Day 51: Living Daily in Reality: The Changing of our Personalities
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Reality is that our maker is actually our loving Father – Â who made us
part of his only son so that he could live in you and me the life on
earth that he has planned.  Now let us try to synthesize briefly that
simple but complex reality – so that we can study its practical
application to our daily lives.

All diagrams simply represent ideas of facts that are much more complex,
so this one that we will use is “one of manyâ€(cid:157) that could be used. Â
It is by no means a perfect explanation of the human personality and
there are many other diagrams that are equally useful, but this one helps
us understand the relationship between us, our maker, and the world. Â
So let’s use it as an easy way to talk together about these things.

It looks like the Jewish temple that consisted of three areas – the
Holy of holies where God Himself dwelt in darkness, the Holy Place, where
the altar and ark of the covenant were, and the Outer Court where people
gathered.   We liken it to the levels of our human personalities.  Â
The outermost part is our body, which sees and hears and touches this
physical world, our inner psychological part which thinks and feels and
decides, and our innermost self that can communicate with our maker. Â
Sometimes these levels are termed body, soul, and spirit.

We’ve been saying our personalities were meant to work from the inside
out – from God’s directing us to the world outside.  God made us
to trust him and his love for all that we need – his love would give us
security and a sense of significance and happiness  But instead, we live
from the outside in – dependent on the world rather than its maker. Â
So, we were created to trust the love of God but instead we trust the
love of the world.

 If God is really your own personal father and if he loves you as much
as his own Son, then he will make sure you have enough food and clothing
– and you won’t care what others think about you.  But if you
don’t believe he’s your own loving father, then you have to ensure
your security with the things in this world and your importance from
people’s opinion of you, and your happiness from pleasant
circumstances. That’s what we have done – so we live outside in
instead of inside out.  And this has corrupted our nature, twisted the
way one part affects another, so that it can no longer operate the way
it was meant to.

Our creator’s Son has things to do through you, so in your innermost
self (your spirit) he gives you intuitions as you communicate with him
and your conscience constrains your will to use your mind to understand
God’s directives so that your emotions provide exhilaration to energize
your body to affect people, things, and circumstances accordingly. Â

But as we instead try to get from the world security and significance and
happiness, we use our minds to manipulate things, our emotions to enjoy
pleasant circumstances, and our wills sink into passivity.  Â

Through self-help and education we try to change the systemic corruption
but our Maker knew the corruption was radical and had to be changed by
Him who had permitted it.  So in the millisecond of the eternal
present (which encompasses the time before the creation of the world AND
the time after its renewal) he destroyed our corrupted natures in his
only Son and remade them in his resurrection.

This is the cosmic action of our Maker that was expressed in time in his
Son’s crucifixion in Jerusalem in the first century.  His son –
Jesus of Nazareth – included the whole human race and God saw the whole
development as it has taken place – and rectified our natures outside
time in eternity.   Our “old self was crucified with Himâ€(cid:157) so that
our independent nature might be destroyed and we might no longer be
enslaved by it.