In God’s Service or In Baal’s Bondage?
I beseech you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Romans 12:1).
This journey shall take us on the paths of psyche and conscious, or the thought processes, towards permanent repentance as found in Romans 12:1-2.
Psyche is a noun, another word for mind, or the deepest thoughts, feelings, or beliefs of a person or group. Embedded in the psyche of this 21st century is the hostility toward things holy, or of godly nature, so much so that humanity thrives in a psyche (or mindset) of disobedience.
Conscious is an adjective (a word that describes a noun) and has several meanings:1) to be awake, thinking, and aware of what is happening around you; 2) to be aware of the existence or presence of a particular thing or person; 3) determined and intentional.
They refuse to be fully conscious of the results or consequences of their acts of disobedience.
It is the conscious which describes the psyche and oftentimes judges it as “right” or “wrong”, hence the term conscience, a noun, a part of you that judges the morality (the rightness or wrongness) of your own actions and makes you feel either good about the right things you have done or guilty about the wrong things that you have done.
Then Paul, looking earnestly at the council, said, “Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day” (Acts 23:1).
This judgment in essence creates a person’s values, the beliefs people have about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, which, in turn, control their behavior.
The journey to permanent repentance requires a shifting in the way we think. The way we think is based on what we know to be “true”. Knowledge then is what builds up our psyche. What are we knowledgeable about? Knowledge is our understanding, our interpretation of information which has been obtained by either experience or study. This knowledge comes from ideas which in turn becomes our ideology, a collective thought, or set of ideas and values held by a group of people and works like a force and power which moves a group of people in a certain direction.
The society into which a person is born is characterized by its living patterns (lifestyle), the way it functions in everyday life. This is a “culture”, a system of beliefs, values, and customs, or social behaviors.
The ideas that are most important in one’s culture cause him or her to act out whatever the elders of the culture think, say, and do; oftentimes following the ways of human psyche and going against the instructions of our Creator God in His Word for living in the kingdom of heavenly culture.
So, in a nutshell:
A deeply held belief is a CORE VALUE. These values guides the way you think in MAKING CHOICES. The choices you make produces your CUSTOMS, or behavior patterns. Your habitual patterns of behavior produces your CULTURE, or the way you live. Do you want to live in the service of God or in the bondage of Baal?
Who is Baal?
Prophet Elijah spoke, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men.” After executing every one of them (1 Kings 18:22, 40), he himself received a death threat from queen Jezebel that made him flee for his life in exhaustion and despair, “Now, Lord, take my life, . . .!” (1 Kings 19:4). And the Lord said to Prophet Elijah, “Yet I have reserved seven thousand . . ., all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” The Lord made Elijah realize that he was not the only one believer, and that were 7000 other believers, also called the remnant of the Lord.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern [ways] of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind [psyche]. Then you will be able to prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2).
Just as each one of us is born into a human “culture” so too can each one of us make a conscious effort to be re-born (born-again) into a heavenly culture, where knowledge is the truth of God’s word. For it is the lack of this knowledge, these core values of the heavenly kingdom, that people are perishing under the servitude of Baal.
Baal is described as the most important god of the Canaanites who lived in the Promised Land of the Israelites. This god, known as a god who controlled the seasonal rains for the fertility of crops, is also associated with the most abominable sexual acts. With Ashtoreth (Hebrew for “shame”), the goddess of sex and war (also known as Ishtar or Venus), their cult thrived on temple prostitution and acts of sexuality that even today can be found in pornography and homosexuality. The symbol for this cult is the phallic, a representation of a penis, the male sex organ.
Child sacrifice by fire was also part of this cult.
The animation video programs (cartoons) that our children are viewing on screens everywhere mention the names of these gods. Are you conscious of the fact that the mention of these names fills the psyche with its influence?
The “influence” of this god causes its worshippers to act out aggressively in lustful desires to gain wealth, dominance, and extreme sexual satisfaction through tendencies that all go against the beauty of holiness thereby trapping the soul in bondage to Baal.
Are we conscious of the existence of this “cult” today, and is our conscience checking the ways we respond in this “air of disobedience” to our Creator God’s original psyche about making man in His own image?
REPENT NOW FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND.
AND HE IS COMING TO JUDGE EVERYONE’S LIFESTYLE.
© 2024 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem. All rights reserved. Published by The Light In Me Enterprise. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The artwork depicted in the blog article is carefully selected to draw out the points made for healing of the soul, and by no means promote any ideologies from the various artists unless they are found in the center of God's perfect will.