Each of us has a destiny, a plan and a purpose God always intended us to fulfil. In preparing for that destiny, we have a choice, whether we want to go through this process and allow God to change us. Today I want to look a little more at our soul gates.
Conscience
Our conscience gets dulled because of sin and rebellion, and therefore if we have operating in our lives any weaknesses, patterns of sin, ‘normal, acceptable behaviours’ (which are neither normal nor acceptable to God because He sees the damage they do to us), we have to be willing to own them.
We cannot argue with God in this process. If we do, we will lose the argument and it will be much harder to be transformed. I have learnt to confess it, own it, repent of it and renounce it. Repentance has nothing to do with feeling sorry, or with doing penance! The Greek word metanoia really means ‘having the same mind as God’, so to ‘repent’ is to change your mind and think about something the way God thinks about it.
If God shows me something, He is always right about it: I am not going to deny it. He knows what is there. I do have sin areas, weak areas in my life. And God showed me patterns of sin when I went through this process that I had to own and say ‘yes, I have acted like that’. And I did not realise it, until God showed me, until I opened up my heart and asked God to show me what goes on inside me.
In doing that, I was able to repent (in the true sense), renounce, and my conscience became really sharp. I applied the blood of Jesus to it. I received forgiveness and cleansing. I refused to feel guilt, shame and condemnation (which are things the enemy brings). Every one of us needs to know that we are righteous. That is part of ‘having the same mind as God’ – He has made me righteous, and He calls me righteous! Then reverence can flow through that conscience gate and guide me and direct me in everything I do every day. But if that conscience gate is damaged, or blocked, affected by sin, it will lead me astray. I need to have it transformed.
Reason
Rationalism, scepticism, cynicism, denial, projection: our mind will fool us into putting the blame on somebody else, and not dealing with what is on the inside of us. We might have words, ideas, philosophies and doctrines in us that need changing, familiar spirits or religious spirits operating in us, behaviour cycles that we recognise. Just own it. Do not argue, give up. Surrender. Stop fighting for the flesh, and surrender to the spirit. As we do, we apply the truth of the word which God speaks to us. The mind of Christ will start flowing through us: the thoughts of God flowing through us; revelation and faith flowing through us.
Imagination
Every one of us has seen a great many negative images in our lifetime. We have to deal with them. Otherwise the enemy will bring them back and use them to pollute our imagination. We want to be able to see revelation, images, and visitations, both in the heavenly realms and in this one; we may be hindered from doing so if our imagination is polluted.
TV, films, games, magazines, books, fantasies – even life itself: we are going to need to get rid of whatever we have seen that is negative. Again, I owned everything I saw as sin. I repented and renounced it and I painted it out with the blood of Jesus.
I now no longer have any of those images in my memory. They are completely gone. It is like having a filing cabinet in my mind that has folders in it. Each one has an index tab with something written on it; but when you look inside the folder, there is nothing in it. I can remember the things that have happened in my life but I can no longer remember the details of them or recall the images of them because they have gone. They have been cleansed: all those images are completely wiped out of my memory.
So if you have images that you are plagued with, put them under the blood of Jesus and paint them out so that they are no longer there. We can have a purified memory and a cleansed screen, so that we are able to see visions and have dreams, and experience revelation from God flowing.
We will have the eyes of our heart opened and enlightened: a flow of hope, and a flow of revelation: visions, dreams, visitations in the heavenly realms, all because our imagination is now clean. We can be cleansed. But we need to actually allow God to do it.
Subconscious Mind
It is the same thing with our subconscious mind. All the memories, words, vows, curses: every trigger that I experienced in my life, every defence mechanism, every coping mechanism. I owned it, repented of it (changed my mind about it) and renounced it. As we apply the blood of Jesus, that soil of our heart will be dealt with. The hardness will be dealt with; the stones, and the weeds. We will just get a flow of revelation knowledge from God; it will flow through our subconscious and trigger the right things, and we will be moved by the things that move God.
Emotions
Our emotions are affected by all the trauma, all the hurts, all the betrayal, all the abuse: disappointment, pain, and rejection we have felt and experienced. And we have to admit we have hurt other people as well as being hurt by them. If you are feeling anger or withdrawal or depression, all those things arise from emotions that we have not dealt with. We either turn in or we turn out.
We need to own all those mechanisms: we need to repent, forgive and release all the hurt, repent of everything we have done to hurt others, and renounce it all. Then we are going to start to get a flow of God’s heart, of intuition, of being moved by what moves God.
Will
If you are stubborn and if you have been rebellious, willful, or controlling you have to own it. Fear, doubt, unbelief, indecision: if they are operating in your life, own it, repent and renounce it, and in that process apply the truth of the blood of Jesus, and God will begin to work things in you, positive things: patience, boldness, courage, perseverance. You will begin to get into a flow of worship, a flow of obedience, in which we are outworking the truth of God’s word day by day.
I know this is a lot to take on board all at once. I am putting it all out there and I am just encouraging you to use the gateways diagram (or spinner) to begin to deal with whatever of this is in your life. Ask Jesus to come and stand in the gateways with you, and show you what he sees. It may not be a quick process, but with a bit of application you can do it.
Own it, repent of it, renounce it. All it takes is surrender, and allowing God to deal with it.