NEIL ANDERSON DAILY DEVOTIONAL
from Freedom in Christ Ministries

April 21

YOUR LIFE APART FROM GOD

If by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body,
you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God,
these are sons of God (Romans 8:13, 14).

Why do you still react as if your old skipper were still in
control of your behavior? Because while you served under it, your
old self trained and conditioned your actions, reactions,
emotional responses, thought patterns, memories, and habits in a
part of your brain called “the flesh.” The flesh is that tendency
within each person to operate independently of God and to center
his interest on himself. An unsaved person functions totally in
the flesh (Romans 8:7, 8), worshipping and serving the creature
rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). Such persons “live for
themselves” (2 Corinthians 5:15), even though many of their
activities may appear to be motivated by selflessness and concern
for others.

When you were born again, your old self died and your new self
came to life, and you were made a partaker of Christ’s divine
nature. But your flesh remains. You brought to your Christian
commitment a fully conditioned mind-set and lifestyle developed
apart from God and centered on yourself. Since you were born
physically alive but spiritually dead, you had neither the
presence of God nor the knowledge of God’s ways. So you learned
to live your life independently of God. It is this learned
independence that makes the flesh hostile toward God.

During the years you spent separated from God, your worldly
experiences thoroughly programmed your brain with thought
patterns, memory traces, responses, and habits which are alien to
God. So even though your old self is gone, your flesh remains in
opposition to God as a preprogrammed propensity for sin, which is
living independently of God.

Be aware that you no longer have to obey that preprogrammed bent
to live independently of God. You are a child of God, and you are
free to put to death those fleshly deeds and obey Christ.

Lord, I make a fresh declaration of dependence on You for today.
I renounce all my old tendencies to live independently of You.

This daily devotional is published and distributed by
http://www.GOSHEN.net/ . It is written by Neil Anderson at
http://www.freedominchrist.com/ .

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