For the past few weeks, we have established God’s absolutes—His sovereignty, our sinfulness, and His forgiveness. We struggle with each of these absolutes, because since the Fall, we are all PERFORMANCE ADDICTS. We have an unconscious, universal addiction to desperately wanting to be like God ourselves. 
We all want to be our own decider, as we each strive to obey God’s Law, and we fight to preserve our own free-will at all costs!. This means that we each think we are the ultimate determiners of our own destiny (with God’s help, of course!). We think our success as Christians is based on our own choices. We are like the three-year-old little child, who thinks he can make his own decisions, independently from Daddy!
These performance addicts come in three, natural-born types. First, there is the “Pharisee,” like I am. We arrogantly see ourselves as righteous, because our behavioral decisions have led us to be self-perceived, successful law-keepers. I call myself a card-carrying, charter-member of this group!
Second, there is the “Wanna-Be Pharisee.” This is the earnest, “hand-to-the-plow ,furrowed-brow” Christian. He knows he “ought-to, needs-to and should” be righteous like God, and desperately tries to be, but knows in his heart that he is actually a dismal failure!
Finally, there is the “Rebel.” He does not escape the performance addiction, but he has chosen a different law system to follow besides the Bible, from which he has rebelled. His code of conduct may be society’s current customs, the law of the gang to which he belongs, or just “Whatever is right for me,” Know for sure that the Rebel also has a generally unwritten code he attempts to follow “to be successful” in life!
Not a pretty picture. We are a fallen, addicted human race, the vast majority of whom have no interest in the Almighty Jehovah God, whom His creation itself loudly proclaims (Romans 1:20)!
“But God (these two words introduce the specifics of what creation is proclaiming), who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (after we died with Him on the cross) – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-7)
There you have it, in a nut-shell! God’s original plan for Adam and Eve and their descendants was to all join the family business of ruling over the earth (Genesis 1:26-28), However, I also want to tell you that WE ARE RIGHT ON SCHEDULE! Adam’s and Eve’s Fall, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the ultimate scattering of their descendants as separate nations over the whole earth are all exactly as our absolutely sovereign Jehovah God ordained! Here’s how.
Before that original plan of God for man to rule can become reality, man must learn what God means by “ruling.” Jesus came to earth to show us exactly what it means for man to live and thus, to rule, God’s way.
Yes, we are in the process of having our minds renewed to live in this totally different way, the way Jesus lived. I desperately need that renewal. God says: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8, 9)..
God’s “higher way” to live, and the way we are currently learning to live and rule is natural, spontaneous, and unconscious (NSU). We are beginning to see ourselves taking the lower place rather than striving to be first, giving rather than taking, serving rather than leading, and finally, if necessary, even laying down our lives and dying for those over whom we are ruling!
Our minds, right now, are being transformed into thinking, living and ruling in this inside-out, upside-down way to go about our daily lives!
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is (that this “bass-ackward” way to live is) that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).
Hallelujah! Can you see it? We followers of Jesus Christ are like little children (Matthew 18:2-5). We are just learning (NSU) to walk in the light together (1 John 1:4-10), sharing our sins openly with our brothers and sisters (James 5:16), with everyone participating (1 Corinthians 14:26). WE ARE ADDUCTED MEN AND WOMEN, riding on Jesus’ addiction-free wagon, attacking the Gates of Hell. Climb on!
