This video contains a secret to joyous Christian living that I didn’t discover until I had been a Christian for decades. I sincerely want to save you years of struggle and pain. I believe this spiritual truth will empower you to live a victorious Christian life.
00:00 My story – alcoholic to Christ
4:14 The Key to Deep, Lasting Change: Your Desires
5:15 Desire Fulfilled is a Tree of Life
6:56 It’s Your Choice
8:12 Delight in the Lord and He Will Fill Your Desires
8:31 Activation
*My Story
I met a lot of Christians from all over the world. And I discovered a pattern. Many believers are born again, but not transformed.
I’ve spent hours trying to help Christians with
• pain and dysfunction from the wounds of their pasts,
• twisted thinking and ungodly beliefs,
• deep character flaws and destructive habits (addictions and sin).
And I know that pain because that is what happened in my own life.
God can transform your heart in a fraction of the time and without all the pain that I experienced.
Romans 12:2 NLT says, “Let God transform you into a new person.”
So, How can I Be Born Again, but Not Transformed?
*The Key to Deep, Lasting Change is Your Desires
The key to deep. lasting changing, what the Bible calls transformation, is our desires. You see, sin is the fruit of us filling our desires by ourselves for ourselves.
God gave you desires that will draw you to Him.
Philippians 2:13 NLT
For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
The purpose of these desires is to drive us to God. God made us with desires only He can fill. He made us to be incomplete without Him. If you ever feel empty, incomplete, or inadequate it's because you are - without God. God doesn't want you to feel that way. The desires he placed in you draw you to Him. He fills the deepest desires of our hearts through relationship with Him and with other believers.
*Desire Fulfilled is a Tree of Life
Proverbs 13:12 NASB
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
There were only two trees in center of the garden of Eden that are mentioned by name: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Adam and Eve were free to eat of the tree of life, but the were told not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That tree represented selfish desires - selfish ambition. Satan told them the "would be like God" if they ate that fruit. They wanted to be like God through their own effort. It was a selfish desire. A sin. It was the first sin. And Satan has trapped million of people in the same sin over the thousands of years since. The fruit looks good, but it leads to death not life.
The truth is that Adam and Eve were already like God, made in His image and likeness. And they had everything through their relationship with God. But they wanted the forbidden fruit for themselves and they found only sin and death. Our life is in God, through Jesus Christ.
God created us to live for more than our selves.
1 Corinthians 16:9 NIV says: "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price."
Jesus paid the price for our sin when he died for us. God now offers each of us the choice to live with Him, as a son or a daughter.
*It's Your Choice
Others choose to go their own way and live for themselves.
Ephesians 2:3 NIV
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
When I was an alcoholic, I turned into one of the most selfish people on the planet. When I craved alcohol, I would do almost anything to get it. I didn't care about God, about friends or family or anything but filling the all-consuming desire for alcohol.
The irony is that by pursuing what I wanted, focusing on my own self-centered desires, I was sentencing myself to a life of unfulfilled desire. No alcoholic or drug addict ever has enough of his drug of choice. No one who pursues power, fame, wealth or any of Satan's twisted desires ever has enough. Like a dog, chasing it's tail, Satan keeps people running meaninglessly in circles until we have wasted our lives.
Little did I know, that by turning my heart to God, he would once and forever heal the desires, the emptiness within me, that drove me to alcohol. But he did!!
Psalm 37:4 NIV
Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
The one thing that will save you years of frustration and pain is to turn your heart to God and let Him fill the desires of your heart. Once your desires are filled by God, the sin that you continue to struggle with will fade away.
Activation
Perhaps the most powerful message I've shared is "Stop Beating Yourself Up About Your Sin! Jesus Has A Better Way." Watch it and "Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." Romans 12:2 NLT