose is. Jesus said that we are "in this world, but not of this world." The Church has access to every resource that our citizenship in the Kingdom of the Most High God provides. We're not limited by only what human resources can offer, but what our Heavenly Father has given to all who believe. This isn't to say there won't be trials and persecution for those who will dare step out in faith, but our Father has much more for us than what trials can and will produce.
We've been taught that Paul's trials and problems were God trying to stop him from becoming prideful or that God was disciplining Him by these. 2Cor.12:7-11 clearly tells us that Paul's "thorn in the flesh," was a messenger or demonic spirit that was sent by satan himself, to stop the preaching of the Glorious Gospel of Grace that Jesus revealed to Paul. Paul spoke about some of his obstacles and said in Verse10, "he finally decided that in order to do what God told him to do, he was pleased and took pleasure in the attacks, because he knew that when he was weak in human strength, he was strong in Divine Strength."
God didn't give Paul the thorn in his flesh, satan did. God gave Paul the Revelation of the new creation, so satan tried preventing Paul's preaching about the new creation people to the world, by putting this thorn of the flesh on Paul. The enemy's attacks couldn't stop Paul in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We should begin seeing that when trials and persecutions come, it's sometimes because we're doing something right and satan doesn't like it. God wasn't disciplining Paul for doing something wrong. God upheld Paul by His Own Power, when Paul was weak in his flesh and might have wanted to give up. Paul was so determined to do the work of the ministry, he simply endured all the enemy could throw at him. AND WITH GOD, HE EXCELLED.
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