The second event

We were sitting again at the revival services and we had sat down after the singing and Doug started preaching. He feels out his sermon as he goes which is fine because he is well versed on his scriptures. So this night he starts talking about the soul man and the spirit man and the flesh and goes into detail as to their interrelation with a relationship with God.
For clarification lets examine a few labels. Labels are funny things. What I label something and what you label it may be different so for the sake of this writing I will state some label that I have come to know. First the flesh well that of course is the shell in which we live a piece of skin with 98 cents worth of chemicals in it. Second the soul. I used to know and speak of the soul as the eternal part of us but in fact it is not it is the essence of who we are, it is our personality. Third is our spirit. This part is the eternal part, the part that never dies. Our mind is inside the soul. The soul and the spirit are attatched to each other and cannot be seperated. Both the soul and the spirit are manifested or made apparent through the flesh. When we die the spirit and soul are freed from the body. The soul is the sinful or carnal part of our being. Our spirit comes alive unto God when we accept Christ as our saviour. That alive spirit is still attached to the soul which lives in the flesh.
Back to Doug. As he spoke he told of the sinful nature of man and he used a visual example he would step to his right and stand in the place of the "soul man" or carnal man and then he would step sideway again to his left and represent the spirit man. As he stepped from side to side he explained that when we are saved we become spiritually alive or alive in the spirit and that our spirit communes with Gods spirit. We still have the option of going over into the soul man but we are still God's possesion. We may decide to openly sin but we are not belonging to the soul man but stepping back into it as he moved from left to right. Many of us have heard the saying that we are sinners saved by grace. Well I heard a new verse. 2 Cor 5:21 For He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him [Jesus].
Ok so I have heard the verse before but never like it hit me tonight. I am the rightousness of God. WOW!! My mind started working through this as Doug continued. You can choose to live in the flesh and be controlled by it or you can walk consciously in the spirit. I had never heard it this way before. Then it started to come together. If I think I am a sinner then what do sinners do? Well they sin of course but if I am the rightousness of God then well I don't have to sin. Then we got into some more verses (Romans 8: 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. Now when we talk about the spirit we are talking about the Spirit of God inhabiting our Spirit and making it new. Then we listen to and our conrtolled by the "Spirit". Now here is where the power comes in. Romans 8:11 The Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead, lies in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you. The he demonstrated as I have never heard before. Again I have read and heard this verse read but it never sank in. What does it say? Does it say Christ rose from the dead? Nay it say The Spirit of God, yes the one that hovered over the face of the waters at creation went down to hell because that is where Christ went with the weight of our sins and the Spirit of God entered. Demons splattered against the wall running and screaming as the power of God came down to raise the Son of God. Satan crawling on his hands and knees when just a second ago he thought he had one for Christ himself was there. The Spirit of God then Raised the Son of God to life.
That Spirit lives within you when you take on the new life in Christ. It was sinking in now and I was getting excited. Things that I made excuses for all my life were nothing now. I had the power of the Spirit of God in me. I was ready to step out of that soul man permanently and walk in the newness of the Spirit. And.....I did. I prayed and cast off the old soulish man with his fleshly desires. The lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. I cast off all those things that bound me some of which had been with me all my life. Now comes the confession. I can confess it because I am now free from it. At the age of 4 or 5 I became sexually active thanks to a babysitters son. I am not crying here or looking for sympathy but an evil entered my life that would manifest itself through lust and pornography for over 40 years. But on this night it died. I buried that old man and I walked in the new man the Spirit man. I would drink occasionally and smoke and I cussed quite a bit. By the power of God yes that Spirit that raised Christ from the dead that lived within me I shook off all those things. I didn't taper off. I dropped them! Flat! Cold! Done! Praise God.  I have since then made some changes in my life. I have given up and when I say given up I mean cut out dependence on or eliminated totally daily coffe, adding sugar to things cut down on white bread, watching tv. I stick to a few clean shows like duck dynasty or pickers. I am cautious not to watch shows that have sexual notes in even to the point of low cut shirts. Why? am I a prude. Well maybe but I do not want my mind to become desensitized again. Stop and look at what you are watching or listening to. Would you want that woman in your house with your husband or that man in the house with your wife? Cast off the old and fill your mind with the good things of God. I do not want to be enslaved to anything. I do not want to "have" to do anything. My last big struggle is my eating which I am working on.
The knowledge of who we are in Christ makes the difference. We are children of the King bought with a high price. The blood of his son. We ARE the rightousness of God and to say we are sinners is to blaspheme what Christ did for us. Yes we may sin but we cannot allow ourselve to practice sin.
Here is the difference. I still sin. For example my child does something I don't want them to and I lose my temper and yell. I sinned I say I'm sorry to God and move on. Practiced sin is what we have to eliminate to be free. For example your wife works late on thursdays so you have a weekly date with your computer and the women of a certain website. you ask for God to forgive you after each incident but you know next week your gonna do it again. That is practiced sin. Satan has you in a snare that you cannot get out of. He will take you deeper and deeper. Get free! Walk in the light.