Balanced Christianity 6. Question Answer Session - Part 1 — Zac Poonen

Renewing the Mind by Focusing on God's Interests

We have a number of questions on different subjects and I will try and answer them according to what is we think would be most important. So one question is how to overcome in our thought life, how can we stop letting negative thoughts go in our mind.

The Bible speaks in Romans 12 verse 2 about renewing our mind and that means to stop thinking like the race of Adam thinks because all of us think in one way, we seek our own. Our mind is set on man's interests and to renew our mind is to have our mind now focused on God's interests and when we get focused on God's interests it doesn't mean that God ignores our need.

The Lord said that if we seek his kingdom first all the other things will be added to us. In fact the person who can be completely free from anxiety and fear about the future and fear about who is going to look after him when he is old or how his retirement will work out is the one who has put God's interests first in everything.

And if you haven't done that so far in your life you can start today, it's never too late to start and the way to do that is by reading the scriptures. There is only one book in the world, the Bible, that tells us God's mind.

So if you don't read it, meditate on it and if that's not the number one book that you want to study you can pray all your life about renewing your mind, nothing will happen. Because the one resource God has given you, you are not availing of.

There are many people who want to overcome negative thoughts, bad thoughts, I say do you read the Bible regularly, do you meditate on it, do you memorize it, do you try to obey what the commandments claim the promises, you are too lazy to do it and some say well I can't understand.

Well if you can't understand, nowadays there are so many helps to study the Bible. For example, even if you go to our website cfcindia .com, there are such a lot of resources there to make you almost a Bible scholar in two or three years if you will spend half an hour a day.

If you can spend half an hour a day, that will change your thought life. Okay, what to do if I am asked, I have asked a Christian person for forgiveness but this person keeps reminding me again and again and is angry.

Seeking Forgiveness Without Controlling Another Person

See you are not responsible for making a person to forgive you, you are only responsible to ask for forgiveness and if the person doesn't forgive you, that's none of your business after that, it's between that person and God.

The New Birth and Evidence of Repentance

Okay, another question is how to live a real Christian life, where do you start, how do you stay focused? Well the first step of course is to be born again. See a lot of people have not had a new birth, the new birth is, the best way I can describe it is, you know a baby in a mother's womb with everything in dark and confined space for nine months and suddenly it's born and it's come into another world and says I never knew there was a world like this.

It's something like that that happens when you are born again, you, if you are really born again, you come into another world where you become aware of a world that you never knew existed, you become aware that Jesus is your, can be your friend and God is your father and that's why many people because they have a very shallow experience of being born again, they, they're like you know premature babies who are born too early and they have to be under the, in the incubator for a long time before they come to a normal life.

What I mean by that is when you're not really repented of your past sins, when you're not really sorry for all that you did in the past and you're not, I'm not asking you to give up your sins, God doesn't ask us to give them up, God says you must want to give them up.

There's a lot of difference between giving up our sins and wanting to give them up. If God told me you got to give up all your sins before you come to me, I'd say it's impossible to come, none of us could come.

But can you want to give them up? When a person comes to me for baptism, the thing I ask him is not will you sin again, nobody can say yes, I never want to sin again, nobody can say that but what I ask him is do you want to sin even once from now on?

That is the evidence that you're born again. You don't want to sin anymore and if that hasn't happened in your life, I would say you're not really born again. You may sin a hundred times after born again or a thousand times, that's not the point but you never want to sin again.

That's the new nature that comes, it's something like a pig wants to be dirty but a cat doesn't want to be dirty and the cat doesn't get that by education. When a cat has a little kitten, right from the time they're kittens, they don't want to be dirty but pigs, they want to be dirty.

But a cat can fall into dirty water, sure, and a believer can fall into sin. A cat can fall into dirty water ten times a day and a believer can fall into sin ten times a day but the reaction when you fall will determine whether you're a pig or a cat.

When you fall into that and you really hate it and you want to get out immediately, you know that you're changed. But what would you think of a cat that falls into dirty water and looks around to see if anybody observed it and say let me enjoy this a little bit, that's a pig pretending to be a cat.

And there are a lot of believers like that. If you have to look around and see whether somebody caught you, you haven't changed. If you sin, if you're a cat, it doesn't matter if nobody in the world saw you, you'd feel that's filthy, I want to get out.

So I always say the test is not whether you sin, the test is what happens after you sin. What is your reaction? And of course we don't want to keep on falling and living like that. If you really hate it and you want to avoid it over a period of time, God will help you.

Learning to Discern God's Will

When striving to fulfill God's will, starting from the small things, denying, trying to deny a will, how do you decipher God's will in the small things and know it isn't our flesh or enemy telling us what to do?

Like, for example, not to email this to your friend or family member, or not to go there or to go somewhere. See, some of these things, like somebody asked a man of God, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice.

And he said, I don't seem to hear his voice, am I a sheep? And the man of God replied very wisely, the lambs have to learn to hear his voice, the sheep hear his voice. So when you're a lamb, you have to learn to recognize the voice of the shepherd.

It takes time. So the more you hear God's voice, and again it's back to the Bible. In the Bible you hear God's voice, and if you hear that more and more, you'll get familiar with God's voice, and then in a situation where there's no clear answer in the Bible about a particular matter, you will know in your spirit what is right.

So it's all a question of continuously listening to what God has said in his word. Okay. Another question is concerning, my family goes to a church but I stay at home and listen to your messages, read the Bible and practice what Jesus taught as I got light.

Freedom of Conscience in Family Church Decisions

So I disagree with things taught in the other church. I don't want to create a conflict in somebody's home by reading this whole question. But what happens when, you know, this is a very common thing in many homes where husband and wife have slightly different convictions on which church to go to or which church to attend.

I believe that we should give freedom to one another, because in the things of God, we can't force a person to do something. When you force somebody to, children we can do, because children are under law, and under the law there was no option.

You had to die, you had to keep the sacrifices, you had to go to Jerusalem three times a year. It was compulsory. So that type of Christianity is not a forced thing. Jesus always said, if any man wants to be my disciple and if you love me, keep my commandments.

In the law there's no if. I mean, if you are a child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you jolly well do this. You get circumcised and you pay your tithe. So we don't believe in force. Anything by force, even a pastor forces you to pay a tithe or anything.

I want to tell you, it's a dead work. If you were forced to do something, and you did it, it's a dead work. Instead of putting that money in the offering box, you might as well have flushed it down the toilet.

It's exactly the same. You're not going to get any reward in heaven for what you did force, because it's a dead work. And the Bible says in Hebrews 6 verse 1, we must repent of dead works. We're not called here to force.

We're not here to do what somebody forces us to do. So we don't force people to go to a church if they don't feel free. When they're children, they're under law, they have to. Whether they like it or not, you come with me to the church.

That's what daddy says. But a wife is an adult and a husband is an adult. You can't force one another to go where you want to go. You go where you feel free. I believe the ideal thing would be, of course it's only if a wife respects her husband as a godly man, that he can accept his advice.

But there are cases where the wife is more spiritual than the husband. Many cases like that. So I wouldn't say that the wife should put her husband above Christ. Not at all. Because the ultimate authority is Jesus Christ.

We must find some way of allowing one another to go to whichever church you belong. The ideal would be to all go together to the same church. When the disciples left their jobs and homes, were any of them married?

Marriage, Singleness, and Christian Calling

Would they still have provided for them? We certainly know that Peter was married because Jesus went to Peter's home and Peter had a mother-in-law staying there. Was this a unique time or thing for Jesus and his disciples?

Do we need to be concerned about following this example? Are we talking about being single? No. I think if you read 1 Corinthians chapter 9, Paul says that apart from him and Barnabas, all the other apostles were married as far as we know.

So he says, don't we have the right to take around a wife like the other apostles? So the other apostles were married. The calling to a single life is a very special calling. Perhaps one in a thousand may be called to a single life.

And one way you'll know it is you won't be persistently bothered by sexual thoughts. If you're persistently being bothered by sexual thoughts, 1 Corinthians 7 says it's better to marry than to burn. And to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife.

So 1 Corinthians 7 is pretty clear that particularly for men, it's very difficult to remain single. And if it's a calling from God, one proof of it will be that you would have victory in the sexual area.

It's just like the calling to full-time Christian work. If you're called to full-time Christian work, again, I think one in a thousand Christians is called to full-time Christian work. One proof of it will be that your mind will not always be on money.

If your mind is always on money, money, money, money, you're not called to full-time work, brother. Go and find a secular job. And if you're called to a single life, your mind will not always be on sex.

And so one can think that it's better if I am single. Paul says that, yeah, that's good, but not everybody can handle that. Jesus himself said that everybody can't accept that calling. Is it possible to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Receiving and Being Filled with the Holy Spirit

And it's also possible to be not filled with the Holy Spirit. What are some of the signs of being not filled with the Holy Spirit? So can we watch out for this? Well, Jesus said when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power.

Now let me explain something concerning the Holy Spirit because there's a lot of confusion concerning this. And I don't expect everybody to agree with me. But I hope you will read the Scripture with an open mind.

That's why I only want to show you Scripture. I don't want to give you my opinion. In Romans chapter 8 and verse 9, the last part, it says, If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to Him.

You don't belong to Christ. You're not a part of Christ. You're not born again. You're not a child of God. If you don't have the Spirit of Christ, which is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ is not different from the Holy Spirit.

There's no four persons in the Trinity. There's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father or the Spirit of Christ. Same thing. Holy Spirit. And if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you don't even belong to Him.

That is one of the clearest verses in the New Testament which teaches that as soon as you're born again, you receive the Holy Spirit. In the early days, in the Acts of the Apostles, they would present it like this.

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive the Holy Spirit. Today, we combine the two and say, receive the Lord Jesus Christ. You never find in the Acts of the Apostles, they're saying it like that.

They said, believe in the Lord Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit. But it's the same thing. Receive the Lord Jesus Christ, receive the Spirit of Christ. Because when I say, Lord Jesus, come into my heart, I believe in you, I've turned from my sins, and I trust you died for me and rose again.

Jesus is in heaven. He doesn't come physically into your heart. He's got a body. How does He come? For 33 and a half years, He was on earth. Second person of the Trinity. But the last 2 ,000 years, He's been the third person of the Trinity who's on earth.

Not the second person. The first and second person are in heaven. So, when we ask Christ to come, and it's the Spirit of Christ that comes into our heart, but you may have received the Spirit, you may have been born again, but you may not be filled with the Spirit, or baptized in the Holy Spirit.

The word baptism is a Greek word, which means immerse or dip. In those days, in Greece, if you spoke about dipping your hand in water, it's called baptizing, or bapto, baptizo, in your hand in water. It's being immersed in water, which is water baptism.

Immersed in the Holy Spirit. You know, you stand under a waterfall, you're completely immersed in that water. And that's being filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, you may have received the Spirit, but not be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Yielding Every Area of Life to Christ

And the best way I can picture it, you know, I find it easier when I use picture language. If my heart is like a house with 10 rooms, and there's one room called the guilt room, where I feel terribly guilty about all the sins I've committed in my life, and I want Jesus to forgive me and light up that room and drive away the darkness.

I receive Christ into my heart, the Holy Spirit comes in, and one room is lit up. My sins are forgiven. Gone. I'm born again. I've become a child of God. And if you ask, is there light there in that house?

Yes, there is light. Is it filled with light? No. Because nine rooms are still dark. So the Holy Spirit wants to come to all those rooms. Now, some people may open up every room as soon as they're born again.

The very first day, their surrender is total. They're filled with the Spirit from day one. But in many cases, it's not like that. You know, we usually want to deal with our guilt first, and there's a lot of selfishness in our life.

You remember when the prodigal son came home? He didn't come home because he had a great love for his father, and he felt he had dishonored his father, and I want to honor my father again. That's not why he came.

He came because he was hungry. He said, I'm eating one of the pig's food in my father's house. It's good food. Let me go back. He came back for food, and his father welcomed him. So what I want to say is, if you come to Jesus with a need, even if it's for sickness or food or anything, he'll welcome you, but he doesn't want you to stay at that position.

If the prodigal son, after he came back home, was only interested in staying at home to eat food, there's something fundamentally wrong with him. So even though you may come initially for some other reason, the Lord expects you to move on from there, to come to the place where you want to be free from your sin.

So, in the beginning, you may have just wanted Jesus to get rid of your sin, and then the Lord knocks at the door of your heart and says, Can I come into different areas of your heart? Can I come and sit with you while you watch television?

And make sure you don't watch things that are not good for you. And you may not want the Lord to interfere in your television room, because you want to watch some things which he will not be happy to sit and watch with you.

Okay? That room remains closed. The Lord says, Can I look at your library? You say, No Lord, there are some books you may not like. Can I come and see how you handle your finances? Are you upright in the way you earn it?

How do you spend it? And you may not want the Lord to see how you earn your money, or how you spend it. He may want to come and look at some of your sisters in your wardrobe. Let me see the type of dresses you wear.

You... The Lord says, Do you think I'll be happy if you dress like this in an immodest way? Do you think you would be able to walk with me down the marketplace? Do you think I'd be proud of you the way you're dressing?

I may ask you to give up some of these dresses. Throw it away. Get some more modest dresses. You say, No Lord, the latest styles are this. I don't want to change. Okay, okay. The Lord says, I will not enter that room.

There are many rooms like this we lock. And we say, Oh God, fill me with the Holy Spirit. You can pray for a hundred years. You'll never be filled with the Spirit. You can go to some meeting where they will make you babble something and say, Okay, you got it.

You have got nothing. Your life is still defeated. Christ is not Lord of your life. This is the great deception. I'm not against the Pentecostal experience. I believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I believe in speaking in tongues. I've spoken in tongues for 40 years. But I do not believe that most of what goes on today in many Pentecostal churches is genuine baptism. 95 of it is fake. There is the genuine.

There is the fake. The very fact that there is a fake is the proof that the genuine is valuable. I believe in the gifts of the Spirit. I mean, people don't make fake toilet paper or fake newspapers. Fake is always gold, diamonds, anything that's fake.

The original is always valuable. So if you tell me there is something fake, fake born again experience, sure, the genuine must be very valuable. Fake gifts of the Spirit, yeah, plenty of it. The genuine must be valuable.

So don't ignore it. Anything that's fake proves that the genuine is very valuable. But don't be fooled by the fake. You wouldn't go to the market to buy gold if you had to and not get some expert to tell you what is gold and what's fake.

So we have to be very careful. And here is the best way to know that you are really filled with the Holy Spirit. Don't wait for some experience. You don't have to go to a meeting. You can be filled with the Holy Spirit right in your room.

Just allow the Lord to search your heart and show you what areas of your life have you not yielded to Christ. I just mentioned a few. There could be others. Ask the Lord to show you. I remember one preacher seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit and he thought he had yielded everything till the Lord told him, you want to be a great preacher.

Give up that desire. And he didn't realize that. And he thought that was a good desire to be a great preacher but he was seeking for honor. And when he gave it up, God filled him with the Holy Spirit.

So I don't believe there's any reluctance on God's part to fill you with the Holy Spirit. But if you don't open a door, you can pray and pray forever. Nothing will happen. Instead of doing all that, instead of, what I say, wasting time in such empty prayer, go before God and ask Him to show you what are the areas in your life that are not yielded, where you don't want to walk with Jesus.

If there's any area in your life where you don't want to fellowship with Jesus in what you're doing, that's the area not yielded. I remember one young sister came and asked me, how should I dress? I said, imagine that Jesus one day called you if He was living in the next street and He asked you to walk with Him down the street.

How would you dress when you go and meet Jesus in His house? You're going to walk with Him proud to be His younger sister. Dress like that always. Not only when you go to church services but all the time.

Don't you want Jesus to be with you when you go to work? Sure, you need Him more there. You don't want to go around provoking other people by the way you dress. But I find a lot of Christians are more concerned about what other ladies will think about them than what Jesus thinks about them.

How in the world can such people be filled with the Holy Spirit? I cannot imagine that. If you're more interested in what people say about you, then we have to stand against this world system in every area.

So, that's how we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. Okay. And then ask God to give you an assurance. And don't wait for speaking in tongues or any gift. That is a separate thing. If God wants to give it to you, He'll give it to you.

Not everybody speaks in tongues. If it is God's will, He'll give it to you. If it is not, He'll give you some other gift. How do I battle with sexual urges? Why does God allow me to fall into the sin constantly?

Resisting Sexual Temptation

You can't say God allows you. God hates sin. Any type of sin. But there are urges in us that God has placed with a good motive. For example, there's a tremendous desire for food in our body. Because otherwise we would die.

The body needs food and God has created hunger. But that doesn't mean I can go and steal. No. God wants me to work and earn my living. And get food. And even begging is better than stealing. There's no word in the Bible which says don't beg.

There's certainly a word which says don't steal. So, the hunger and desire to satisfy hunger is a good desire. But I must do it in the right way. Not in a wrong way. In the same way, the desire to sleep.

God has given us the desire to sleep. And that's why He darkens the sky for many hours a day. So that we can go to sleep. And so that we can be refreshed the next day. It's a cycle and God does that. So the desire to sleep is good.

But you shouldn't be sleeping at the wrong time. So, just like that. When you've got work to do, that's not the time you should be sleeping. In the same way, the sexual urge is something which is normal.

God has placed in it for the propagation of the human race right from the beginning. And so there's a natural attraction that God brings between a man and a woman. From the time of, you get into the teenage years, there's an attraction.

But why has God given that desire to come up even in your teenage years when you know that, and God knows you're not going to get married for another 10 years. I believe it is so that you can learn to battle it and overcome it.

Even before you get married. So that it's not through marriage you overcame it. Because you're going to be tempted with sexual urges even after you get married. Go and ask any honest married man. Temptation is there.

Temptation doesn't mean they're evil. Even Jesus was tempted. Was Jesus tempted sexually? If he was not, then I have to say, you are not tempted like me Lord. But the Bible says he was tempted like me.

And since the sexual urge is one of the strongest urges in the human body and something very difficult to battle and overcome. If Jesus was not tempted like that, and I am tempted and I overcome it, I will stand in heaven as a greater conqueror than Jesus Christ.

Can you believe that? Not at all. He was tempted like us and he overcame and he says, follow me. He never sinned. And he was a man, a strong full-blooded man just like anybody else. And he had the urge that came at a teenage, in his teenage just like everybody else.

So, I remember when I used to be tempted in this area, I say, Lord Jesus, I remember you were tempted just like me in Nazareth when you were a young man. And I want to do what you did in Nazareth. How did you fight it Lord?

To me, the thing that's helped me most in overcoming sin is to see Jesus as my example. Tempted like me, he was a man just like me, grew up just like me. And I used to say, Lord, what did you do in Nazareth when you were tempted like this?

I want to do the same thing. The Bible says, run away from immorality. If I can avoid it, run away from it. When you are tempted to the computer, to pornography, don't try and sit there and battle it.

If you can get up and turn off that computer and go away for a little while and come back, that's the best thing to do. The Bible says, flee from immorality. It's a very powerful force, sexual urge. It's more powerful than other desires.

Do you know that the Bible tells us not to flee from Satan, but to flee from immorality? Do you know that? James 4 .7 says, you resist the devil, he will flee from you. But when it comes to temptation from a woman, you better run.

So who is stronger? The devil or a woman who's tempting you? The Bible says, if you resist the devil, he will run. He will flee from you. That's James 4 .7, but 1 Corinthians chapter 6, I think it's verse 19 or something.

It says, flee from immorality. It doesn't say, stand there and fight. Run. When David got up from his bed and walked on the terrace and he saw that woman, he was tempted, he should have just immediately run back into his bedroom and closed the door.

He wouldn't have sinned. There wouldn't have been that sad story there. But if you're not willing to run, you will fall. So that's my advice. God wants you to overcome. He wants you to be strong. How to live in grace and truth every day in our life?

Pursuing Humility by Looking to Jesus

God gives His grace to the humble. And if you deliberately determine to be humble in your life, and the best way to be humble is to look at Jesus. Do you know that pride always comes by comparison? Humility comes by comparison.

If you compared yourself with other people who are far better than you, you'd be humble. If you compared yourself with, or jealous, you'd be jealous of them. But if you compared yourself with people who you feel are inferior to you, you become proud.

All pride comes by looking at other people you feel are inferior. For example, you get, I've used this example. A boy who gets 10 marks out of 100 in mathematics in class. Can he be proud? He certainly can.

If all the others got 4 and 5 and 3 and 0. He came first in the class with 10 out of 100. How did he become proud? By comparison. Now you put that same boy in another school where everybody is getting 98, 99, 100.

He all of a sudden becomes humble. How did he become humble? By comparison. He compared himself with people who got 3 and 5 and 0 and he felt he was better. He compares himself with people who get 98, 99 and 100.

He feels all of a sudden very small. So pride comes through comparison. If you look at your life, the areas where you're proud, you're always unconsciously comparing yourself with somebody else who's not as intelligent as you are, not as good looking as you think you are, and not as clever or smart or whatever it is, not as accomplished as you are or doesn't have such a big car or a better house as you have.

Whatever it is, it's always by comparison. And that's how we despise others. And you can compare yourself with people who are better than you and become jealous of them. So humility can come by comparison.

Compare yourself. Deliberately compare yourself with Jesus Christ. Every day. In fact the Bible says that. Hebrews 12 .1 Let us run this race looking unto Jesus. In other words, every single day of my life is a race.

And I have to fix my eyes on Jesus who's gone ahead of me in this race. And I'll tell you one thing. You cannot live with Jesus day by day and become proud. You cannot even be proud for a single second.

You can be tempted. But it's impossible to be proud. No matter what you've accomplished, no matter how good looking you are, how intelligent you are, how spiritual you are, whatever you may do or anything, you cannot become proud if you look at Jesus.

It is impossible. If you've studied Jesus in the Bible and you see what he's like in the Gospels, and you've seen him clearly and you keep looking at him, I'll tell you what I see myself as. A speck of dust.

Lord, where am I compared to you? Almighty God walked on this earth. I remember once when I asked the Lord this question. I said, Lord, why do you keep saying you're the son of man, you're son of man, son of man?

And I got an answer. It meant Jesus was saying, I'm an ordinary man. And I tell you, that really humbled me. I said, Lord, Almighty God, you walked on this earth and you call yourself an ordinary man.

What am I? I'm ashamed if I ever think I'm anything more than an ordinary man. All my life I want to be an ordinary man. I'm amazed at how Christian leaders take titles like reverend and right reverend and all kinds of titles and try to show off that they're bigger and better than others.

Even the title of pastor is to elevate yourself over other people who are just brothers. You're only a brother. I'm a pastor. I'm a reverend. I don't want to be anything more than another person. Imagine Almighty God walked on the earth.

He never took a title. Did anybody call him reverend Jesus? Or pastor Jesus? He'd have shut them up immediately. He said, I'm an ordinary man. Many people don't take these things seriously. Jesus said, don't ever be called rabbi, father or any such thing.

Deliberate disobedience to that command. Most of Christendom, every single, almost every Christian leader disobeys that command because they don't care for the teaching of Jesus. Oh, they say it's a small thing.

What is a small commandment? A commandment given by Almighty God is never a small commandment. I'm just giving you an example. There are things in scripture which you don't take seriously because you don't take the word of Jesus seriously.

Do you know Jesus said that every careless word that you speak, you'll give an account in the day of judgment. That's in Matthew chapter 12. You read that whole section, Matthew 12, 34 to 40 or so. Every careless word, idle word you speak, you'll give an account in the day of judgment.

If you really took that seriously, you'd be very, very careful about the words you speak. Colossians 4, 6 says, let your speech always be with grace. And every time you use a word which is not gracious, you repent and you go before God and you gradually begin to see how small you are.

That with all your Bible knowledge and apparent spirituality, you're really nothing. You say, Lord, what a long way I have to go to become like Jesus. It really humbles you. So, pursue humility and you'll get grace all the time.

Obeying Conscience in Employment

Okay, another question is, okay, that's already answered. As a young man, I have a job where I have to do certain things which a God-fearing person would not do. But I have to do it for the safety of my customers.