True Internal Change: Beyond Good Behavior with Jesus Christ

True internal change is not about good behavior, but about the divine work of the Holy Spirit.

God desires truth in our inmost being, not just external actions.

The Holy Spirit can bring about a supernatural work of purging our old nature and replacing it with God's nature and character.

Cooperating with the Holy Spirit is necessary for true change and divine understanding.

Well, I would like to take time today in this message to teach the difference between true internal change versus good behavior. In other words, true spiritual internal change is not called good behavior. And it is not our good behavior that pleases God, but it is rather the divine and the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in our inner man, or oftentimes called our souls and our hearts. You see, the reason that you must understand this important truth is because you cannot see or know the eternal truths of God if your spiritual eyes have not been purged of the sinful grossness that stands between you and your holy God and Savior. King David knew this all too well, dear church, when he prayed a revealing prayer to God, the God whom he loved through the divulging words in Psalms 51, verse 6, when he said, Behold, you desire truth in the inner part. Make me therefore to know wisdom in my innermost heart. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ceremonially. Wash me, and I shall in reality be whiter than snow. Well, we gain insight into the importance and the difference between true internal change versus good behavior. Internal change that God expects and demands of each redeemed child of God cannot happen unless, first of all, the sinner pleads for God's mercy and acknowledges his sin. And this is what David has done in these verses that we have just read. He longed for God's cleansing in his inmost heart. His inmost part would be his inmost heart. and desired that the joy that he once knew be restored. David understood that God desired repentance, not sacrifice. He understood that he would be blind, deaf, and dumb without God's wisdom. And dear church, only the truth of God will give eternal wisdom that comes from only one fountain, and that is from above. When David said, Behold, you desire truth in the inner being. Make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart. You see, divine wisdom belongs to God. Divine wisdom comes from and it's superhuman. It's beyond anything a humanity could ever lay hold of in the mind of reason. It is superhuman. And without true internal change within the kingdom of your heart and soul, you will not know God's truth. You just will not know it without this true internal change that is continually taking place in your heart and your soul. Your attempt at trying to keep God's commands and love Him will only be frustrating to you, and you'll have no real desire in your heart to do so either. you will attempt and strive to overcome and you make vows to yourself and to God that you will be good possibly for weeks in this being good even possibly months but in time the ugly old behavior will rear its ugly head and you will say I thought that this thing I thought or that urge was behind me and you will wrestle with guilt and fear and doubt and condemnation and anger and frustration at yourself and at God and you may possibly throw the blame on other people for your faults and weaknesses. It's called the blame game. You see, when a clock is out of order, we might tear that clock to pieces or take it to someone to find out where the problem is. And when one part of that mechanism is out of sync or is defective, it will hinder the workings of the whole clock. Yours in my heart is like this too. If there's anything out of order, our part is to examine our own hearts and find where the fault lies. And let it be established that the fault is not with God or His Son, Jesus Christ. David knew that only through God's process would it be possible to remove the stain of sin that went so deep and only God could forgive him and restore him back to the joy and the peace that he had become so accustomed to when he remained in the obedience by obeying the commands of God. And see, David was a unique individual. And God made this known when he said that David was a man after his own heart. And even though David sinned, he was forgiven because, hear this please, because he loathed his sin. He hated it, and moreover, he turned away from it. And it was all motivated by the love that he had for his God. David obeyed the commands of God in that he opposed idolatry, and he sought to promote true worship and obedience to God in his kingdom. And he was a man after God's own heart because he endeavored to rule his kingdom according to the divine will of God. Is this telling us anything? Can we read between the lines? You see, he was guided in the government of his nation by the law of Moses as the standing rule of government in his day. and also David allowed the prophet to speak the divine oracles of God by which he gave direction in certain situations and impending dangers David had a unique relationship and fellowship with God and all of these things and factors caused the eternal living God to say this is a man after my own heart and now today because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and the giving of his Holy Spirit to all blood-washed children of God his spirit now lives within us and there is no keeping of the old law in the offering of bulls and goats to be right before the Lord but now we have a helper who works diligently to bring about this true and wonderful internal change of our souls that purges us of everything evil, everything vile and sinful and lustful and hateful, as we learn to cooperate with him. And his name is precious Holy Spirit. The prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36 verse 26, Ezekiel 36, 26, uttered forth a prophecy for future generations when the word of the Lord came to him. And he said, a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will take away that stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh. and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you shall heed my ordinances and do them and you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I shall be your God. Well, this happened when Jesus Christ, our Messiah, died a horrible death on the cross. He went to hell and he took back the keys of death and Hades and he ascended to be seated on the throne next to his heavenly father. And then, and then, he sent his Holy Spirit to dwell in the land of our hearts to take it over and cleanse us of every abominable, every sinful thing that stands in the way of our relationship with God and that would prevent us from maturing in our Christian growth. And this change is not redressing your old vile and sinful nature with new clothing, dear ones, and calling it cute. But it is uprooting and purging of your old nature and replacing it with the beauty of your Creator's nature and character and his wonderful attributes and fruit of his Holy Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so forth. And there will be no true change or divine understanding within the kingdom of your heart and soul unless you are allowing and cooperating with this purging of your old nature. And this is the new spirit that Prophet Ezekiel was speaking about, This wonderful and awesome miracle. Please know, this is a miracle that takes place in the human soul. It is a supernatural work of the living God. We should never take it lightly. It is a miracle. And you can't understand the eternal things of God without this divine change this miracle that takes place in your soul, that is brought about by the power of God in a willing and eager heart to know Him and His ways, and will implement them once you hear them. You see, David knew that God desired truth in our inmost being, and he knew that wisdom in our hearts would give us this spiritual understanding this spiritual compass so to speak to keep and guide us on this spiritual path and journey When he said, Behold, you desire truth in the inner being, make me therefore to know wisdom. What did he say? Make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost being, O God. wisdom. Your carnal or natural person walking in your contrived good behavior cannot know or understand these divine truths of God without his supernatural power working within your heart and soul bringing about this true internal transformation or miracle which allows and enlightens your new nature to see and understand his truth and to desire and prefer his truth. In 1 Corinthians 2 verse 1, 1 Corinthians 2 verse 1, Paul said, Brethren, when I came to you, I did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I am determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Verse 3. Now I was with you in weakness, in fear, and much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. And this is why Paul preached Christ crucified. He said so that your faith would not stand in the wisdom of man or your mind but in God's power. Your faith is in yourself and your good behavior or in other people's wisdom or doctrines, then you will be continually drawn away from the truth of God's wisdom, and thus you will only go through the motions of Christianity without any true change of heart, soul, and mind. God's wisdom is for the spiritual man and woman, not the carnally-minded person. only the Holy Spirit can reveal these precious truths of redemption to those who believe to those who trust in God and habitually obey Him do not miss these words I pray people who find themselves in constant conflict with this true change need to honestly and sincerely examine the workings of their heart motives just like the example of the clock being out of order because some part of it is not functioning properly. It is just like that. We need to examine our own hearts and honestly desire to see where sin lies. When things don't go well, when things aren't working right, when we lose our joy, when we lose our peace, we find ourselves like a snowball that comes a little bit of snow, rolls down the hill and turns into a big snowball by the time it gets to the bottom of that hill. And our lives seem to, at times, just get out of control. So we need to examine our hearts and honestly desire to see where the sin lies when things are out of order. Because as I said, it is not God's fault. It is not God's problem. You see, by staying in the place where the workings of the heart are sinful and prevent one from growing in truth of God's wisdom. It prevents the Holy Spirit's power to bring about the understanding to comprehend the importance of this change. We need to comprehend it. We need to understand it, that it is vital. And therefore life's struggles and habitual sins prevail and frustrate the individual and finally the end result is that many thousands and millions fall off the path completely, purely because they did not conform to God's way of this internal change, but rather thought these things of lesser importance and eventually just plain foolish. Their good behavior without the Spirit's help did not allow the truth of God's wisdom to conform and transform their fallen nature because the natural or carnal-minded individual cannot understand God's truth, cannot understand it, does not perceive it as necessary and vital for eternal life and salvation. They are totally unable to comprehend it, and therefore the Scripture says they conclude that it is foolishness. And it's foolishness when they do not heed it. They consider it foolish. When it's not heeded, God says that we consider it foolish. 1 Corinthians 3.1, please. In 1 Corinthians 3.1, Paul is speaking to his congregation, giving them a pep talk here in this time. He's saying, I could not talk to you as spiritual men and women, but as to non-spiritual men of the flesh in whom the carnal nature predominates, as to mere infants in the new life in Christ, unable yet to talk. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not yet strong enough to be ready for it, but even yet you are not strong enough to be ready for it. For you are still unspiritual, having the nature of the flesh under control of ordinary impulses. That's the carnal nature. The ordinary impulses is the carnal nature, the habitual responses. So as long as there is envy and jealousy and wrangling and factions among you, you're not spiritual. and of the flesh, behaving yourselves after a human standard and like mere unchanged men. So Paul was in effect saying that because of their whining, their backbiting and fighting, they were acting like little babies who were weak, immature and inexperienced in the truth of God. And he was unable to talk to them as mature Christians or to teach them anything really that was meaty because of the way that they were acting. They couldn't comprehend it. It was like a gerbil on a wheel. It goes round and round and round and round. And you see, what we're talking about, precious ones, is the importance of this true internal change versus good behavior is that sin is at the bottom of this issue to transform or conform. or not to the change that is required of us, that is internal, it's divine, it is a miracle at work in our souls. And it must be understood that there will be no admission to heaven without this new birth process taking place in our hearts, our souls. You and I must be born of water and of the Spirit, in order that we enter into the kingdom of heaven. And when you repented of your sins and were saved and baptized with God's Holy Spirit, you repented of your sins, you vowed to conform to God's holy standards, and you were told that this was the only way that you would be cleansed and pardoned from your past sins. And this was the beginning only of the new birth process that is necessary to bring about the true internal change that God requires. That was the prerequisite, so to speak, that was only the beginning of this birth process that is necessary to bring about now this miracle, this transforming miracle that goes on every day. in our hearts. And birth of the Spirit is real change. It is a change of nature. It is not acting out a good behavior and being sporadically nice now and then. Sanctification is an internal change that is brought about by the Holy Spirit, by the means of the Word of God, and in faith in Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1, verse 2. 1 Peter 1, 2. Those who were chosen and foreknown by God the Father and consecrated, that means sanctified and made holy, by the Spirit, listen, to be obedient to Jesus Christ, consecrated, sanctified, made holy by the Spirit to what? To be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with His blood. May grace, spiritual blessings, and peace be given you in increasing abundance, that spiritual peace to be realized in and through Christ, freedom from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts. And this is speaking about those who are delivered from sin, from the world, and are dedicated to God in heart, in life, in soul, through all mental faculties and members of your body, and your life is dedicated to him. And this speaks about a participation in the divine nature of God and walking with God through His Holy Spirit and having communion with Him. And this speaks about knowing that you are living in His blessing and promises and in His favor. And this is knowing and not a self-deceived notion that you have a place among the sanctified. Turn with me as well, please, to Acts 20, verse 32. Acts 20, verse 32. And Paul says, brethren, I commit you to God. I deposit you in his charge, entrusting you to his protection and care, and I commend you to the word of his grace, to the commands and the counsels of his promises and his unmerited favor. It is able to build you up and to give you your rightful inheritance among all God set ones those who are consecrated purified and transformed of soul Praise the Lord Hallelujah How that thrills me Does it thrill you, precious ones? Does it thrill you? God's Word is living and vibrant. It reverberates, and it ought to reverberate in your hearts. causing you to just want to shout at the promises that are yea and amen for those who live and love Jesus Christ. They live in Christ. They love him. And so do you know that this inheritance among the sanctified, it means a lot among a place or a lot among the wisest, among the best, among the holiest, and the most honorable and blessed of the human race in the kingdom yet to come, and yes, even among angels with Jesus Christ and with God. Now, this wonderful internal change is even visible. It is quite visible. And it is made visible and known to yourselves that this truth of God's Spirit working within your soul and heart is real. and it's not phony and like an actor on stage and putting forth your best behavior when you're around others. Not like that at all. But you know that God's Spirit is working in you and it's very real. It's not phony. And you know this internal change is real because you love and you seek out the spiritual things and truths of God. You hunger after His truth and wisdom. where before you avoided it. In fact, it was a burden to you. And you found yourself making excuses why you couldn't devote time to God and study the Word. You became very good at it. It was a burden. Your heart wasn't with it, nor was your mind in it. But you know also that you've grown to love the things of God over the things that held your attention before. You know that you've been overcoming the world and the vices of the devil. And you know that you're not committing the same old sins anymore. And you're endeavoring to bring forth the fruit of the Spirit who lives within you. And its fruit again is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on. instead of what lies in the old unregenerate man, and that is jealousy, hatred, bickering, fighting, lying, cheating, and love for the things of the world, and passions of the flesh, and more stuff than gadgets and fashion, and all the list goes on. And you know at this point, if there is true internal change that you could not, and did not renew yourself, you know it. but that there were many times that you cried out and said, Oh, God created me a new heart, a clean heart. And you spent hours and hours before God pleading and crying out for Him to bring about this wonderful change, this miracle. You were willing to lay the axe at the root of that corrupt tree, that nature in your life where you knew sin lurked and had victory over you. And you finally said, no more devil. You can take your baggage and be off. I'll no longer cooperate with you. But I owe my allegiance to my God and my Savior. And you have been holding this change, dear ones. You've been holding it dear to your heart. and you know that no idle or sinful precious thing at all can be held next to your heart in preference over Christ's new command and that is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and with all of your mind and your whole being. And you know that your acquaintance with the truth of God's wisdom is not an experimental or theatrical thing that you can play around with but it is a matter of life and death. It is that real and serious to you. You know it is a matter of life and death. And the truths of God's Word ring within your renewed heart that screams out warning but yet encouragement that says, He who remains in Christ cannot sin. It screams within you. Turn with me, please. 1 John 3, 9. 1 John 3, 9. No one born begotten of God deliberately or knowingly and habitually practices sin. For God's nature abides in him. His principle of life, the divine sperm, remains permanently in him. And he cannot practice sinning because he is born, he is begotten of God. Verse 10. and by this it is made clear that all who take their nature from God and are his children and who take their nature from the devil and are his children, no one who does not practice righteousness, who does not conform to God's will in purpose, thought and action is of God. Neither is anyone who does not love his brother, his fellow believer in Christ. This internal change is very real. It is the power of God that is passed upon these who do not sin any longer. Their hearts have been touched. They are aware of their words, of their habitual responses. They are aware of their deeds and sinful outward body language that speaks a thousand words. Did you know that? Your body language speaks a thousand words. and your heart has been touched by the power of precious Holy Spirit, the author of this beautiful internal change, that in your heart you know that the labor and the work and sacrifice and the tears that it took to come to this place in your understanding is what David meant when he said in Psalms 51, verse 6, Behold, you desire truth in the inner being. Make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Ceremonially wash me, and I shall in reality be whiter than snow. Desiring the purity of truth, of God's righteousness. God is pure, and this is what David was longing for, purity. Righteousness. and what we're talking about in overcoming the sinful nature of the old man and allowing this true internal change to take place in our hearts and soul instead of keeping the old perverted and sinful nature and trying to act out a good behavior will begin with true repentance for your sins precious ones and we have a message that is called the gift of repentance And if you would like to hear this important and life-changing word, please access our website by going to www.shininglight7ministries.com. That's again, www.shininglight7, that is a numerical number 7, ministries.com. And you can touch the opening page and there you will see a link called Audio Christian Teaching Library. and you will be able to look through the teachings that are there and you will find this one that I am specifically directing you to, again called the gift of repentance. You see, repentance is really a gift of God. It is not cheap. Repentance to the mind or heart to which God has granted repentance will have gained a right sense of their sins. Let me repeat that. Repentance, as I said, is a gift from God. Anything that comes to you that is from God is a gift to you or to me. It is a gift. And repentance to the mind or heart to which God has granted this repentance will have gained a right sense of their sins. You know that you know that you know that you know that you've sinned and you hate it. You don't keep committing that sin over and over and over. And you hate it because the gift of repentance has been granted to you to know that you have sinned. And the added blessing is that you hate it. With all of your heart, you hate it. You don't hide it. You don't excuse it. You don't pet it. You don't deny it. No, you hate it. You hate it so much because it has a control over you and causes you much grief and trouble and tears. And you know that it does not please God, the one whom your heart has grown to love and respect. You're not happy with pretending or wearing a mask or acting out a good behavior when others are around. And with this gift of repentance that we see with David, there is also a real sense of God's mercy that David has grown to understand. And this truth has come about by the wisdom of God that he has been privileged and allowed to know as well. I said it was a miracle. This change that comes is a miracle. This inmost or this true internal change is a miracle. Mercy and grace come from our Lord Jesus Christ. And with this understanding of wisdom, which is a miracle, There is now a distinct endeavor to obey Him because you love Him, not because you have to. And this understanding is allowed for you to know and comprehend with spiritual understanding because of the true internal change that has been gradually taking place in your heart and your soul. and again this true internal change is first brought about by true repentance which is God's gift to you so that you could come to him in the way that he demands and not in your way or my way that is contrived that we make up our own rules to do to make God happy and put on good behavior that we think that he will be pleased with There, that ought to please him. I was nice to someone instead of rude today. Our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. And there are many people who seem to think that just reading and memorizing scripture and inclining an ear to hear the Word while it being preached or taught and they make an effort to go to Bible study or pray or prayer meetings often, they think these are evidences that they're born anew of God's Spirit. But I want to say that this is no proof of God's power working in their life. It's not the evidence by going to church, by going to Bible studies or prayer meetings often, or memorize the Word of God. It's no real proof of God's power working in our lives. The Word of God has dwelt and rattled around in many of these people's heads who were never right with God, never right with Him. There are multitudes of millions of those who purport to be Christians who seem to think that by abandoning some of the external vices and sinful practices that they used to have and do is to be taken as evidence of their repentance. Indeed, this is necessary for the reformation of moral change. but this can only happen and will be real with those who spiritually mourn and grieve over their sins. And this is only possible again because of the miracle of internal change that is taking place and being worked out by the power of God's Holy Spirit as he sees in the repentant heart the hatred of sin. the true heart change of the repentant sinner is that he or she is now careful to discriminate between good and evil and light and darkness. The true internal change that has taken place within this soul struggles against every not some unholy tendency and every sinful habit and works with God's grace to destroy and to uproot them. He or she doesn't say, tomorrow, mañana, I will make a better effort and an attempt at this sin. But this kind of person exercises himself, like Paul said, in one who was running a race and that he did not want to be disqualified for the prize. And the prize, dear ones, is called eternal life. In 1 Corinthians chapter 9, Paul gives the demonstration of how we need to run this race. He says, run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training they do it to get a crown that will not last but we do it to get a crown that will last forever and therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly and I do not fight like a man beating in the air verse 27 no I beat my body and I make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. And you, like Paul, will exercise yourself to have a conscience that is well aware of what you say, of how you say it, of what you see, what you lay your eyes on, what you incline your ears to hear. And Paul is saying that he beats his body. this was a figure of speech that said that he took control over those things that wanted to dominate his physical senses and he made himself a slave to God's righteousness. You see, the whole course of an individual who is brought into the kingdom of God is a course of repentance. But understand this. You do not make repentance a way of life and an excuse to say what you want to when you want to say it and do what you want to when you want to do it and then go before God and say, Oh, I repent of this. I repent. And you go to someone and it's time after time you're repenting over the same thing, time after time after time. Then you've made repentance. You're Jesus. You've made it a way of life. So many people who live their Christian lives this way and make no advancement in spiritual maturity is because they do not have it in their hearts to change their old nature. And Apostle Paul, in this verse that we have just read, considered his body as an enemy, his flesh as an enemy that he must contend with. He considered it an enemy that he must contend with. He must mortify it, he shows us, by self-denial, by abstinence from sinful pleasures and practices, and by continually being aware of the enemy's ploys to get a foot in the door to thwart our salvation. Paul is in effect saying that in order for true internal change to take place in our souls, we must mortify these things and make our bodies a slave of our souls and not the soul the slave of the body, which is the case in all those whose souls are not regenerate. And they follow the leading and pleading of the body's passions, which demand to be satisfied. Paul had made use of all the possible means to subdue his corrupt and his carnal inclinations to show that he was not under the dominion of evil passions. but was instead totally under the dominion of God's truths. And you see, dear ones, true internal change must be abiding or a place of continuance. And the only way change will be abiding or continuing if we will heed Jesus' words in John 15, verse 4. Jesus said in John 15, verse 4, Dwell in me and I will dwell in you. Live in me and I will live in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in being vitally united to the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever lives in me and I in him bears much abundant fruit. However, apart from me, cut off from vital union with me, you can do nothing. Verse 6, if a person does not dwell in me, he's thrown out like a broken off branch and withers. Such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire and they are burned. Verse 7, if you live in me, abide vitally united to me, and my words remain in you, and continue to live in your hearts, ask what you will, and it shall be done with you. should we not ask for those things that we know that we need from the Lord and that is the ability to continually live in him so that we may have this divine miracle at work continually in the innermost sanctum of our hearts in the where true internal change is taking place Jesus said live in me dwell in me or abide in me. And you see, you cannot live in Christ without producing fruit. This word shows us that for a branch to bear fruit, it must have first been cleansed or pruned by the Father in heaven. And this is speaking about salvation. And then this branch must abide in his Son, which is speaking about sanctification. So that which is purged is the old nature, the sinful past. When you came to him, it's purged, cut off. And now by dwelling in Christ, in living with him, this is where the sanctification process takes place. And the branches speak prophetically about believers. Committed believers will progress from fruit to more fruit to much abundant fruit. However, according to the Word, if a branch fails to bear fruit, it is rejected and it's cast off. It's cut off. This can be that their attempt at good behavior failed to conform to God's holy standards in the way that He demands that we come to Him and obey Him. And these can be rejected also because of constant habitual sin, which shows a true lack of true repentance and earnestness in pleasing God. To be rejected also shows that they committed the sin that can lead to death, and that is unrepented sin. To be rejected also can be those who are severed from Christ because they had a superficial connection with Jesus, just as what happened to Judas Iscariot. Judas loved the world and money and all that it had to offer. He sold his Savior out with 30 pieces of silver and a kiss. Judas thought that his good behavior was enough to squeak by and fool those around him and even his Christ and yet think that he would not lose out on eternal life because he walked with the Master. He was one who was a pretender, and in the end he was cut off and eternally condemned in the lake of fire. You see, only the fruit of obedience to our Savior and dwelling and abiding in his love will secure any true internal change that goes on and endures until he comes for us. and if we obey him we will abide in his love and will produce the fruit of his spirit and with Christ as our example and being secure in our friendship with him we cannot but help true internal change that will be lasting and will be rewarded at the end of our journey I don't know about you but I don't want to be guilty of wearing a mask and being condemned to death because my unregenerate good behavior did not pass the test. But I would rather be found living and dwelling in the life of Christ now, with true internal change taking place, and holding David's words precious in my heart that say, Behold, you desire truth in my inmost being. Make me therefore, Lord, to know wisdom in my inmost heart. Thank you.

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