Week 2 Day 3: Who Is Jesus

"You were taught to change the way you were living. The person you used to be will ruin you through desires that deceive you. However, you were taught to have a new attitude. You were also taught to become a new person created to be like God, truly righteous and holy." Ephesians 4:22-24 GW

We were created to live fully engaged with God, but when sin entered the world our ability to do that was lost. It's our choice to live out our created purpose or not; but it is hard to choose the best way when our thoughts run rampant on a daily basis. It's estimated that we can have almost one thought every second of every day. Can you imagine someone talking to you every second of every day? It's exhausting to think about.

Science tells us that nearly all of our thoughts are habitual, we think them without even realizing it. Day after day, year after year we think the same things over and over. Sounds like a boring trap doesn’t it? To make matters worse a vast majority of these repeated thoughts are negative. Studies show that we are actually wired to think negatively. 

This cycle of negativity is further strengthened because we hold tighter to painful experiences than we do positive ones. We do not let go of the bad as easily as the good, causing us to be chained to our own negative thoughts. Neurologists have also discovered that the brain is physically altered by our thoughts. Our brains actually form grooves and patterns that coincide with our thoughts, further trapping us into unhealthy thinking.

God's Spirit speaks to us through our spirit. It is this connection that renews our minds, keeping our thoughts healthy. When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost their spiritual connection with God because their spirit man died. No longer were their thoughts, emotions and wills protected from their flesh. 

Our flesh is the medium by which Satan speaks to us. The words he speaks holds our thoughts to the negative patterns they are born in and he works to destroy our ability to have healthy thoughts. Satan’s scheme is to control us by continually damaging our souls, further reducing our ability to find our place with God and His creation. 

Adam and Eve had children after they lost their spiritual connection with God and after their brains were altered by their sin. The spirit man they were created with was no longer part of them, so they were unable to pass it to their children. Instead, they passed the “negativity” trait leaving them without a spirit man to nurture and protect their soul.

But Jesus changed all of that. The sin that had corrupted man was not found in Him. When Adam and Eve invited sin into their lives it changed them on a level so deeply that it was passed on to their offspring and every human born after them, except Jesus. 

Jesus was born of flesh like us, but He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, which rewired the tainted DNA of man by reinserting God’s Spirit. The Spirit in Him completely healed any tendency toward the negativity that we are born with. He was pure and uncorrupted, just as Adam had been. Jesus is what man was originally created to be. The difference between Adam and Jesus is that Adam chose his own way and Jesus always chooses God’s way.

This is why Jesus came in the physical form of a man, to reconnect us to our Father in the spiritual. It’s through our spiritual connection that negative and destructive thought patterns are changed, bringing us new life and healing. He came to give us an abundant life by showing how to live and by paving the way to connect to it.

Do you struggle with negative thoughts? What steps can you take to change negative thoughts into positive ones?

Meditate on Romans 12:2 today