{"id":551,"date":"2009-12-28T07:41:05","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T15:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wordpress\/?p=551"},"modified":"2009-12-31T10:10:42","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T18:10:42","slug":"551","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=551","title":{"rendered":"Continuous Conversion 12-28-2009"},"content":{"rendered":"
December 28, 2009<\/div>\n
Continuous Conversion<\/div>\n

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. . . unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven \u2014Matthew 18:3<\/div>\n
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These words of our Lord refer to our initial conversion, but we should continue to turn to God as children, being continuously converted every day of our lives. If we trust in our own abilities, instead of God\u2019s, we produce consequences for which God will hold us responsible. When God through His sovereignty brings us into new situations, we should immediately make sure that our natural life submits to the spiritual, obeying the orders of the Spirit of God. Just because we have responded properly in the past is no guarantee that we will do so again. The response of the natural to the spiritual should be continuous conversion, but this is where we so often refuse to be obedient. No matter what our situation is, the Spirit of God remains unchanged and His salvation unaltered. But we must “put on the new man . . .” (Ephesians 4:24<\/a>\u00a0). God holds us accountable every time we refuse to convert ourselves, and He sees our refusal as willful disobedience.<\/p>\n

I wonder about Oswald’s use of fear here, “God holds us accountable every time we refuse to be obedient. ” Was it the time, my own reaction to fear and “rules” as incentives to “do right” or is it in fact the way of continuous\u00a0conversion….”if we don’t, God will get us?” It is here I need to remember that Oswald was simply Oswald, and not the Holy Spirit. During his time, fear and obligation were often used by spiritual teachers as leverage. However, the Holy Spirit today seems to be taking a different tack. “We can\u00a0arrive out of fear, but we stay out of love.\u00a0(quote by DJR)”….JDV<\/em><\/p>\n

Our natural life must not rule\u2014 God must rule in us.<\/p>\n

To refuse to be continuously converted puts a stumbling block in the growth of our spiritual life. There are areas of self-will in our lives where our pride pours contempt on the throne of God and says, “I won\u2019t submit.” We deify our independence and self-will and call them by the wrong name. What God sees as stubborn weakness, we call strength. There are whole areas of our lives that have not yet been brought into submission, and this can only be done by this continuous conversion.<\/p>\n

And often this is less pride than it is simply not being connected to the Spirit of God.\u00a0When we are connected, the Holy Spirit makes us aware of our lack of conversion in a particular area of our lives, and gives us the gift of conviction and submission.\u00a0 JDV<\/em><\/p>\n

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Slowly but surely we can claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 28, 2009 Continuous Conversion . . . unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven \u2014Matthew 18:3 These words of our Lord refer to our initial conversion, but we should continue to turn to God as children, being continuously converted every day of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}