Our Spiritual Heritage in Christ

Our Spiritual Heritage in Christ | Joel Osteen | #ChristianLife

This truth of living in the abundance of God is based on the fact that we have been made kings and lords of all by the great love of God.

“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together” (Romans 8:16–17). We are heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus.

There are three things that will keep us from knowing that we are lords of all—laziness, indifference, and a preoccupation with the world.

If you continue as a child in your thinking, if you are uninformed in your spirit, if you are lazy and indifferent, if you are preoccupied with the things of this world, you will live as a slave to sin and self and not function as a king in this life.

Why do we have the Holy Spirit living within us? “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).

The Holy Spirit dwells within us that we may understand the things that God has freely given to us. He wants to teach us the truths of the Word of God so that Satan will not be able to rob us of the blessings and abundance God has for us in this life.

The Holy Spirit desires that we might fully know what God has provided for us.

When you are born into the family of God through the Holy Spirit, you are like a newborn baby. You have no spiritual past. Your sins and failures are gone and not remembered.

You are a new creature in Christ Jesus. There is no past with God. Forget yesterday, and the yesterday before that! Forget it! God has wiped it away!

1 Corinthians 3:1–3 tells that there are three kinds of Christians: “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?”

There are newborn Christians who need gentle care and to be fed with “milk,” the basic truths of God’s Word. A new Christian is often carnal, because he has not yet learned many truths from the Word of God.

Carnal Christians walk as men and women who are not ruled by the Spirit of God, whereas spiritual Christians are.

Many believers are involved in questionable activities that keep them in a worldly or carnal state.

If we only knew the power of looking at something with our eyes or hearing something with our ears, registering that with our brains, and sending it down to our spirits, we would be more careful to guard our eyes and our ears.

Far too many believers remain trapped in a life of constant carnality, which in the Corinthians’ situation manifested itself in envy, strife, and divisions, because they were still slaves of sin.