A "Grain Of Wheat" Ministries publication

Written by David W. Dyer

INDEX

Chapter 1: GOD’S ORIGINAL PLAN

Chapter 2: HOW THE DEVIL WORKS

Chapter 3: THERE IS A SAVIOR!

Chapter 4: BEING TRANSPARENT WITH GOD (Current Chapter)

Chapter 5: THE SOUL-LIFE

Chapter 6: HOW GOD MADE MAN

Chapter 7: THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT

Chapter 8: REBUKING OR “BINDING” THE DEVIL

Chapter 4: BEING TRANSPARENT WITH GOD

Here we will speak a little about being open to God. What does this mean? It means revealing to Him all of ourselves. It means that we “let Him on the inside” of us completely. The emotional opening of our life is not a physical act like opening up your hand, but a very real act based upon a personal decision.

Every human relationship has a degree of intimacy. This degree of “closeness” depends on the willingness of both parties involved to reveal themselves to each other. God is no different in this respect. Although He will in no way force us to be open or insist upon our transparency with Him, it is what He wants from us.

Obviously, you will have the relationship with God which you choose. You will be as intimate with Him as you allow yourself to be. There is no resistance on His part to complete intimacy of communion. Therefore, the most satisfying relationship with Him, and the kind of relationship which will most transform us, requires complete openness on our part.

Originally, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were naked. What does this tell us today? To be naked means nothing is hidden, nothing is secret, nothing is covered up. That’s the kind of intimacy we need to have with Jesus.

Now I’m not speaking about physical nudity here. Let no one suppose that I am talking about anything to do with naked bodies. This is a spiritual lesson for us. We can relate to God with none of our inner man hidden, nothing secret, and nothing covered up. It is completely up to us.

What kind of a relationship with God would you like to have? A distant sort of thing where you acknowledge that He exists and He acknowledges you also? Or would you like a kind of occasional friendship, where you get together every so often and spend a little time together?

Or would you instead like to enjoy a full and glad surrender of everything you are to Him, resulting in a full enjoyment of His person and the possibility of walking daily in His presence while having intimate communion with Him?

When we take a close look at the bride of Christ who is revealed in the last part of the book of Revelation, an interesting fact appears. She is entirely transparent. There are no interior walls. There are no barriers. There are no dark places. Nothing is secret. Nothing is hidden. Everything is transparent and full of light. This light is radiating from God Himself.

Everything and everyone is evident for all to see. And what they will see is the glorious splendor of God’s light shining through each individual who is part of this composite bride.

This transparency in our relationship with Jesus is what will result in our being part of His bride. Only in this way will you and I be able to let Him work in us in a way which will prepare us to be part of this indescribable blessing.

Can you imagine a couple getting married when they hardly knew each other? How about two people getting married who were not in love and who had no emotional intimacy whatsoever?

How can we imagine being part of the bride of Christ if we are not close to Him now? How can we think that suddenly, at His appearing, all our resistance and our closed up heart will suddenly disappear? This is just wishful thinking. It is a fantasy. Since God will not forcibly remove our resistance to Him now, He certainly will not do it later either.

Jesus is the light of this world. This light is shining brilliantly in the darkness and the darkness cannot put a stop to it (Jn 1:5). However, you can stop it in your life. You can limit and resist this light, or you can embrace it. You can remain closed up or open up your heart fully to Jesus. You can let Him “see” all that is in you, whether it is attractive or even repulsive. You can choose to yield your whole being completely to Him, thus allowing Him to do His work within you thoroughly.

This is what the Christian life is really supposed to be like! Although we can limit God’s work in us, this is not really very satisfying and will certainly keep us from enjoying Jesus in all His fulness.

We are called to “be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph 3:19). This is our right because we have become God’s children. This is His will for us since He sent His only Son to die so that we could enjoy it. May we never be satisfied with less!

Although I have said that we should let God “see” into us, the fact is that He already does see everything. Hebrews 4:13 reads: “And there is no created being that is not transparent in his sight but all things are stripped bare and exposed before the eyes of him from whom this word came.”

He knows our inmost thoughts. He knows everything that is in our heart. He knows how we feel. He reads the thoughts and meditations of our mind. He even knows what we are going to say before we speak.

What He needs is not to know about us, but for us to open up to His work and will. He needs our permission to transform us and all the different experiences which this involves.

God never forces Himself upon us. He completely respects our free will. Therefore, He will not move one millimeter inside of us beyond where we feel comfortable or where we do not want Him to move.

This is a wonderful thing, yet at the same time, terrible. On the one hand, our loving God is so kind and gentle that He will not push beyond where we want Him to be. On the other hand, it means that we can miss out on His will for us. We can hinder His work. We can retard our own transformation which is meant to be a great blessing to us.

God’s work in us involves His light. As we have seen, the world and its inhabitants are in spiritual darkness. The source of much of what goes on within them is not clear. Their own evil is often very well hidden.

So, once we become a child of God, He begins to shine His light into us. He reveals sin. He shows us our attitudes and opinions which are contrary to His nature. He also shows us His own holy, pure nature and how it compares to ours.

This then is how He renews our mind. He exposes our own ways of thinking and reveals His to us. He shines into us by showing us who He is. The comparison between us and Him is what brings us to repentance and helps us to be willing to be transformed.

In the book of Hebrews we encounter some interesting verses which speak to this subject. Some of the traditional translations and even our English language have somewhat obscured the meaning of these passages, but a fresh look at them shows us something wonderful.

For example, in Hebrews 9:14 in the New International Version we read: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”

However, in the Greek language, this phrase “cleanse our consciences” does not mean exactly what it does in English. For many English speakers, to “cleanse our conscience” means to relieve us of guilt or a feeling of guilt.

But in the Greek it can mean much more than that. Thayer defines this word as meaning: “The soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending one, condemning the other.”

It then refers to our moral consciousness, or our inner moral compass. In other words, it involves our inner viewpoint of what is right and wrong. It is not just a guilty feeling, but our entire understanding of what is evil and what is right.

With this in mind I would like to offer another translation of Hebrews 9:14 which is based upon this idea. We read: “...how much more will the blood of the Anointed One – who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God – purify your moral consciousness concerning right and wrong so that you don’t perform acts which produce death, enabling you to serve the living God?”

You see, the death of Christ opened up the way for God to have intimate communion with us. And it is through this intimacy that He purifies our minds by shining His light into our souls. When this light shines, we can have different reactions. A person can embrace the light, confessing their sins and receiving a new way of thinking.

Others however, even believers, tend to resist the light. Perhaps they excuse themselves for a variety of factors. They might insist that everyone else is just like they are. They might argue that no one is perfect. They could say that they could never be that holy.

Of course in this they are correct. The only way to be truly holy is to have our mind filled with the mind of Christ. It is to allow His thoughts to fill our thinking. It is to embrace His opinions about many different things, including what we think about others. We can never be holy by our own strength or efforts.

But the life of a holy God has been born inside of every true Christian. And this life is supremely and completely holy. Even more wonderful is the fact that it can grow. It can spread. It can fill us more and more with all that He is. It can even change our “moral consciousness” so that even our thoughts and opinions are different, coming into harmony with those of a holy God. This is real salvation. This is what Jesus came to do in us.

Under the Old Covenant, the laws of God which told us about His thoughts and opinions were carved into stone. But He promised that He would make a New Covenant.

We read: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord. I will impress my laws on their hearts, and inscribe them upon their minds” (Heb 10:16). You see, this renewing of our mind is the promise of the New Covenant. It is God’s will for all of His children. It what He came and died to accomplish.

This, brothers and sisters, is true salvation. It is for everyone, not only a select few. As children of God, it is our right to inherit from the Father everything that He is. Don’t be put off by thinking it is impossible.

Of course it is, humanly speaking. But that is exactly why Jesus died! He died to save us from our sins (Mt 1:21). When He rose from the grave, He defeated death, thus giving Him the authority over death. He is mighty to save anyone and everyone!

Since this radical change doesn’t depend on us, but on the risen Lord, of course a complete salvation, a total deliverance from sin, is possible! It is not only possible but necessary.

Please don’t find an excuse to resist the light, the light of life. Open up to it. Receive it! Don’t run away. Look fully into the wonderful face of Jesus, trust Him to do His work in you in the best possible, most loving, way.

Although we should not do so, many believers resist God’s light for very many different reasons. Perhaps it would help some readers if we took some time examining some examples.

Let us take an imaginary story here about a sister who was always full of problems. She was tormented inside by demonic influences and on the outside had a very difficult personality. It was hard for anyone to get along with her. She was always seeking solutions from other brothers and sisters but no one could seem to help. This situation persisted for many years.

But one day it came to light that, before knowing the Lord, she had had a secret abortion. This was during a time when such abortion was illegal.

This sister had a terrible time being completely transparent before the Lord. She didn’t want anyone to know. She was afraid of the consequences. At the time of the abortion it would have been considered murder. Perhaps she could be prosecuted.

This lack of openness on her part greatly inhibited her spiritual progress. It kept her locked up in darkness. This imaginary sister could have been set free many, many years ago. But her tight hold on her dark past and sin kept her from much progress.

Another example could be a woman who was raped as child. This is a situation that we touched on at the beginning of this writing. This person could have a lot of buried trauma and pain that she does not want to think about again. Consequently, she may avoid at all costs this whole situation coming into the light. I’ve known women who told me that they had repressed such an event so much that they had even “forgotten” it.

But all such things need to come into the light. Jesus’ loving hands cannot heal us and change us if we hold tightly onto whatever it is in us that is painful or shameful. We must trust Him, believing that He loves us, and open up even the most difficult parts of our lives so that we can be free.

In Luke 11:34,36 we read: “The ‘lamp’ of your whole being is your eye {vision, understanding, Gk}. When your vision is clear, your whole being is also full of light ... If, therefore, your whole being is full of light, having no dark part, everything will be completely clear inside in the same way that a lamp radiates physical light.”

I love this phrase, “having no dark part.” These words came from our Lord Himself. What a salvation! What a deliverance from the devil and his minions with all their subtle influences, little lies, and evil suggestions. What a wonderful thing to be walking in the “light of this world.”

This is great liberation. It is God’s will for you! Let us all seek His face with sincerity so that we can obtain all that Jesus died for us to receive.

HOW GOD’S LIGHT FREES US

So we see that our opening up to God’s light is essential. We must not resist or run and hide. In this light is our salvation.

In the case where our thoughts have their source in evil spirits, the light exposes them for what they are. Then, we can simply stop listening to them. We can stop paying attention or responding. When the light shines and we realize that certain thoughts are not our own we can reject them and the power of the enemy is weakened.

Recognizing the source of these thoughts enables us to turn away from them and stop responding to them. In this way, the evil spirits begin to lose control over us. They can no longer rely upon inserting certain thoughts and causing us to act in predictable ways.

Light defeats darkness. Perhaps this could be analogous to how sunlight kills certain bacteria and viruses. When the light shines, you no longer keep banging your shin on that coffee table. You can see clearly where you are going. You begin to understand with increasing clarity why you acted and spoke in certain ways.

Just this understanding will change you. When you begin to see, the darkness loses it power over you. Light is essential for us to have liberty from the powers of the dark forces. We must walk in this light.

When we accept the light which God gives and act accordingly, God will give us more. When we maintain an intimate communion with Him, He will shine more and more brightly into us. As we agree with what He reveals, He will show us more. This will bring us into greater and greater freedom and joy.

Just recently I received an email which might help the reader. A woman wrote to me wondering how to be free from blasphemous words which would suddenly crop up in her mind. She explained that she had a terrible time not saying these words. She loved the Lord, but she was tormented because she always had these blasphemous thoughts and was tempted to say them.

I told her that no doubt these thoughts were from the enemy. He was inserting these thoughts into her mind and then accusing her about them. Since she herself loved Jesus, it seems very doubtful that these thoughts came from herself. “Seeing” in the light the origin of these words and thoughts should free her from them.

The autobiography of John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, seems to be an account of someone tormented by demonic thoughts in a similar way. Although God delivered him with the passage of time, I was always sad to see that he never seemed to realize that the source of many of these evil thoughts was not himself.

Instead, he spent years agonizing about the condition of his mind. Yet, it seems to me that he was receiving these thoughts from the darkness without realizing it. He too was still in the darkness so he needlessly suffered so much mental torment. By accepting these thoughts as his own, he agonized about them without much real progress.

BRINGING EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE

The following section is being included because of a verse that has lead some people to think about the renewing of the mind in the wrong way. Since it has been misleading to some, we will spend a little time to investigate this idea.

In 2 Corinthians 10:5 we read about Paul telling us that he was ready to be: “...Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (KJV). Now many believers think that this verse is referring to trying to control their individual thoughts. They imagine that we must police our thoughts constantly and try to control them according to the scriptures or some other standard. They confuse this with the renewing of the mind.

However, our mind is not renewed by self-effort. We are not changed by our own power, even mental power. Transformation is not achieved by trying to control our own thoughts. A person could drive themselves crazy trying to keep track of every thought and “make it behave.” No such effort could possibly make an eternal change in us. Please don’t waste your time trying to do it.

The renewing of the mind is something which God does in us by His Spirit. It is by His grace that He shines His light into us and it is He who changes our thinking. It is His work and He will do it.

The subject Paul is addressing in the previous passage is the ideas and opinions of others who were opposing his teaching. He wasn’t speaking about his own thoughts. He was talking about correcting the wrong ideas of others. When we read the context of this verse, this becomes clear. Let us read together in 1 Corinthians in a different version to verify this truth.

“Now I Paul appeal to you through the meekness and mercy of the Anointed One – I who in your presence am humble among you but now that I am absent am bold toward you – yes, I plead with you that when I am present I will not have to be bold with the confidence with which I plan to be bold against some who think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.

“For though we walk in bodies of flesh, we don’t fight according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly but mighty in God to cast down strongholds, overthrowing human reasonings and all “superior” arguments which rise up to oppose the knowledge of God, taking every wrong concept captive to the obedience of the Anointed One. And we are prepared to correct all unwillingness to hear once your obedience to God is perfected” (2 Cor 10:1-6).

You see, Paul was planning to be bold toward some other people who were criticizing him. He was going to overthrow their arguments and reasonings. He was going to correct their wrong concepts, not his own. So we see that this verse is not a basis for trying to police our own thoughts and rearrange our own thinking. 

End of Chapter 4

Read other chapters online:

Chapter 1: GOD’S ORIGINAL PLAN

Chapter 2: HOW THE DEVIL WORKS

Chapter 3: THERE IS A SAVIOR!

Chapter 4: BEING TRANSPARENT WITH GOD (Current Chapter)

Chapter 5: THE SOUL-LIFE

Chapter 6: HOW GOD MADE MAN

Chapter 7: THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT

Chapter 8: REBUKING OR “BINDING” THE DEVIL