Your redemption includes some amazing benefits. You are dead to sin (Romans 6:2, 11). You are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). You have the divine nature within you (1 Peter 1:4). You are no longer living your own life; it’s Jesus living within you (Galatians 2:20). Meanwhile, you know your struggles and sins, and some days your inner nature seems anything but new. There seems to be a vast difference between what scripture says about you and what you are actually experiencing.
Which will you believe? The battle of faith is largely a matter of choosing what God says over what your natural eyes see. Your spiritual eyes have to take charge. This is why Paul so emphatically urged us to “reckon ourselves” or “consider ourselves” dead to sin and alive to God. How you see yourself—by faith—determines what you experience.
Choose truth. Your visible struggles are the last-gasp attempt of a dead, fallen nature to cling to some semblance of life. But your new life waits for you. That’s your new reality. Faith is letting go of the old—ignoring it, neglecting it, vehemently denying it—and embracing the new. What God has said about you is a far greater truth than anything in your past experience. The more you believe it, the more you will experience it.
