We’ve been given the ultimate permission: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” [Romans 6:11]
Transcript
Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by being dead to sin and alive to God.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you, God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
Well, it is a rainy Thursday night here in Georgia. Yes, I am literally recording today’s episode “The Night Before.” It’s super casual here. I’m literally in sweats and yoga pants right now. You know, we started this week in Episode 107, reading a chunk of scripture from Romans 6, Romans 6:3-11. And I just wanna encourage you, read Romans 6:3-11 today, it will set you free. So the reason I’m recording “The Night Before,” super casual, kind of last minute, it’s because Graham Cooke and I are currently hosting this challenge on Facebook. And today, Thursday, we talked about Romans 6 and specifically the ultimate permission given in verse 11. And I’m going to read that to you right now. It says in verse 11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” And what Graham shared about that scripture was just too good not to share. So here’s the clip from today.
I love Romans 6:11. I quote it to myself all the time. You know that God is just giving us permission to consider ourselves to be dead, and then to learn the practice of being alive in Him. ‘Cause I think the thing is if, if you still feel like I’ve got all these problems and issues and so on, then you can’t consider yourself to be dead. So it’s hard to practice being alive because you’re classically double-minded you’re caught into a mind. So I’ve got this, so I can’t be that. And I’ve got this going on, so God’s gonna be annoyed with me and you’re not going anywhere. You’re just like going around in circles, but God is quite clear, He’s saying, “No, there is an end point here, which we accomplished for you on the cross.” So you can consider yourself to be dead right now, even before we do anything. And what we’re gonna teach you is how to be alive to us. A slightly ultimate permission, you know? Let’s start here, with God, He never starts at your beginning, He starts at His. So what you think is that’s the outcome I want to achieve, He just says, “Great, why don’t we start with the outcome and just go on from there.” ‘Cause everything between here and the outcome has already been resolved in Jesus by Jesus. So let’s start with the outcome. I wanna be a new person, let’s start there. Let’s start teaching you how to see new thing, speak new. And let’s just start to teach you that there’s no struggle. There’s no stress, there’s no strain ’cause all that belongs to the old person, you’re a new one. So you can just be like us right from the start. And that is like the most phenomenal thing about salvation. We get saved once, but we get redeemed every day, You know? So ’cause we’re walking with the Redeemer now, He lives in us. Several situation we’re in, is always about, well, let’s redeem that. We don’t need to think that, because this is a better thought. So if you take this thought that we’re giving you, it will redeem that old thought. And I love that the process of redemption is just so unshakeable in God’s mind and heart, this is what we’re doing. So we get to start with the outcome and process that, we don’t have to process from what we’re not. We’re processed from how He sees us. And I think that’s beautiful.
Isn’t that amazing? We are being redeemed every day. You know, when we think about being with God, probably most of us have a history of coming to Him just as we are, with all of our issues and problems and dire circumstances. And often in that mode we’re too weighed down and overwhelmed by the burdens of life to see the truth. But think about this, God comes to us just as He is, unchanging in His true nature with His perspectives, how He sees things, what He loves about us and His purpose for today. Remember God’s primary purpose, Genesis 1:26, making us into His image and likeness. We share in God’s nature. You come to God as He is not as the old you, being alive to God is about you connecting with Him and allowing His beauty and His nature to overwhelm you with goodness and kindness and love and patience and gentleness. It’s so good and freeing and peaceful to relax in Him and let His love wash away all the negatives, all the stress and all of the weariness that comes when we try to be someone for God, rather than letting Him be someone in you.
The promise of “Perfect Peace” is found in Isaiah 26:3. In Hebrew, it is “shalom, shalom.” Meaning, complete wholeness. Nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus. Because of Jesus, you are a living testimony of Jesus’s ultimate win. With every step you take today, you’re putting Jesus’s victory on display and satan’s defeat on replay.