I have decided to launch the next lesson of the Celebrate Freedom Discipleship Course.  As I stated previously:  “I developed the Celebrate Freedom Discipleship Course in 2020 as part of my master’s thesis in Christian Counseling to “fill in the gaps” of the Christian Twelve Step/Celebrate Recovery – Teaching Curriculums by introducing concepts of Christian Discipleship that I found important in my walk of faith and in my recovery over alcohol, drugs, sex addiction, and food addiction.”

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Listen to the podcast: Celebrate Freedom Discipleship Course – Lesson 5- Ascension Podcast

Or Watch it on YouTube: 

CFDC Lesson 5: 
Ascension 

Discipleship
Principle 5 – After having won a
victory in one area of our lives in our recovery, we will seek to take back
more enemy territory as we surrender more to the Lord to be cleansed and hope
to claim new freedom and healing, by faith.

Galatians 5:1, 5 Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which
Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage… 5
For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by
faith.  –

 

Part of our spiritual journey of
recovery, or discipleship, includes monitoring ourselves and changing our
behavior and thoughts as we see our old patterns threaten to re-emerge through
old triggers that still want to get a response. 
Whether these triggers are just the flesh or are a temptation from the
enemy, our tactic is to resist temptation by asking God for help, standing on
the truth of His word, remembering who we are in Christ, and by choosing to
walk out the freedom that Christ has won for us by faith. 

2
Thessalonians 2:13  says that…”God from the beginning chose you
for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.

However although we have gained a
measure of victory over a stronghold of addiction or other hang-up or hurt that
sent us to recovery, we begin to realize that the primary stronghold we have
overcome may have only been a symptom of a larger problem or just a part of a
whole host of problems.  So, since we
have victory over one stronghold that was a major problem in our lives, what
should we do with the other issues that remain? 

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Twelve-step groups recognize this issue
and encourage their participants to continually use their framework to
progressively break these additional strongholds. For the Christian, the
decision to progressively seek more freedom can transform one’s life but our
efforts have to be empowered by our faith and the two things that only the
Christian has – The Holy Spirit and the Mind of Christ.

1
Corinthians 2:12,14, 16 (NLT2)
¹²  And we have received
God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things
God has freely given us. ¹⁴  But
people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It
all sounds foolish to them, and they can’t understand it, for only those who
are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. …
¹⁶  ….But we understand these things, for we have the
mind of Christ.

This lesson is an expansion on the
concept that we are to keep “working the Steps” but it focuses on our faith and
how we can grow through the renewing of our mind with the word of God and how
the Lord blesses our decision to trust and follow Him.

Romans 12:1-2 (NKJV) 1 I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
of God.

Scripture states that we are to
surrender our bodies and minds to the Lord and as we do, we will progressively
know God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will for our lives.

 So what Truths can our “Mind of
Christ” and the Holy Spirit help us to understand and to be transformed into
Victors rather than Victims,  to be the
people God created us to be?

Ascension – The Upward Call  

The key to a
spiritual solution to any problem is that we must have faith in the process and
in the power, authority, and willingness of God to change us. If God decrees it, we must obey His commands. If He said, “It is
finished.”, we must believe that it has been done.  He gave us victory in one area. We must have
faith to maintain that victory and use His help to win more and become the
people He made us to be.================================================================

Christian Recovery:
Changed or Cured?

As Christians, our solution goes beyond
the flesh and mind. Our solution is empowered by the Holy Spirit, and results
in eternal life. Christ is the Healer. We have the ultimate victory in Christ,
and we can have progressive victory over sin and negative states of mind in our
lives. Christians have been given new life, so we need to choose to believe it,
pursue it, and live it out.

Romans
6:11 Likewise you
also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.

Christian disciples are not in recovery,
they died. Through their death and resurrection with Christ, they are cured
but they need to have more faith in God than in their addiction or old
narratives of dysfunction.  They have
been given the power to overcome by faith. They need to choose to believe the
truth about their freedom.  

Sanctification by
Faith Christians need to stand in what we
believe.  God leads us not into
temptation, the enemy does. We “fight” temptation with our faith that says our
old stronghold no longer has a hold on us. 
We “fight” depression, anger, anxiety, and low self-esteem with the
truth of our identity in Christ.  Our
battles are won in the mind of Christ and through the Spirit. It is faith in
Christ’s finished work and our acceptance of our new identity rather than
effort that brings victory. 

Acts
15:8-9 (NKJV)  So
God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit,
just as He did to us, and made no
distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

Spiritual Warfare –
The Truth will Set You Free – Three Steps to Freedom Over Sin

As for our freedom over sin, we prove
this easily by saying “no” just one time to sin. We have all done this but the
most effective means of our continual victory over our sin is through
knowing the truth about sin, knowing who we are in Christ, and having love for
God.  

So, we need to change how we think about
our sin to make sinning unnatural and undesirable to us and thus easier to say
no to, but we must also accept the identity of one who has been set free and
who is in love with God, who set him free.

1.   
First, we need to
honestly look at our sins, by looking at the negative consequences and the
emotions that result from falling back into them. One strategy I heard that
someone at AA used was to ask the question, “What then?”, whenever he was
tempted to drink. He would imagine all the bad consequences that taking a drink
could result in and would see logically that drinking was not what he wanted to
do.  He saw the truth that getting drunk
was not a good thing and he could choose to say no to drinking.

=============================================================

2.. Finally,
we need to think about our relationship with God. We must continually talk to
and thank God for saving us and changing us. We need to thank Christ for dying
for us. We need to pray to God for strength to not give in. We must think of
sin as a betrayal of the One who gave us everything and refuse to do it.

We need to
place our relationship with God above any sin and value Him more than our old
selfish desires.

We need to
love God so much that the thought of falling into sin is unthinkable. 

3. Finally, we
need to think about our relationship with God. We must continually talk to and
thank God for saving us and changing us. We need to thank Christ for dying for
us. We need to pray to God for strength to not give in. We must think of sin as
a betrayal of the One who gave us everything and refuse to do it.

We need to place our relationship with God above any sin and value
Him more than our old selfish desires.

We need to love God so much that the thought of falling into sin
is unthinkable. 

The Three Steps to Freedom Over Sin is
not just positive thinking. This three-step process is speaking the truth.  It exposes the truth of sin, the truth of who
we are in Christ, and the truth of our love for God. This is the application of
the truth against our hurts, habits, and hang-ups to set us free indeed.  This is the truth that leads us out of the
darkness never to return.

Spiritual Warfare –
A World War Campaign

In our daily inventory, rather than
maintaining our hold over the ground we have conquered. It is time to take new
ground and let the Lord heal the underlying issues that led to our habits and
hang-ups.

Philippians
1:6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in
you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

The
more we come to live our identity in Christ, the more negative mental states
fall away.

·       Fear is conquered with the knowledge of our victory over death and
our security with God.

·      
Anger is wiped away
by the revelation of the spiritual state of the world and our call to pass on
the forgiveness that we have received. 

·      
Depression is
erased by His presence, promises, and love.

·      
Our self-worth is
determined by the One who gave us the priceless gifts of sonship, forgiveness,
and freedom. 

·      
His good work in us
changes our behaviors but also brings the growth of all the fruit of the
Spirit. 

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Philippians 3:13-14
(NKJV)
13  Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I
do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those
things which are ahead, l
14  I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus.

The Christian life should never be
boring. There is a self-improvement project every day and the best way to
improve is to let go of the troubled self we so desperately wish to improve and
embrace the new life that is defined by our identity in Christ. 

Ascension is merely
a commitment to the upward call of Christ and the plan of Christ for
progressive sanctification. The process
is happening. Let’s agree with it and work with it rather than deny and resist
it.  Our relationship with God is
cooperative. We trust and obey, and He leads in the way we should go. This is
our relationship with God: surrendering ourselves to Him and inviting God to renew
more and more of us continually. 

1 John 3:6-9 (NKJV)
6 Whoever abides in Him does not sin.
Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. 7 Little children let no one
deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is
righteous. 8 He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the
beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that He might
destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whoever has been born of God does not
sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born
of God.

Our walk with God is not for an hour at
church service, our walk is to be continuous. If we want a life with His
blessing of a peace that goes beyond understanding we must continually seek
Him, abide with Him, and obey Him. We do these things not out of duty or
obligation or for reward. We do these out of love for the One who first
loved us.

The Upward Call –
Ascending to Your Purpose

Exodus
31:3 (NKJV) says of some filled with the Holy Spirit
 “And I have filled him with the Spirit
of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of
workmanship,”

Forsaking sins and breaking strongholds
are only one aspect of ascension. We are also called to grow. Learning new
things and developing new skills is another form of your personal ascension
process.  

Ephesians
4:7-8 (NKJV) tells us that we receive gifts from God for our purpose:
7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s
gift.
8 Therefore He says: “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And
gave gifts to men.”

God has called us all to a purpose. He
supplies gifts for His purposes but the cooperative nature of our relationship
with God requires action and development on our part.

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Learning new things does not necessarily
mean hobbies. As we seek to put away childish things, we are to seek the Lord’s
will for our lives and stretch to the potential He knows we can fulfill. Your
plan could mean possibly going back to school, learning a new language, going
for promotion by pursuing specialized training or starting a new career.  Study of the word and prayer are some of the
best personal development tools we can use for growth. All of these are things
we can work on that may contribute to our purpose and development.

These are all in the spirit of ascension
– exploring life, ourselves, and service to the kingdom to grow closer to God
and our purpose. The plan does not always have to be known; we go forward in
faith. 

Wrap Up

Christians have been saved by faith in
Jesus and given freedom over sin and death. Christ calls us to follow Him. He
called us to life. He called us out of the darkness. As we follow Him, we can
experience the freedom over sin that He has won for us through our faith and
our life’s expression of that faith: obedience. 

When we win a victory over a stronghold,
we should rejoice but continue the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We can
use the Twelve Step framework to bring another hurt, habit, or hang up to the
Lord and have progressive victory and freedom in life.

 We should also ascend further in our growth as
Christians by seeking to develop ourselves for the purpose that God has for our
lives.

We also seek to adopt our identity in
Christ and grow in our relationship with God, so our subsequent sanctification
projects are acquired through our faith and not by the sweat of our brow. We
seek to renew our minds so that sin is defeated with a three-pronged attack of
the truth about sin, who we are in Christ, and who God is.

So, let’s go up but don’t rush because
what God accomplished in a moment may take us some time to grasp and to walk
in.  We may not do it perfectly, but we
will go forward at our pace, one day at a time, and one victory at a time,
growing increasingly closer to God and His purpose for our lives.

 

Review and Examine.

1.   
What areas has God
helped you to experience freedom or victory in?

2.   
What areas do you
want the Lord to help you to be free in?  

3.   
Do You Believe that
God can Help You Experience More Freedom?

4.   
What Problem Do You
Feel the Lord is Calling You To Take on next?

5.   
How Can the
Celebrate Freedom Growth Group Help You?

6.   
What purpose do you
think the Lord may be calling you to?

 

 ——Join us next week
for the next Celebrate Freedom Discipleship Course Lesson—-

or

Join
our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”, and “Freedom in
Christ” series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com,
You can also find it on Apple podcasts

(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The
mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts,
Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com. 

These
teachings are also available on the MT4Christ247 YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MT4Christ247

Email
me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to
receive the class materials, share your progress, and be encouraged.

My
wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian encouragement via her Ask Seek Knock blog
(https://tammylynask.blogspot.com/
),  her Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 )
and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)

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views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author,
M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of
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Encouragement for the Path of
Christian Discipleship