Lifetime Guarantee (19 page)

Set your mind on reality and the Holy Spirit will gradually begin to supernaturally lower the stuck threshold of your feeler down toward a more normal position. This will give you more points to play the ball game with on your emotional Richter scale (see Figure 7.3). You’ll be much more able to tolerate situations that formerly would have led to certain spiritual defeat.

Since God says the Channel #2 perspective is truth, what does that make the Channel #1 perspective? Deception. It’s based on the false premise that the old man had resurrection power, that he somehow arose from the dead and continues to wage war against the new man.

If you are embracing and living out Channel #1, you are living a lie. You are acting as if Channel #1 were reality and Channel #2 an idealistic pipe dream that you can’t seem to make “come true.” Therefore, you are “pretending” Channel #1 is your identity, when in fact Channel #2 is your identity!
You are pretending to be what you are not.
And do you know what God has to say about folks who pretend to be what they aren’t? He calls them
hypocrites.
(Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites because they claimed they were holy, when in fact they were not.)

Pay attention, now. This is another one of the most powerful truths the Holy Spirit has ever shown me as a key to living victoriously. It has helped to liberate me as well as thousands of other people over the years. Without this understanding, you’ll be set up for failure:

God’s Definition of a Hypocrite:

Pretending to Be What You Are Not

Satan’s Definition of a Hypocrite:

Acting Contrary to How You Feel

The devil’s definition of a phony is based totally on the condition of our emotions. If you buy into it, you will never be able to walk in your true identity in Christ! Tragically, all world-system counseling embraces his definition and much of Christian counseling naively does as well. The majority of counselors major on how people
feel,
and if their techniques make the counselee feel better, they pronounce him “better.” A person is only better if he is “walking in the light,” gang. We determine truth by what God says, not by the state of our emotions. (See Appendix E.)

Try to act in a manner contrary to how you feel and Satan will accuse you in your mind of being a phony. He is “the accuser of the brethren” (see Revelation 12:10). It will seem like self-accusation, however, because again, the thoughts will be presented to your mind by the power of sin with first person singular pronouns: “Why, I can’t tell my wife that I love her and that I’m thankful for what she does for me when I don’t
feel
like it. That would make me a hypocrite!”

Christians swallow that line because they don’t know it is originating with the accuser. Most of them never break through the deception to victory. They sit there and wait, hoping the Lord will somehow change their
feelings
so they can act accordingly without “being a hypocrite.” Channel #1!

Now, what if you would simply
act
(by faith) as if Christ were expressing
His
life through your personality and earthsuit to bypass the flesh and speak loving, encouraging, tender words to your wife and children. What if you
act
(by faith) as if Christ were using your arms to reach out in love by giving them a hug or a pat on the back? You would be acting as if Christ actually were your life. You would be acting like something is true that
is
true, wouldn’t you? Would you be a hypocrite, or would you be acting like
what you are
? You would be living obediently to the Word of God by faith. Do you see it? Ignore how you
feel
and the accusations served up to your mind that are contrary to your true identity. You’ll be experiencing Christ as life, letting Him filter His life through your personality. And repeat with me, “Rain on how I feel!”

Let’s put the rubber on the road and apply these truths to some everyday situations. Consider a man (me) who has a wide, green highway in his brain for selfishness and self-indulgence. He often finds it difficult to give of his time to his wife and kids. He experiences persistent thoughts (served up to his mind by the power of sin) and feelings of resistance when any of them make demands on “his” time. Although the illustration I’m about to use may sound a little silly to you, it illustrates an intense problem for him.

His wife requests that when he mows the yard, please use the catcher on the lawn mower and bag the cuttings. You see, she’s really saying, “Husband, please love me by bagging the grass.” This is the way she’s spelling love today. But sin says to him, “It’s such a hassle to bag the grass! It takes twice as long! I wish she’d get off my case!” It’s always worse if his feeler is acting up on that particular day. Hey, this is Anabel and Bill! This describes one of my flesh patterns.

How am I going to experience victory in this situation? It won’t do me much good to practice seeing myself seated in heaven. That won’t get much grass cut and bagged. I need some performance! Thus, I will employ the side A truth of Christ’s being my life. I will let Him filter His life through me by cutting and bagging the grass. I
know
He wants to do it, because it really does need to be done. It would be ugly to “windrow” it, because it is pretty high. Anabel’s request was quite reasonable. Besides, He has told me to love her as He loves
His
bride.

I start the mower and begin to push it across the lawn, but
I simultaneously choose with my will to set my mind that He is mowing the lawn through me.
It’s just a matter of believing that He is and acting as if He is.
It’s all done by faith and obedience.
You keep concentrating on your method of operation—faith and obedience.

As I walk along, I generate in my mind, “Well, Lord, it’s really neat not to have to mow and bag today. I’m sure glad you let me off the hook by doing it all for me. What a neat thing it is to rest while I work. You are something else! Uh, oh, Lord, the bag’s full. We’d better stop and empty it. That baby sure fills up in a hurry, doesn’t it? Man, I’m sure glad I don’t have to empty the grass into those bags. That’s the part I hate the most! Boy, You sure do make short work of it. Yessir, it’s a real pleasure to watch You do the work through me.”

You say, “Come on, Gillham, what a dumb story! Let’s move on to some illustrations of claiming the abundant life. Get on to the story of when you went to the big meeting at the convention center and saw a guy’s leg grow a quarter of an inch and then everybody swung on the chandeliers.” Well, I enjoy a little chandelier swinging, but the abundant life is not always doing one-and-a-halfs off the ceiling fixtures.
The abundant life is being able to spend Saturday morning mowing and bagging grass for your wife without getting resentful over it. That
is the abundant life for me. That’s victory over my flesh.

Someone says, “That’s what you call suffering? Bagging grass? How hokey can you get!” I guess suffering is a relative thing. But yes, I confess that initially, bagging grass was suffering to me. It’s no longer such, as I have been “transformed [in this area] by the renewing of my mind.” I even bag the grass when Anabel is out of town. I enjoy it. My feeler’s unstuck on this one.

Now that we’ve seen an illustration in which the believer employs side A of our identity in Christ (Christ’s life through me), let’s develop an example in which the believer will appropriate the truth that he is in Christ (side B).

Suppose you are a woman with six-lane, green highways for feeling inferior and rejected. Your feeler is stuck at about a seven on each of these. You are a teacher in a large elementary school. The state teachers’ meeting is this weekend, and you had so hoped to travel to it with three ladies who teach in your building. You get the word, however, that they have arranged to invite another woman because one of them thought it would be fun to have her along, which means that she’s more fun to be with than you are.

Do you feel rejected? Yes! Have you been rejected? Yes, by them you sure have. Would this be apt to make anyone’s feeler go up a few points on feeling rejected? Yes. The trouble is, though, that you’ve got only three points of tolerance on your Richter scale. This is going to be a tough one to “turn over to the Lord.” Do you also feel inferior to the other woman? Yes. Are you? According to the world’s view, yes. According to
reality,
no.

Now, this calls for appropriating side B, setting your mind on resting in heaven in Christ, totally accepted and secure in His love for you. You must
instantly
fight to set your mind. Sin will flood your mind with thoughts such as,
I’m such a yukky person. I’m such a Delberta Dumb. It’s no wonder they didn’t invite me. I hardly blame them. I seem to have such a talent for casting a wet blanket over any party. Oh, if I were only different!
These “beat on myself” thoughts would be served up only to certain women with this unique sort of flesh.

The woman having self-pity green highways would experience thoughts from sin such as,
Well, after all I’ve done for them! It’ll be a cold day when I ever volunteer to take their playground duty when they have a sore throat. Imagine inviting Elsie! That clod always manages to worm her way in. Lord, it’s no wonder You have so many enemies, the way you treat your friends! You always seem to make it difficult for me to keep up my faith. Others always get the breaks, and they don’t try half as hard as I do. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth all the effort to serve You!

This woman has fleshly patterns to blame others when her needs are not met, while the first woman accepts self-blaming thoughts for the deficiency. It’s also very common for a person to experience a combination of these thoughts.

In either case, you must
instantly
begin to generate thoughts contrary to these based on truth in Channel #2, while simultaneously claiming what the Scripture states. You are dead to the power of sin that’s feeding you those negative thoughts. If you don’t, your feeler is going to break the sound barrier. Instantly think,
I am relaxing in Christ at the right hand of the Father. I’m so glad it’s not a zillion light-years away, Lord, but right here in this room! Oh, I’m loved and accepted!
Imagine yourself snuggled up against His chest. Feel His strong, reassuring arms about you. Are you insecure there? Ha! Are you inferior? Never. No one in Christ is either superior or inferior. First Corinthians 12 makes it clear that eyeballs are equal to elbows in the body of Christ, and you’re not inferior to anyone. Confess the truth—aloud if opportunity permits.

Set your mind on these truths. Choose with your will to force your mind to generate appropriate, biblical, productive, true thoughts while refusing to accept sin’s thoughts fed through the brain to your mind. Force yourself to keep at this five minutes, ten minutes, whatever time is necessary until the “attack” of sin’s thoughts begins to ease off. If he tries to crank it up again, you crank up again with thoughts contrary to his. You see,
it’s the setting of your mind in Channel #2 that will enable you to experience being dead to Channel #1.
As I said earlier, it would be a fatal mistake to try to concentrate on being alert to recognize sin’s thoughts to you so you could become more skilled at rejecting them. That would be concentrating on
death,
which would effectively cut you off from
life.
Generating therapeutic, biblical thoughts and setting your mind on these is what will make you more and more victorious over the world, the flesh, and the devil.

You’re going to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). You’ll begin to mature
experientially
into what you
already are
in Christ. Your emotions will begin to settle down into the normal Christian ballpark, and the ultimate outcome will be the emergence of godly character that will evolve out of your godly nature and godly behavior.

Watchman Nee, our beautiful Christian brother who used to wear a Chinese earthsuit, made a powerful statement years ago. He said that all knowledge is the outgrowth of obedience; everything else is just information. In other words, you can
believe
the truths taught in this book. Yet, they can still remain just
information to you.
If you would convert this information into
knowledge,
you must
obey
it. You must grit your teeth and hold a good funeral, celebrating after the fact the death of the old man.

So, start setting your mind. Your character will take on the properties of Christ. The fruits of the Spirit will begin to emerge from you as a
natural product
of your obedience. You don’t see the branches on a grapevine straining and groaning to produce grapes. They simply abide, and the life of the vine produces the fruit. That is what you will see happening to you when you begin to appropriate your true identity in Christ. Praise His name!