Patterns of Sin

9/21/1995

I was just thinking about how do I, in these things in my life that are to be gotten rid of or that aren’t like Jesus…I thought, well, what are they specifically? What is it that we are trying to get at? And I wrote down a couple things just to consider the patterns, the patterns, which means that it’s probably been there for a while, it’s just a normal course of thinking that you might not even think about it. Like it’s just who you are right now, the patterns in your life of sin and the patterns of character issues that are unlike Jesus’ way of living. The way that you walk out life, the way that you live, the way that you think, a pattern of thinking or living that isn’t like Jesus. But you may not even be conscious of it. That’s why it is so important to stay close to Him and ask Him specifically to unveil those things and bring them to the surface. But this is the kind of stuff that we’re trying to get rid of. Like Mike has said before, it’s probably not the blatant stuff of screaming at somebody or just blatant, outward things, but it’s the inward things, the thoughts that go through our minds. And those are hard for other people to detect. They’re not right out there on the sleeve. That’s why it is important for us to be verbal and working together with these things.

Could you say again what you started saying?

Oh, I said the patterns of sin, of thinking and action and the way that you live and the character issues that are unlike Jesus’ way of living. And also I was thinking about the word…we’ve been using the word “character issues” and I thought, well, what that has to do with is something that characterizes your life – a trait about you. When somebody pictures you or thinks about you, what it is that they think of? Like we have that kind of conjured up about each other. You know certain people you think of: “Well, they are a quiet person.” And then someone else you think of: “Oh, they’re loud and funny,” “they have a real great sense of humor.” Ya know, those are character things that you can sense. And in some cases, they’re really sweet things that Jesus is…the strength that He has given, but in other cases it’s something that isn’t like Jesus and it’s a way a person is. “Well, they’re just like that. They’re kind of sharp with their mouth and they talk quickly and they say things rapidly” or something like that.

But those are…I was just trying to define in my own mind what is it that we are talking about when we say “character issues.” What does that mean? Well, it’s things that characterize the way that you are, the way that you think, the way that you live. It’s the things that shape you. Traits about you that are unlike Jesus that he wants to get at. And in many cases, I’ve been finding with me, in many cases, these are things that have been in my life since I was born, 30 years. A long time I’ve been living with these things that God wants to get rid of. So I’m real familiar with them. And so many of them can just be such a normal pattern of thinking that’s unlike Jesus. So we really need Him and each other to be able to uncover those things and ask the Holy Spirit “Please God, please, by Your Spirit unveil these things, show me these things clearly. Let me see them. I can’t open my own eyes to these issues, but you can.”

And I just wrote down a few examples, I didn’t know if it would be helpful to do that, just some general thoughts. I was trying to thinking of some maybe major blocks of things that might help or unlock some doors. In ways of thinking, it might be the way that you deal with problems, how you face problems and difficulties in your life. How you treat others; if you’re impatient, if you’re insensitive, if you’re selfish with other people. The way that you respond in your thinking to things that happen. Now outwardly you might say, “Oh, no, I don’t want to go with you. That will just get in my way, it will ruin my day.” You probably wouldn’t say that verbally. But if your pattern of thinking is, that you respond by putting yourself first or thinking about your own needs first, or something like that. Those are patterns of thinking that need to be uprooted. And you might go ahead and say, “Oh, yeah, I’ll go with you,” but if you haven’t dealt with the thoughts that are in your heart about it, if you just sort of brush them aside, then you really haven’t dealt with that bad seed. It just continues to sit there and continues to be the same.

Ok, here’s some of the ones that I really wanted to get at. One is an attitude towards God’s Word. What your attitude is towards God’s Word. We already talked a little bit about that tonight but just to have an awe and a respect and a desire for God’s Glory. A yearning after it. A hunger for God’s Word with the intent to obey, with an intent to sow God’s Word into your life. What is it that your attitude is towards God’s Word? Is it Jesus’ attitude toward the way that His Father spoke to Him? The same kind of attitude – longing for it, knowing that He needed His Father’s Word from heaven to be able to live. Jesus didn’t do anything apart from what His Father was speaking to Him. So, that shows that He knew very clearly He needed to have God’s Word in His life. He needed to have the Father’s words to Him for His life.

So, how much more we would need to have God’s Word in our life in a teaching situation, in day to day situations for specific things that we’re involved in. What is our attitude towards the Word of God? Is it “I can’t do it. It’s too big. It’s too hard.” When you hear things. Making up those spiritual excuses as David said or other ways that you can sort of blow it off or justify why you are not going to do it, or you’re lazy about it, you are just plain ‘ol lazy, you just don’t do it, or you just don’t care. You have filled your life up with so many other things and spent your affections on other things that by the time you hear it, you are already kind of satisfied with where you are at. It just doesn’t seem all that important. So you hear God’s Word and you just can’t quite connect with it because it’s just not that important because you’ve just filled your life with other things. And that just can’t be. Those are the kinds of things that really have to go so that we can have a very pure, healthy, devoted attitude towards God’s Word and wanting to hear it.

The second one I wrote down was the attitude about yourself and who you are in Christ. Do you see that clearly? Do you see clearly who you are and what you have been given? Jesus living in you, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you see what your inheritance is? Do you view yourself properly as being one who has been given an opportunity to hear Jesus, to walk with Him, to commune with Him, to be His person, to have His affections, to love what He loves, to hate what He hates. Do you see that you are meant to walk with God exactly the way that Jesus walked with God when He was on the earth, or do you lower the standard, do you lower your ceiling a little bit? Do you kind of have your self in the thought process that this really won’t be possible for you somehow or just an attitude that prevails in your thinking that doesn’t apprehend things as though you can walk the way Jesus did? You really, really can. You can pray like Jesus prayed when He was on the earth. You can talk to God the way that He did, like a person. You really can. That is your inheritance as a child of His, to walk with Him, talk with Him, to hear His voice, as you talked about being led by His Spirit, really hearing His voice, everything being in response to Jesus.

So that’s the second thing that would be worth thinking about, because I think all of us have a slanted view of ourselves. Either we are too hard on ourselves, we are too soft on ourselves, we are too rapped up with ourselves, we are too introspective, we are putting too much faith in ourselves, worrying too much about who we are. I mean there’s a lot that could really stem out of that one. But that’s one that has to be really clear, too.

The patterns of how you think about yourself, and just patterns of how God’s Word affects you and how you think about that. And how you think about yourself in any given situation. “Well, somebody else will take care of that problem. I really won’t be able to see it.” Well, that’s not right. Jesus wouldn’t do that. Jesus didn’t sit back and say, “Somebody else will take care of it.” So you shouldn’t either. Jesus was God’s answer for the planet, so I have to view myself as being an answer for a situation because Jesus lives inside of me. All of us should be considering things that way. I can be part of the answer for this particular thing because Jesus lives inside of me. I should be asking God for the expectation that He wants to open my eyes. He’s the revealer of mysteries. He wants to open my eyes and allow me to take part in being a solution to this problem. Just an example.

Another thing I have down here is passivity or inactivity. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that down. I guess just that – passivity, being passive. But the opposite of that would be demanding Reality in your life, Jesus’ presence in your life no matter what the cost. A change of a supernatural degree. Your attitude towards life is you will change because God said you will in a supernatural way. You will not be passive about that. You will not be passive about that. You will pursue God with an energy in your heart and mind, with an expectation to be changed because of God’s Life inside of you and revealing things to you. You will demand Reality, to have Jesus present and alive in your life on a continual basis. A consciousness of God that never goes away. I haven’t reached it yet guys, but I know it’s possible. It has to be. There aren’t times when I’m supposed to be disconnected from God. Nothing in the scriptures says anything like that. He lives in me to be with me every moment of my every day. A consciousness of God at all times and in all places, in all circumstances with all people, always.

Will I demand the Reality of Jesus being alive in my life, or am I going to be passive and let life happen to me and be inactive and just settle for the status quo? If you sit back, life is going to happen to you and these things won’t be possible. You have got to be going after it. These things are taken in an aggressive way. It doesn’t have to be rootin’ tootin’ shootin,’ you’re always stirred up in your head and spinning yourself around, but there has to be a very clear mind about demanding Reality in your life. Jesus must be Real. And everything, remember, will tend toward the opposite of that. There will be times when that will be very clear, God will open great big doors for God to be very Real and present in your life. But there will also be times when you will have opportunities to tend towards passivity, to tends towards earthliness, to tend towards human thinking, to tend towards “Well, Jesus is kinda out there, I know He’s still alive, but this situation right now things are kind of cloudy and seems kind of far away.” Things will tend that way but you have got to apprehend it and grab things back to where they are supposed to be. Believing God, trusting Him, talking to Him day by day by day. Sowing seeds that He’s Real in your life and that He wants to manifest Himself always. There’s never any exceptions to that. He always wants to be present and active; always a consciousness of God that can be part of your life.

Another thing I had down here was how you make decisions, how you go about deciding things, either how you are going to spend your day, or what you are going to do or who you are going to be with. There is a lot of different things that can drive that motivation for how you make decisions. It could be because you’re panicky because you need to be doing good deeds, you’re trying to establish your own righteousness, it comes out of your own head, you’re worried about what other people think of you. There’s a lot of different things besides God’s Spirit that can motivate how we make decisions; out of logic. Ok, purely out of logic. “Well, I obviously wouldn’t want to do that, because after all, there’s just not enough time...” or whatever. “Well, after all I have got to have dinner ready, so I can’t possibly stop and pray right now, because after all people are coming in 15 minutes.” There’s ways we can push aside God’s Spirit trying to speak to us because we are more dependent on our own thought processes to lead us than we are dependent on listening for God’s voice and hearing Him and walking with Him. So, that’s another area to consider.