Crisis To Process

"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." - Romans 12:1-2 NASB

God uses the crisis to brings us into a process. Here is a great quote from a booklet by Dr Carl Stevens.

'In presenting my body, I prove what is the perfect will of God. If I don’t present my body, then I will never prove it. Instead of having His perfect will, it may just be something that I want. If we don’t prove His perfect will, God will send trials to make it happen. The Lord will deliver us through death if we haven’t already been delivered from death. He will bring a crisis into our lives so that He can start the process of victory. If you present your body by faith and by mercy, and do it because of the Finished Work, then anything God does will result in you revealing what has been done. When trials come to those who refuse to present their bodies as living sacrifices, they reveal what hasn’t been done and what they are like. All we can do is patiently sit back and hope the day comes when there will be a conversion. But, when trials come to a Spirit-filled Christian, the trials reveal what Christ has done and Who God is.' - Atmospheric Cycles

God is the faithful one. We can love and help but we don't want to interfere with what God is doing in a person's life.

Grace words renew the mind. Truth that emphasizes the finished work of the cross and keeps God's character and nature as the focus will keep a person and purify a person's thinking in the midst of good times and bad.

In the most difficult situations there is a victory that we can enter into. That victory is an eternal victory.

"But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." - 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 ESV

The flesh needs a veil. It needs to hide in emotionalism and shade from the truth in order to preserve it's illusion that in it's dysfunction it is still somehow acceptable. The flesh needs to just endure as long as it can and rationalize why things aren't the way the should be.

When a person turns to the Lord in a new spiritual identity the veil is removed and transformation can take place. The gap between expectation and perceived reality shrinks. Peace and hope can reign in a person's heart and mind. Then a person can say, 'If I perish then I perish' and really mean it.

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