There’s a Native American fable about a young brave who happened upon a nest of golden eagle eggs. Deciding to have some fun, he took one of the eggs and placed it in the nest of some prairie chickens. The egg hatched and the changeling eagle grew up with the brood of prairie chickens. Believing himself to be like everyone else around him, he behaved accordingly. He clucked and cackled and scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to live on. He never flew more than a few feet off the ground, since prairie chickens are incapable of rising any higher. Years passed and one day the young eagle was scratching along with one of his older prairie chicken brothers when a fleeting shadow passed over them. They looked up and saw, high in the sky, the soaring form of something gliding on the currents of the wind. “What a beautiful bird!” the young eagle exclaimed. “That’s an eagle,” the older brother informed him, staring upward. “A golden eagle. He’s the king of the air. No bird can compare with him.” Then he lowered his gaze and added, “But don’t give it a second thought; you could never be like him.” And back to scratching they went. Indeed, the changeling eagle never gave another thought to that soaring sight. And according to the fable, he died as he had lived, never rising any higher than a prairie chicken’s existence.
Tragically, this same story is repeated in too many of our lives. Like eagles, we were created and redeemed to mount up on God-given wings. Our privileged calling is to know God more and more intimately, to know the thrill of unrestrained, exuberant worship and to abandon ourselves to the high adventure of warring on behalf of the Kingdom of God in this dark world by loving others to Jesus.
This is our God-given design and that’s why we can’t be truly satisfied with anything less. We can never find the intense fulfillment our souls long for while scratching around in carnal living or mediocre spirituality. We were made and fully equipped at the time of our conversion to soar! In our New Covenant relationship, God has placed within us the deeply designed desire to do the will of God. It’s a gift of God’s grace in us. Deep down in our spirit, every true believer in Jesus Christ does want to do the will of God. And either we are unaware of it or we’re blocked to the realization of it. However, in Ezekiel 36 God reveals the truth that He has provided four primary spiritual provisions that gives you Your New “Can Do!”
God gives us not only a new set of “want to’s” for doing His will, but also a new “can do” through His Spirit to actually carry out our new inclinations. The point is: The Christian life isn’t just hard; it’s flat-out impossible to live. It becomes possible only when God injects His fullness into His people’s hearts and that’s exactly what He’s done in the New Covenant. So let’s attempt to recognize and release these four spiritual realities: your new: Purity, Identity, Disposition and Power. Each is purely the gift of God alone, received through Christ alone, by faith alone. Therefore, Christ alone is our key to Christian living and He has already placed all of these supernatural resources permanently within your life, ready for release every day of your life on earth. So through Your New ‘Can Do’:
I. Recognize Your New Purity verse 25
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean …” Jesus said in the context of our abiding in Him, “You are already clean” (John 15:3). And when washing the disciples feet in John 13:10 said “. . . And you are clean . . .” In Christ you have received a new purity.
In 1829 a man named George Wilson was arrested for robbery and murder in a US mail heist. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Some friends intervened on his behalf and were able to obtain his pardon from President Andrew Jackson. But when told of this, Wilson refused it saying he wanted to die. Well, the sheriff didn’t know what to do, how do you execute a man officially pardoned? An appeal was made to the President who perplexed turned the matter over to the US Supreme court. Chief Justice John Marshall gave this ruling: A pardon is a piece of paper, the value of which depends on its acceptance by the person implicated. Anyone under the sentence of death would hardly be expected to refuse a pardon, but if it’s refused, it’s no pardon. Thus, George Wilson was executed while his signed pardon lay on the sheriff’s desk!
In the same way, God has offered His gift of divine purity to every person, a gift that not only provides pardon from eternal condemnation, but offers much, much more. However, this gift of Christ must be personally appropriated to be personally beneficial. God promises here, “You shall be clean.” His divine cleansing, this new purity, is the starting point for living out our Christianity. It’s what the New Testament calls being “justified.” Romans 3:21-24 indicates you’re declared and made just as if you never sinned or will ever sin again. And in it you are cleansed of sin’s guilt. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, once decided to play a practical joke on 12 of his friends. To each he sent an anonymous telegram that simply read, “Flee at once . . . all is discovered.” Within 24 hours all 12 had fled the country! All of us, know what it is to live with such nagging guilt. But the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses our conscience and freedom comes with our New Purity. And so much more time won’t all me to mention. Secondly:
II. Recognize Your New Identity verses 24 and 28
God says “. . . you will be my people. . .” We have a new identity. Who are we now “in Christ” ? 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Behold if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone and the new has come.” One way to look at a us now is as costume jewelry which is essentially worthless metal covered with an attractive coating. So many believers see themselves in that way – sinners through and through, yet covered by the blood of Jesus. But a truer image of who we are after conversion is “tarnished silver.” While we’re covered by the infinite righteousness of Christ, we’re also new creations in Christ (we’re silver) clothed in an earth suit that is sin-saturated (tarnished). The new you isn’t a sinner, but rather a saint who struggles with the tarnish of sin. And we always will while we live with this tarnished flesh!
The truth is we have a new identity in Jesus Christ. We’re a new creation, we’ve been transformed from the inside out. The encouragement we need then is to live in line with our God-given design. The Christian life is simply the process of becoming who we are. We need to recognize we have a New Identity. This new identity is entirely ours because of our union with Christ (Galatians 2:20). We now have a Christ-saturated and Christ-sufficient identity. That’s why we’re not to be preoccupied with developing a good self-image. We already have the best one available – we simply need to receive it, appropriate it by faith and thank God for it.
One night a man and his wife were having a fairly heated discussion over a habit of his that annoyed her. As it continued, he became angrier and more defensive. Finally, he realized he was attaching her criticisms of who he was, his identity which caused him to feel threatened. However, it wasn’t him she was finding fault with, but rather a particular hehavior of his. God brought a picture to his mind, so he said, “Sandy, it’s not like you’re saying I’m ugly, but just pointing out that my hair’s out of place.” “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she responded. As Christians, we all have our hair out of place in different ways, but no believer is fundamentally ugly! That’s true because at our conversion, we received an internal, unalterable transformation. We became a new creation with a new identity. Thirdly:
III. Recognize Your New Disposition verse 26
God’s says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” We were born into the world with a disposition innately and inherently opposed to God. Spiritually, it’s described as a “heart of stone” – cold unyielding, lifeless. It’s where our thoughts, pursuits, delights and desires are out of alignment with God’s. The New Testament calls it “enmity against God.” That’s why God’s promise and provision in the New Covenant is to give us a new heart – inclined, warm and responsive toward God. It’s a heart that now loves God, fears God reverently and wants to do God’s will. In fact, in the New Disposition He’s given us is a heart that can do God’s will.
Dwight Edward’s writes, “Liver is one of my least favorite foods. My problem is with the taste, or perhaps distaste. I grew up dreading those nights Mom fixed liver for dinner, encouraging us with, ‘It’s good for you.’ Those words meant nothing to me, and they certainly did nothing to make liver more palatable. I’ve tried smothering it with ketchup or gulping it down with a bite of something else, but the liver flavor always seemed stronger than everything else. Nothing has ever come close to helping me like it. I doubt that liver itself will ever be radically changed in substance to taste like steak or hamburger. So to actually enjoy eating it, only one option seems to remain. I suppose it’s conceivable that I could undergo a tounge transplant and be given the tongue of a liver-lover. My new set of taste buds could then rejoice in liver rather than merely enduring it. Liver would no longer be an ‘ought to’ but a ‘get to.’”
When we became believers, something similar happened to us. We were given a heart transplant that instilled a whole new set of God-given desires. God has seen to it that our new regenerate hearts will incessantly and instinctively yearn and long for God and His glory, His will and His words. As Jonathan Edwards called it, “it’s a holy, heavenly disposition. And because of it, the will of God isn’t just an “ought to” anymore, it’s also a “want to.” And with it God has also given us a new “can do.” Finally:
IV. Recognize Your New Power verse 27
God says, “And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees . . .” Have you ever had a fantasy to fly? I mean without an air-plane, with just your 2 arms, floating, even soaring. Well, no matter how much you might like to, there’s no way it’s going to happen. Your “want to” isn’t connected with the resources necessary to make flying a “can do.” The only hope is that there really are wings for us in heaven. In the same way, it isn’t enough to simply want to do God’s will. Our best intentions and highest resolves are still powerless to overcome our flesh’s downward pull. To put the equation this way: New Purity + New Identity + New Disposition = frustration & defeat. Only when the provision of New Power is added to the equation does genuine victory become possible.
God has given us that new power through the New Covenant.” God gives us a new “can do” through His Spirit to carry out the new “want tos” of our new disposition. Only God can fulfill through us what God has inclined within us. This new power from God’s Spirit is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. It’s also the new power that alone can resurrect us from the defeated, death-like quality of life to which our flesh seeks to hold us in bondage to. Oh, our flesh will always want a piece of the action and there will always be a walking civil war going on at the forefront of the mind. But the intensity of that battle will be dramatically affected by how fully we appropriate the power provided for us in the New Covenant. We access the resurrection power of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit within us. That’s why Paul exhorts us to, “walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal.5:16).
But until we recognize and become convinced at the core of our being that there is something fundamentally new and different in us and that Christ Himself provides the power for Christian living we’ll continue to thwart the Spirit’s ministry within us by depending on our Self or our Flesh and we’ll miserably fail and live ineffectively. So, would you enter into a new relationship with God today through the New Covenant? Or maybe recognizing your New Purity, Identity, Disposition and Power you would be willing to make a reaffirmation of Christ’s lordship in your life today?
(This message was developed out of a study of Dwight Edwards book “Revolution Within: A Fresh Look At Supernatural Living.”
