A New Creation in Christ
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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE? Program 133 A New Creation in Christ by Ernest O’Neill
You are in the middle of a bright little discussion in the office, and someone is expressing their views very strongly. In the course of the discussion, they say something that you utterly and absolutely disagree with. You open your mouth and you’re about to explain your position. Then your little eye (that is always looking out to see who approves of you or who agrees with you, or who doesn’t agree with you, or disapproves of you) looks out and catches sight of the boss.
Suddenly, you realize that he agrees completely with the last speaker. Just as you are about to open your mouth and express what you really think, you feel that fear coming in and that concern for your reputation in your boss’ eyes and, indeed, for your job and your promotion. You shut that old mouth of yours, and just keep quiet.
Maybe you do that a number of times. You try each time to rationalize, “Well, I’m just watching my “p’s” and “q’s”. I’m just making sure that I’m not imprudent or stupid in regard to my professional advancement.” But deep down in your heart, you realize that that often works in your personality, just exactly that way. You are often about to express and explain what you really do think about something, but your little eye seems as if it has a natural twist in it.
It seems as if there is a connection between your eye and your heart and your mind at moments like that, and you automatically look out to see who is going to agree with you and who is going to disagree. In the light of that you determine whether you’re going to explain what you really think or whether you’re going to shut your mouth and pretend that you think differently.
Gradually, of course, you feel more and more of a hypocrite and more and more of an actor. Indeed, you feel more and more like a coward. You come to a point in your life where you begin to wonder who you are anyway. Are you just a little dog that wants to please everybody else? Are you just a little puppet that is pulled by the strings that everybody else operates? Or, are you a man or a woman at all?
Of course, the situation is even more pitiful and desperate when you determine. “I am going to speak my mind. Whatever it costs me, I’m going to speak my mind.” You start trying to do just that very thing. Those moments come when you feel that you should say what you really think, and lo and behold, it seems as if you are paralyzed. Your personality has become so used to looking out to see who agrees with you and who disagrees, or to see what effect this is going to have, or what possible ill consequences it could have for your professional career, that you find it impossible virtually to express what you really feel and what you really believe. So many of us become robots that are governed by our environment. We find that our personalities have got into certain ruts that we seem unable to change. It’s at that moment that we wish that we could be changed completely. It’s at moments like that, that we say to ourselves, I wish I wasn’t the kind of person I am. I wish I were different. I wish I could start life all over again. I wish I could be changed completely and could be like ‘so and so’, or could speak out like that person or this person. I wish I were different. It’s at that moment that we just wish that a miracle would take place that would change us completely.
What we have been sharing, of course, on this program is that, in fact, that has taken place. Your wish for a complete change of personality occurs in you, because that very event has occurred. The truth is that the person who made you…(and there is a Creator who has made you. That’s why you have such an amazing mind, such
incredible photographic capabilities in your eyes as you possess. That’s why you have so many abilities that a computer doesn’t have in your thinking and your reasoning abilities. There is a Creator who made you.)
He foresaw that you would gradually through fear induced by the fact that you felt you had to depend on what people thought of you for your prosperity and for your promotion, rather than on Him, He foresaw that you would, in fact, twist and pervert your personality to the point where it wouldn’t do what you wanted it to do — where you couldn’t even be what you knew you ought to be. He foresaw that. He foresaw that before He even put you on this earth.
If you ask how he could do that, it’s easy. He has an infinite mind. He doesn’t tie Himself to future and present and past. He sees all of time as one great present moment. In that moment that He conceived of your existence and conceived of your freedom of will and conceived that you would misuse it to pervert your personality so that it became the opposite of what you wanted it to be, He conceived of the need to remake you. And that He did.
He did it in His Son, in His son whose name is Jesus, even before He put you on this earth. He remade you completely. If you say, “Well, why did He leave me with this twisted, perverted personality? So that you would see that that was the personality you could have if you chose to live independent of Him. But, He made you new in His Son. He has remade you and given you a completely new personality that is free from fear of your boss, or fear of what other people think or fear of what they can do to your promotion or your career. He has remade you and given you a completely new personality.
That personality can be actualized in your life today. If you say, “How?” Through a miraculous, dynamic power that He has put into the world. It’s the power that makes the sun set as beautiful as it is. It’s the power that makes the lake as peaceful and as calm and serene as it is. It’s the power that links our eyesight with the objects that we see. It’s the power that makes beauty, and that enables us to understand other people without even seeing them, just by hearing their voice. It’s the power that moves the winds and the breakers break so magnificently on the Hawaiian shores. It is a power called the Holy Spirit.
It’s a life that links up everything in this life together with the Creator. That power, which is really a person, not just a power — He’s the Holy Spirit, a person. He’s the third person of the Godhead. He is able to take the miracle that this Creator has wrought when He remade you in His Son in timeless eternity and He is able to make that actual in your life at this very moment. He is.
The Holy Spirit is able to bring out of timelessness into time the new personality that the Creator gave you. You can experience that new personality day by day. How? It’s amazing, but simply by faith. Faith is first of all believing that the Creator has actually done that. That’s based on the death that took place in the first century, of Jesus, the Creator’s Son.
It’s based on a verse in that old book called the Bible, which is Romans 6 and verse 6, if you ever want to look it up. It’s the book of Romans in the New Testament and it’s chapter 6 and verse 6. It says that,” We know that our old self” ( that old self that is scared of your boss, that is scared of what other people think of you, that keeps your mouth closed when you want to speak out and say what you really believe), that old self “was crucified with Christ.” That’s what the verse says.
Our old self was crucified with Christ. Crucified not only in the first century, but in timeless eternity before that. Because the Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world. The Holy Spirit is able to bring that miracle out of cosmic eternity and timelessness and make it real in you this very moment, if you simply have faith. That is, if you believe that God has done that.
Secondly, if you begin to respect this Holy Spirit and listen to Him and obey Him and trust the intuitive impulses that he puts within you, and speak out when He tells you to, irrespective of what the consequences will be, trusting that he will take care of them.
If you begin to respect this Holy Spirit and begin to let Him constrain the actions of your life, instead of letting other people and their opinions constrain the actions of your life, if you are ready to govern your behavior by him and his directions, instead of by the constraints and the compulsions that come upon you from the fear of what other people think of you, then this Holy Spirit will bring this new personality into you and will recreate you completely anew and enable you to live a life that is free from self and free from fears about self-esteem.
You can do that this very moment. Let’s talk a little more tomorrow about it.
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