Altered Reality

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Luke 21:34 warns: But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. Anything that affects your heart creates an altered state of consciousness. We are warned throughout the New Testament to remain sober minded. While we may have developed a life of abstinence in the most obvious areas, we still fill ourselves with vain imaginations, which are the ultimate drunkenness for the believer. If it affects your heart, then it creates an altered state of consciousness. Vain imaginations are thoughts, ideas, or opinions that stand in opposition to Gods Word. In the passage from Luke, Jesus was describing something that the original language likens to a seizure or a sudden onset of pain. Altered states cause you to head down paths of destruction that dont seem too dangerous. But when disaster strikes, it comes like a seizure, suddenly and unexpectedly. You have no control once you begin to go over the edge. The drunk driver doesnt realize he is weaving across the line until it is too late. The person who over does on cocaine has no idea that he is minutes away from having his heart explode. The drunk doesnt realize how loud he is talking until he is asked to leave. Deception is the common denominator in all of these examples. Each person thinks he is in total control until it is too late! In a very real way this same thing takes place in a believer who lives in an altered reality that denies his or her relationship in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus! The apostles Paul and Peter repeated over and over be sober be alert. When a person is sober they see things like they really are we are told by Jesus, John, as well as Paul to turn from darkness and walk in the light! Believers must open there eyes to the truth and refuse to live in darkness. As a believer I must embrace the finished work of Jesus. Even though it goes against human logic and reasoning even when I cant fully grasp it. To stay focused I must ask this question am I a new creation in Christ or not? Have I been set free from the power of sin and all its consequences? Was I really crucified with Christ, or is it just a religious belief? Until I embrace the teachings of Jesus with my whole heart I am still in darkness. It seems its not total darkness its dim theres just not enough light for me to see clearly. The only way to end the struggle with the past is to fully except the death of the old man. When I consider it so in Christ the old man loses his grip on my life. Giving up the old man introduces us to what seems like a new threat, once you give up the old identity, you also have to give up all your excuses. The way people treated us, all the hurts and wounds of our childhood, all the wrongs weve suffered all these things that we use for an excuse are memories that belong to another person. I remember that person but I no longer identify or poses that identity and it no longer possess me. Once I leave that altered reality the promise of living as a new creation begins to be an attainable reality. Once we turn lose of that old reality the new Christ reality comes alive in my heart. Now I can see myself in Christ and not in the flesh.