The Struggle Is Real (The Flesh, The World, and the Devil) - Smurfs, Judo, and Russian Troll Farms [Ryan Ashley]

Ephesians 4:17-28

“Basic conversion must be followed by daily conversion.”    

“Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his.” 
Dallas Willard

In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a "superstition" (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion).

Larry Hurtado – Destroyer of the gods

Our apprenticeship of Jesus means we begin to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus enabled by the Holy Spirit.

The Devil’s Strategy:

Deceitful ideas, that play to disordered desires, that are normalized in a sinful society.

“As we first turned away from God in our thoughts, so it is that our thoughts that the first movements toward the renovation of the heart occur. Thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change… The process of spiritual formation in Christ is one of progressively replacing those destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that fill the mind of Jesus himself… spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for His.”

Dallas Willard

“The hidden dimension of each human life is not visible to others, nor is it fully graspable even by ourselves. We usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul, the deepest level of our life, or what is driving it. Our “within” is astonishingly complex and subtle—even devious. It takes on a life of its own. Only God knows our depths, who we are, and what we would do.” 
Dallas Willard

1. The Scriptures

2. The Spirit of God

3. The Community of Jesus

Where are my own energies, insecurities, wounds and fears being used against me in my experiencing the kind of life that Jesus has on offer?