Each morning when I type the title “The Journey Continues” I reflect momentarily about what the journey is.  I bring myself to the starting point of this journey from the bondage of abuse.  As I do this I am reminded that I am a new creation and the bondage is only part of the old self.  The new self is purified by the shed blood of Jesus Christ and the gift of The Holy Spirit is placed within me.  This journey is teaching me that I have much to learn about living in the spirit and not in the flesh.  The flesh is where the bondage is.  My spirit is free.  Our society in America teaches little about our spirit.  We spend way too much time teaching to be self-reliant.  This is a trick of Satan.  We were never created to be self-reliant.  If we were we would never need God and we certainly wouldn’t have needed Christ’s gift–The Holy Spirit.  The battle of living in the spirit is a spiritual battle and not a flesh one.  If we don’t learn about our spirit and The Holy Spirit we stay crippled not knowing how the battle is won.

In the intercessory prayer class I’ve been taking on Sunday morning I learned that the warfare is largely  won through surrender, praise and obedience.  This all starts with our surrendering the battle to the One who has already defeated it–Jesus Christ.  We then praise Him for this along with praising the Holy Spirit.  We can do this out loud too.  We can bow, kneel, raise our hands to show our appreciation for the work already done.  We can sing or listen to uplifting songs if we don’t choose to sing for music is a form of worshipful praise.  It is also good to know that praise is emotional.  There are many scriptures in the Psalms declaring our need to dance, clap, shout, leap into the air with our praise to God.  Sometimes this joy is expressed in tears of thankfulness.  The obedience comes in doing this.  It is one thing to know it, it is another to actually do it.

Personally, I am not very good at most of this.  However, I am determined to live the victorious life of the new creation Christ gave me.  So I am starting this morning surrendering my doubts to Jesus and lifting my fingers to the keyboard so I can praise Him with each of you.  God bless us all as we give our Praise to our Almighty God.