Curious what they are? Read on…

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. – 1 Thes 5:23

You live your (1) Christian life of faith according to your understanding of Scripture, you live your (2) public life when you’re with others (your immediate family excluded), and (3) you live your very, very private life of your innermost thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

We’ll focus on this third very private life that no one talks about; no one shares, and pastors and the church certainly don’t teach, let alone even mention it.

Let me elaborate. This third very private life are the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs you experience that are so different, so strange, so strong, so wicked, so shocking, so opposed (so you think) to orthodoxy and tradition, that you would never, never mention them to your immediate family, let alone those in your public life.

You experience this third life late at various times- at night when you lay awake in your bed, during the day when things aren’t going well, when you’re overwhelmed, or when those close to you say or do something opposed to your first life.

This third life you dare not share with your spouse, best friend, family, pastor, or any ‘expert’, for fear of embarrassment, shock, judgment, condemnation, separation, and worse.

This third life is generally nothing you consciously decided to learn or do. It’s just what got accumulated in your life that makes up who you are today.

So how do we deal with this third life? Is there a way to eliminate it and banish it forever? There certainly is!

Scripture mentions this in Jeremiah 17:9 – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” As believers we read this and understand it, but rarely do we plumb the depths of understanding this- especially on a personal basis. If we do this, at first, we’re shocked at our very depraved nature. But if we allow it, we come to grips with it by the Holy Spirit. Then verses like Isaiah 64:6 – “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” are all the more sweet to our spirit as we finally start to realize the depths of God’s grace and mercy in salvation!

Verses like Isaiah 1:18 – “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…”
Titus 3:5b – …according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.
give me great joy! Thank God He loves us so much He sent His Son Jesus to pay our sin debt!

Since we’re new creatures in Christ Jesus, and since the old is gone and the new has come, we simply reckon ourselves dead to that third life and rejoice! We are free, because the Truth has set us free! God sees us in perfect righteousness; forgets ALL our sin; adopts us into the body of Christ; gives us an inheritance that’ll last for eternity; and frees us from a guilty conscience that we may be joyful, rejoice, love Abba Father, and shower others with that love!

All this because God is love and love never fails! Praise God, my Abba Father!

Romans 11:33 – O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!