“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” II Corinthians 4:16
Watching the news, especially the Politicians vying for our votes, one cannot help but see that most criminals and most politicians are two-faced people.
Criminals lose themselves in a fit of anger, jealousy, or greed, and commit some horrific crime, and spend time in jail. Yet, once the crime is over, for the most part, these same criminals turn out to be good people. Of course there are the serial criminals who never change their spots, mainly due to demonic oppression or possession, or to mental health conditions.
Politicians start out as sincere people wishing to help people and better their country, but get sidetracked with the fame, money, power, and kickbacks from those who persuade them to vote for their cause. Yet, underneath, there are those who try to be sincere and perform their duties honestly and transparently. We need to pray for all of them to be God-fearing leaders.
The trouble becomes in deciding how to tell the one from the other. It seems today that you cannot tell the difference until the damage is already done. Crimes that were done in secret now are done in broad daylight. Politicians have leaked emails and their sins exposed without being prosecuted, while in the past their predecessors have been removed from office or jailed.
The same can be said for some modern day preachers, more concerned with appearances and the bank account than the condition of their sheep.
We all can be nice. We all can be nasty. We have the capability to do either one, yet it seems today that more and more people are thriving on being nasty instead of nice.
Paul said we should not lose heart. Our outward man is decaying. Just take a look in the mirror month after month, year after year, and you know this is true. But, Paul goes on to say that our inward man is being renewed day after day.
We are all composed of the OUTWARD MAN and the INWARD MAN.
The world operates solely through its inward man being influenced by its outward man.
Christians on the other hand are to operate by their spirit ruling their inward man and thus ruling their outward man.
Romans 7:22 says, “For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man.” So our inner man is designed to delight in the law of God. Yet how many of us resist daily Bible reading, going to church, listening to the Word being taught or preached, having anyone say anything to us about God? Our outward man hates the things of God because they are spiritually discerned.
Ephesians 3:16 tells us “to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man.”
Paul also tells us that we as humans are composed of body, soul and spirit.
- Our body is everything outside of our soul and spirit.
- Our soul is our emotions, will, and mind.
- Our spirit is our true inner man and dwells in our intuition and conscience.
The conscience of America and the world today is heavily scarred, so that it cannot feel the moving of God’s Holy Spirit upon it. Just as the wound on my left wrist can remind me of a bomb fin slicing it open just missing an artery 48 years ago, it does not have any more feelings due to the nerves being damaged and scar tissue growing over the wound; so our conscience has been desensitized to anything that is considered wrong and sinful by Almighty God.
We are left with our emotions, our intelligence, and our self-seeking will to navigate through this life, with the desires of the body dictating to us what is pleasant and what is unpleasant to our thoughts, feelings, and volitions.
Jesus gave us the parable of the grain of wheat in John 12:24. He tells us that the grain has to fall into the ground and die, or else it will abide alone. However if it dies it will bear much fruit.
The dying of the grain is in the temperatures both inside the soil and outside and the moisture or lack thereof. The circumstances of life, the sufferings of life, the hardships of life, the pain of decaying and dying, are all necessary for our outer man to die and for the outer shell of the grain of wheat to die.
Jesus also tells us, “He who loves his soul-life loses it; and he who hates his soul-life in this world shall keep it unto eternal life.” John 12:25
When the outer shell of the grain breaks open, then the life that is within the grain of wheat comes forth, fights its way through the hard soil around it and produces many times more wheat than that one grain. A grain of wheat will produce around 50 grains to a stalk or head of wheat giving quite a return for one kernel of wheat.
Jacob is a good example of a grain of wheat that had to be broken to be able to produce the nation of Israel.
- He wrestled in his mother’s womb with his older brother Esau.
- He outsmarted his brother with a bowl of pottage securing the birthright.
- He deceived his father Isaac.
- He had to run away from home at a young age to the safety of his Uncle Laban.
- He was cheated out of his wages ten times over twenty years by his uncle.
- He was given the wrong woman as his wife, instead of the one he loved.
- He lost his beloved wife Rachel as she died on the way back home.
- His cherished son Joseph was sold with him believing he died from a wild beast.
- He had to deal with his son Benjamin being detained in Egypt years later.
- The deceiving that he sowed earlier in his life came back to chastise him in his senior years.
Jacob started out as a stubborn, self-loving person, but became a charming one as he is broken by God. His history is one of smiting and discipline. At one point he wrestled with God at Bethel and left with his hip thrown out of joint, acknowledging that he had met God in this place. At another point he cried out that “all these things are against me!”
Yet when he stood before Pharaoh he stood with dignity and authority that only came after years of brokenness. His will is still strong and his emotion deep, but those who come into contact with him know that they are touching his spirit and not just his words, thoughts or feelings. Jacob had become a Prince with his God. He was more gentle, more humble, more mature as he stood before Pharaoh speaking words of wisdom that caused even Pharaoh to bow before him for a blessing! He was a true Prophet when he blessed his sons before his death!
All these things, circumstances, pains, sufferings, etc. were thought by Jacob with his outer man to be too much for him and all against him. But God was using all of them, each of them to discipline Jacob, try Jacob, refine Jacob into a Prince who could stand before even the Pharaoh of Egypt and become one of the twelve gates of New Jerusalem!
Before you and I can release God’s divine purpose for our lives, we each have to allow whatever comes into our lives as coming from God Himself. We each have to realize that these sufferings are not to destroy us, but to refine us as silver and gold is refined in a furnace of fire, for the sole purpose of bringing out what is really within our hearts; the good that can be used for eternity for God with the bad to be burned up and thrown away never to be held against us. If we refuse to break the outer man, then the inner man will never be able to produce fruit for God’s harvest, and will be cast away into outer darkness of hell fire as the chaff is separated from the wheat.
The bottom line is we have to know that we are two people in one. We do not have dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder, but we do have an outer man and an inner man.
We cannot release the good that is in the inner man infused by the Holy Spirit until we allow our outer man to be crushed and broken open. Only when the hard shell of the outer man is broken will the Holy Spirit be allowed to flow into the inner man and out to the outer man to bring forth the Fruit of the Spirit and the will of God for each of our lives.
“that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,” Ephesians 3:16
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” II Corinthians 3:18
Give thanks for each day’s circumstances because they are used by God to refine you so that He can enable you to reign with Him and to judge angels. Contrary to popular opinion, just as in Jacob’s life, this can take a whole life-time for some people, and explains why some Christians never mature after years of attending church. Don’t give up-God is pursuing you until there is no more time to get you to change your mind for Him.