GROWING FORWARD

• Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. - 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

 
In order to please God, we need to learn to surrender everything unto Him and remove all that He does not like. The devil always tries to trick us into returning to our old sinful habits. Of course, the enemy does not want us to do what is good, he wants to lure us into doing the familiar sins that we used to commit. Thankfully, when we learn to surrender it all to the Lord, we can live right for Him. The above verses talk about leaven, which is the descriptive term for a rising agent used in making bread, not only in ancient times, but it is still used today. The old leaven represents the little things that in time would produce the growth of sin in us.
 
The old leaven is whatever sin we had in our lives, especially the habitual kind, that was daily or frequently, that if we are not careful, can spring up again and cause us to fall back into our old bad ways. This is something the Lord is warning us about through these verses to the Corinthians. As His Word says, “For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
 
We need to decide to stop doing what we used to do. We need to learn what pleases God and what doesn't. And we find it all in His Word. He teaches us everything we need to know about His will, His desires, how we are supposed to be, how we are supposed to behave, how we are supposed to talk, and what is good or bad for us to do. We do not want the old leaven anymore in our lives. We want to become a new lump, one that is sincere, that is truly God's, that doesn't have anything to do with our old nature or our bad old habits.
 
The Holy Spirit is always present to help us change. So let us learn to always ask for the help of the Holy Spirit when we study God's Word so that we understand what we read, so that we grasp the truth that God has for us, so that we change, renewing and transforming our minds, hearts, attitudes and behavior.
 
When our minds are renewed and we change the way we think, our value system changes and then we understand what we need to pursue or not, then the more we’ll follow the direction of the Lord, and become more of who God wants us to be. Also, we need to resist the devil when we are tempted to sin and not go back to what we used to do. And we can resist the devil by being strong in in our faith, and if we are truly being led by the Holy Spirit, we can then keep our carnal nature under control.

• Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

 
The Lord says to bring our bodies as a living sacrifice, so when we decide to become a living sacrifice for God it's a good thing, but to do so, it is not a one-time decision, but a continual one, sincerely keeping a clean heart and the flesh crucified. Even Paul said, "but I discipline my body and bring it unto subjection," in 1 Corinthians 9:2. He said it because he was fighting with his carnal nature also. He knew what he was talking about, because when he wrote it, he had already been practicing it for decades. The quicker we learn what God likes and dislikes, and walk more obediently with Him, the better off we are. We are called to a new life, a new life in Christ.
 
In this new life God's nature, God's love, God's peace, God's joy should be seen in our lives. And because the Holy Spirit came to indwell us, we have His fruit also. And His fruit is peace, love, joy, self-discipline, goodness, kindness, meekness. All this amazing fruit is in us because of the Holy Spirit but cannot manifest if we continue to allow our flesh to rule. Like when we go through a hard time, we start to be irritated and upset and even angry or start to say what we shouldn't. This is when we allow the soul to increase and grow, to the detriment of the spirit. The more our soul grows, the weaker our spirit-man becomes.
 
Our purpose is the opposite. We need to keep our spirit-man growing, allowing the Holy Spirit to occupy as much of our heart as we can. But this cannot happen if we continue to do things the fleshly way, if we continue to live as we used to. We have to grow spiritually by reading, studying and learning the truth of God's Word where we find everything we need to know in how to live right for God, to please Him, and to be as He wants us to be. As we do so, we become more lovable to others also.
 
It's true that those who do not love God, are not too happy to be around us, but they have the chance to see what God can do in someone’s life, and hopefully find they may want to change also. When we surrender everything to the Lord, we become truly free, because we give up self-rulership, and Jesus becomes our true Lord. We want Him to guide and teach us in all that we need. By allowing God to change our heart, we become a new person that can help others to change also.
 
The light of Jesus will shine through us, if our hearts are full of Him. And that's what we are after. We want the light of Jesus to be seen in us. We want our eyes to sparkle with joy, the joy of salvation. We want to learn to rejoice in the Lord always, no matter what happens in life. It is profitable to surrender everything to the Lord. It is for our benefit to do so.  When we realize that we need help, because self-rulership is bad rulership, the good news is that we have a way better alternative. By allowing Jesus to be our true Lord and learning to follow His directions and leadership, our lives become better and closer to what God intended for us to have. Thank You Lord!
 

Carmen Pușcaș