There needs to be a Time When We Need to Examine Ourselves—R Fritz
When is our time to look at our life, our mental, spiritual, and physical parts of us? We need to decide where we want to go with our lives, what we need or want to change, and if we can do it ourselves. We now need to invite the Holy Spirit to help us and to show us how to go about the change or changes we need which the Holy Spirit might add to our list. It could be a physical issue such as pain where our prayers would remove our pain, the pain would disappear, or the Holy Spirit would send us someplace where somebody would change the pain and eventually, it would go away. I have had it happen both ways. The Holy Spirit when we are surrendered will through our thoughts put us on a path each day with us doing the things we need to do with God’s things at the same time. We could meet people who could help us with our pain, people the Holy Spirit brought us to. We must be open to whoever is sent to us, sometimes we will not know until we start having a conversation with somebody.
The spiritual part of our life starts when we choose Jesus but that is the start. If we go no farther than that, what do we have? Our spiritual life starts with prayer and our ability to expand prayer in the time we spend praying and our growing relationship with the Holy Spirit. I met with somebody a couple of days ago and our conversation turned into prayer. I told this person that prayer starts with our relationship and with if we talk to the Holy Spirit through our spirit. I shared that I used to pray before I went to bed, but I found out that I would fall asleep a lot. I learned to get up an hour before I normally would, that is our best time when we are awake. We give God our best, for me it was the first hour of the day, our first fruit. 2 Timothy 2:15 says “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” When we give God our best, he gives it back to us. The Holy Spirit would talk to me when I was awake in the morning, in my case it was two-thirty in the morning before going to work at four in the morning, even though my eyes were not open yet. It changed my life and my ability to lead the other chaplains. The Holy Spirit also showed me my other spiritual gifts given in the last year to help me do God’s work. It was my willingness to change something I was doing to something that was what the Holy Spirit wanted me to do.
Firstfruits is a term God used in the Old Testament to bring what his people received from the land, being the first part of their crop given to the Lord. Exodus 23:19-20, 22, 25 says “The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. Behold, I send an Angel before thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.” This is what God did for his people that came out of Egypt. His people were expected to bring his firstfruits to God then obey the Angel with God’s Spirit in the Angel, he will take care of our enemies and bless our food, and take our sickness away. Our firstfruits in the New Testament come through Jesus and his death and resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:22-23, 25-26 says “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward, they that are Christ’s at his coming. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Jesus is who has changed our lives, we need to embrace him through the Holy Spirit. We are spiritual beings, and the Holy Spirit is the spirit that lives in us to change us into the person God has made us.
It is hard for me to say most people will not embrace the Holy Spirit, and what I am saying is treating the Holy Spirit like a father figure which he is, our spiritual Father whether we have or had a bad relationship with our earthly father can have a great relationship with our heavenly Father, but we must initiate that relationship and keep it up. I am always looking for people who are looking for God’s truth but what I saw was God working in my life as well as others I was sold out. I searched out for God in all places and found him in many places such as work, I saw more things happen at work than in most churches, changing the atmosphere where God was involved. I was his mouthpiece and got other people involved praying all the time as I was walking down the aisles as I worked in a factory. Nobody can stop us from praying, only us. Prayers do not have to be aloud; we are speaking to the Father it is spiritual through our spirit, our thoughts, all of us. John 4:23-24 says, and this is Jesus’ speaking “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” When we pray, praying in the spirit means we are heard by the Holy Spirit and not by Satan who wants to stop us from doing what is going on in our life.
Spending time praying and talking to the Holy Spirit will change our mental state because God’s love shows up to change our hearts and then our minds. When we look at ourselves, we see the things that need to change. The next thought should be to the Holy Spirit to ask for help. The Holy Spirit sees our flaws, we need to choose to examine ourselves all the time not just once per year, our choice. God Bless.
