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Dufresne Ministries Podcast
Growing Up Spiritually, Part Three | Nancy Dufresne | Jesus the Healer Broadcast
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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message. I'm so glad you've joined us today for Jesus the Healer. The location I'm at is our family ranch. I'm in Colorado and I have a home here on the property. But right behind me you'll see a little separate structure. This is a one room cabin that my son built for me just so I can have a place to go privately whenever we're here at the ranch. And so we wanted to bring you to this place. It's, it's personal to us and so we wanted to have an intimate time with you here. And so we're so grateful that we could share this time with you if you would grab your Bibles and we want to open them to Romans, chapter 12. I've done two previous episodes in line with what I'm going to teach on today, and I just want to stay at it for a little while of staying with this same topic. And, and I would encourage you that if you can go back and watch the two previous episodes because we're going to build on these and they'll be a blessing to you. These are foundational truths that we're going to share with you. I know that some of the time people, Christians especially, like to hear. You know, I'm the same way. I love hearing good preaching, exciting sermons, but I know this is that sometimes you have to address the real foundational things. I love hearing about the anointing. I love hearing about miracles and signs and wonders and how to increase financially and all these things because they're part of our inheritance. But also we have to make sure that we also go back and revisit foundational things that even allow us to live and walk as the healed, to even allow us to have the prosperous life that God intends. It's these foundational truths that will really give us the footwork for the best life life that God has authored for us. And so these are the things that we're going to be addressing in today's broadcast because without these foundational things in, in, in place, we're not going to live the, the healed life as we ought to. We're not going to have the victory and the joy and the peace that God intended for us to experience in this life. And so we're glad you could join us for today's broadcast because these things are very precious. You know, if you go to buy a home, especially being a lady, I walk in and I want to see what colors they use, what design elements are in a home. But before you buy a home, one of the main things that they'll tell you is, especially in the United States, maybe in other countries it might vary a little bit, but here in the United States, part of the home buying process is that you have to get someone to inspect the foundation. And a bank won't even give you a loan to buy a home without that foundation being inspected. Because they know that no matter how beautiful the structure is, no matter what beautiful design elements and finishes are put in the home, if the foundation is compromised, that that home is not going to be a safe place to live. Well, I want you to know that there are foundational truths that God wants us to have fortified in our life because it keeps our lives safe. Our greatest defense against the enemy, against opposition is going to be two things. A submitted body and a renewed mind. That if we will submit our bodies to God, renew our minds with the word of God, that no matter what the devil throws at us, he cannot take us off course, he can never win in our lives when our minds are renewed and when our bodies are submitted to God. And this is what we're going to read in Romans 12:1. If you would read with me. Paul writes, and he says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove or discern what is the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. So, as we've said previously in the previous episodes, is that God did something with our spirits, but we are to do something with our bodies and with our minds. And we can do that successfully because God did something with our spirit. He gave us a brand new spirit with his life, his power, his nature, his ability, and his grace in our spirits. And so because of that, we can keep our bodies under and we can take in the Word of God and receive it into that new spirit and renew our minds with the Word of God. And as we do, that gives us the best life. What does it mean to present our bodies to God? Before we were born again, we would present our bodies to sin, to wrongdoing, we would allow our bodies to do whatever they wanted to do. But now that we're born again, we present our bodies to God, meaning we do the right thing with our bodies that His Word instructs us to do. We do things that are pleasing to God with our bodies, but also we renew our minds. And that means we take on God's way of thinking. As we take on God's way of thinking, thinking. The Word says that it will transform our lives. We also, when we're born again, we are born again as spiritual babies. We're to grow. And as we grow, we come into childhood spiritually. But then we're not to stay there, we're to go on to full maturity. And the Word talks about this, that we walk in the stature of the fullness of Christ. And so that means that we grow up spiritually. We, we don't want to remain a spiritual baby. And I want to again read out of Galatians, chapter 3, verse 29, it says this, and if you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's seed and your heirs according to the promise. So that simply means everything that belongs to Christ belongs to us. That our lives should show that we are partaking of the inheritance that Christ made ours. What's in that healing, prosperity, peace, joy, victory, everything that heaven is enjoying right now, that's what belongs to us while we're on this earth. Galatians, chapter 4, verse 1 goes on, and it says, now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all. So he's saying here in this passage that if we remain in a childhood state of development spiritually, if we don't go on to full maturity, that we're going to be living like a servant when we should be living like the Master. We should be living as one who is lording it over circumstances and not circumstances, lording it over us. And so this is part of the flow of renewing of the mind. It will help us to grow into adulthood. And we can't enjoy the full benefits of what's ours in Christ as long as we're just going to choose to remain a spiritual baby or to remain spiritually young and not develop our lives, our spiritual lives, not develop our faith, not renew our minds with the word of God. It will keep us from being able to walk in the fullness of what God has for us. Then I want to read again in First Corinthians, chapter 2, in verse 14, and I'm going to read out of the classic amplified translation, it says, but the natural non spiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly, meaningless and nonsense to him, he is incapable of knowing them. Notice this, that someone who is not spiritually developing and they remain a spiritual baby, that there are certain things about God and the fellowship of their Father they'll never understand, that there's certain light that they will not be able to embrace because they don't. They haven't developed themselves to be able to, if I could say this, had the spiritual capacity to accept certain things. Now think about it. When a child is in first grade, they begin to learn, of course, their Alphabet. They begin to learn to read. And if they had an older sibling at home that was maybe in high school, and this sibling is studying calculus, and the first grader says, well, I can read. Can I read your calculus book? Well, baby, yeah, there may be some similar words, but you're not even going to be able to comprehend it or take it in because you've not matured in your knowledge. You've not matured academically. Your mind hasn't matured. So if you tried to read a book as a child, if you tried to read a book that belonged to somebody in high school, you wouldn't even be able to process it. You wouldn't even be able to take it in, because it would almost seem foreign to you. Because you have to mature to the level to be able to read at that high school level. Well, it's the same thing spiritually. This is what this verse is saying. If we remain spiritual babies or spiritual children, there are revelations that God may have for us to walk in, but we can't even accept them. We don't even welcome them because we're not even able to basically process them or have the capacity spiritually to accept it and walk in the light of it. So as we grow and as we develop, mature spiritually, the renewing of the mind and the. The keeping the body under control is part of that maturing process. And we do ourselves a favor as we renew our minds that we can come into greater light, that God would have to show us greater revelations. And as we do, life becomes easier. As you grow older and gain light spiritually, life becomes easier. Situations don't seem so formidable. They don't seem to overwhelm you. You seem to. You grow in skill. And it's so important that we do grow in these things. You know, a young person, a child, lacks skill. But as we grow and renew our minds with the Word of God and we practice doing the Word, we bring the doing of the Word into our everyday life. In fact, could I say this, that your mind isn't renewed until you're bring bringing the word into your everyday life. And as we are renewing our minds, it will transform us and it will cause us to have skill that we become skillful in prayer, we become skillful in faith, we become skillful with receiving our healing, we become skillful with ministering to people, we become skillful in receiving provision from God. A child is not. They just don't have the ability to have the same level of skill as an adult. But as we grow and spiritually, it's so true that we will have an ability to cooperate with God and flow with God as we mature in God at a whole different level. And so this is part of the benefits and the blessing of renewing our minds. One of the things that we have to understand that's going to help us in this process of renewing our mind is the importance of having a pastor to sit in a local church. You know, you can go to the theater, you can go to a shopping mall, you can go to places of recreation, and none of those places are helping you renew your mind. The local church and going to church services is the only function in the earth that's going to help you in this process of renewing your mind. Now notice this, and I want you to understand this. Just attending church will not renew your mind. That's the first step. But you just sitting in the church building and being present in the room will not renew the mind. The renewing of the mind means you accept into your heart what the word of God says. And then you, you become a doer of that word. You put that word in your mouth, you bring that word into your actions. You know, when I was growing up and attending school, there were certain classes I really liked and enjoyed. In certain classes I didn't. In a class that I really liked, I would engage in. I mean, I was excited about it. I was, I was attentive, I would listen, I was quick to do my homework. But if there was a class I didn't much like and I didn't really understand it, I would check out, so to speak. I was not. Even though my body was there, my mind was somewhere else. And because of that, I struggled, I would struggle with that subject. I struggled with my homework, I struggled with the tests of that class. And so it's the same thing spiritually. If you'll attend church hungry, interested, engaged, and drawing on what your pastor is feeding, and then go home, do your homework. What's that mean? Implement that word you heard, put it in your mouth. Put it in your actions, then life becomes easier. And when a test comes, it's not a difficulty for you because you've been doing your homework. But if you. If you attend church with the idea of, well, I'm present and thinking, that's enough, that's not enough. It's right to be present. But as you're there, you have to receive, you have to draw, you have to have such value on the Word that you're hearing to honor that Word and not just go home and put your Bible down on the table and never look at it again. Throughout the week, there's homework to be done. Spiritually, your pastor is not your complete diet. He's just helping you direct and point your diet in the right direction so that when you're at home, that you can still continue to feed on the Word in such a way that your mind is renewed and your spiritual growth is maturing. And so, yes, the pastor plays such a large role in this process of spiritual maturity. Maturity and renewing our minds. And just as a child cannot academically advance without a teacher, a Christian will not spiritually advance without a pastor. You need a pastor in your life. They are part of this spiritual development, and you need to value that. I know. I know this. The devil doesn't want you to mature. He doesn't want your mind renewed with the Word. Because a renewed mind is a closed door to the Devil. An unrenewed mind is an open door to the devil. So the devil wants to keep you away from any kind of settings that's going to assist you in the renewing of your mind. Your pastor can't renew your mind for you, but at least being around a pastor, he's giving you the tools that you can renew your mind with. So the devil wants to separate you from that pastor. He wants to separate you from that local church. He wants to separate you from your church family. Don't allow him to. The renewing of your mind depends on you having a connection with your pastor. And God will direct you. It's so important. Can I say this? It is so, so important that you let God direct you as to who your pastor should be. I remember, of course, my husband telling the testimony of when he first got saved. Somebody invited him to church. For a year and a half, every week, this man would invite my husband to church. It took a year and a half before my husband agreed. But finally he went. And when he went to the church with him, he heard the salvation message for the first time, and he got born again. That Day and he began serving in that local church. So you can imagine how they valuable and how important and how precious that church was to my husband and that pastor because his life took a total turnaround. His life was truly being transformed in that church. But there came a time when God was, God spoke to him because God was leading him into greater light. And so God led him to different places to where he could come into greater light. Always follow where God tells you to be the pastor God tells you to be under because he's trying to lead you into greater light of the word of God. And my husband then went on to become a pastor. And of course I pastored for 25 years. And I know this, that you have to have the anointing of the pastor in your life to help you in your maturing process. Ephesians chapter four says that that God has, that Jesus gave gifts to the church, the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor, the teacher, that these gifts to help bring the body into maturity, you can mature to a certain level on your own, but you'll never come into full maturity apart from having these five fold gift ministries that Jesus gave as gifts to the body of Christ to help mature you. And the pastor is the most important of those gifts, maybe not the most powerful of those gifts, because the apostle and the prophet are such powerful offices. But the pastor's office is the most important office in the life of a believer because he's going, that pastor is going to help you with that process of renewing your mind and growing up spiritually. So when we come into spiritual maturity, we say, how do we know that we're maturing spiritually? Because we begin thinking and acting like Jesus. That's how we know. The more our thoughts and actions are in line with him and the example he left us, then we know that we're maturing the closer our lives are to the Word of God, that our lives are depicting the Word of God, our conversations, our thought life, our actions are depicting the Word of God. Then we know that we're maturing spiritually. And someone would say, well, I can never live up to the example that Jesus left. I mean, he was a son of God. Yeah, and that's what you are. You're the Son of God. And Jesus was set as our example. That we can come up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is what the Word tells us in Ephesians. And so he is our example of what true spiritual maturity looks like. And so that's what we're Reaching for in our spiritual maturity. I want you to turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles, to Galatians chapter four in verse nine and the Amplified translation, and this is the classic Amplified translation. Before I actually read that passage, I want to make a statement to you, and that is this. I said earlier, a renewed mind is a closed door to the devil. An unrenewed mind is an open door to the devil. I remember one particular time I was praying for someone. I was just really spending time in my daily prayer time. I was praying, and God brought this person to my heart. And so I began praying for this one person. And as I was praying for them, God helped me to know what it was that they were facing, what the attack that the enemy was launching against them. And so I was praying for them in the light of that. And so about a month later, I was in a service, and that person happened to be in the service. And the spirit of God reminded me about that person and how he had directed me in praying for them. And so I turned to that person because God. God prompted me to minister to them in the service. So I asked them to come forward in the service, and they came up and I said, I just wanted you to know that God's care for you is so great that he's had me to be praying for you. And I want you to know what I prayed for you. And that person said to me, pastor Nancy, that's exactly what I've been facing. I said, yes, I understand that, because God allowed me to know that. God told me that. And part of the difficulty was that this person had not really been renewing their mind fully. Now, listen, God will never call someone out and embarrass them publicly. The way I delivered that was not in a way that would diminish them or put them down. I let them know that God cared for them so great he had me praying for them. And so because of that, because the mind was not being renewed or, and let me tell you, every one of us are still renewing our minds. None of us have arrived. There's always some arena that needs to be fortified. And in this particular arena, this person needed to renew their mind further. And because their mind wasn't renewed in that area, the enemy was able to get in and harass their mind. Now, that doesn't mean they're demon possessed. If you're a Christian, you don't have a demon in your spirit. Now, the devil can attach himself to your body with sickness and disease, and he can gain an Entrance to your mind. If he can get you thinking wrong. But that's the only way the devil can harass the mind is through wrong thinking. Well, how do you get him out of the mind? How do you get those thoughts out? By thinking right. You put right thinking in, you renew your mind. And I knew that this person's mind was being harassed, that they were tormented in their mind because they had left the door open through not having a renewed mind. So I called them out and just told them that God's care for them was so great. And so I stood there in the service and I said, this is what the devil has been. He's been harassing and tormenting your mind. Let me tell you what to do. I said, when that thought comes, when that suggestion comes, when that. That torment comes, that harassment comes, answer that thought with the word of God. And I told them the exact scripture to use the Holy Ghost. You say, well, nobody's told me the scripture to use. The Holy Ghost will tell you. He'll direct you to what scripture to use. So I told them, when this thought comes to you, because I knew that thought was troubling and harassing and tormenting that person. I said, this is the scripture to answer to that. To that thought that comes. So they said, pastor Nancy, thank you so much. And they. They said, you know, that is what they were dealing with, because I delivered in a way that's helpful, not in a way that diminishes any part of failure on their part or highlights any part of failure on their part. They were. That's what we're there to do, is to help each other succeed, not point to what they're doing wrong. But if we can supply them with their answer, what a help that is. So someone came up to me later and said, pastor Nancy, don't you know that there was a demon there that needed to be dealt with? And I said, yes, I do know. That's why I gave them the Word. The word will deal with that. That evil spirit that's troubling their mind. What they were wanting me to do, what that person was suggesting that I do, was cast the devil out. Well, what if I told the devil to take his hands off that person's mind? I could do that. But you know what? When they go home, that devil's going to come back and say that same thing and trouble them. What I did was give them something to close the door to the devil. I didn't do their believing for them. I didn't do their answering for them. A Renewed mind, you learn to answer for yourself. You're not relying on someone else to do. You're resisting for you. And I will tell you this, don't be troubled by thinking. I got demons, you know, harassing me and I've got to get someone to cast them out. If you'll get the Word in you, the Word will run them out. If you'll say the Word, speak the word, act on the Word. The Word is enough to run out any troubling thoughts that the devil puts there. And yes, he may even try to get a. If I could say this, like a claw in your mind to where it seems like that you can't even think right. You're trying to think right, but you can't. I tell you what, if you'll just act on the word, worship God. Worship God, Worship God. That is an. That is acting on the Word. Speak the Word and say, I cast down every wrong thought. I will not accept that thought. Fear, I resist you. Doubt, I reject you. If you will talk to those things, I guarantee you those things will fall off your mind. And God will not make you to where you're dependent on someone else. He wants you depending on the Word so you can just renew your mind with the Word. And as you'll act on it, it'll run those things out. The biggest thing I could do for that person was give them the answer that they could put in their mouth. The biggest help was not me answering the devil for them, the biggest help was me telling them what to say. Because then they can close the door and keep it closed for the rest of their life. And so, thank God, that's what the renewing of the mind will do for you. It will teach you to speak the Word so that you keep the door closed to the operation of the enemy against your life. I tell you what, having a renewed mind gives you the best life. And so I cannot encourage you enough. Invest in your spiritual development. Don't just rely on someone else to do your believing for you, do your praying for you. There is such a wonderful place of fellowship with God that you come into whenever you feed yourself on the Word of God and you make it part of your lifestyle, you make it part of your speaking, you make it part of your thought life. And you refuse to act on anything that doesn't line up with the Word of God. Dad Hagin used to teach us, when something comes up, an opposition comes. Ask yourself, what does the Word say about this? And then act in line with the Word. That's what a renewed mind does. So we're so glad you joined us today with Jesus the Healer. We look forward to having you next time. God bless you. We trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us at defresheministries.org to learn of our upcoming meetings, share your testimony, become a partner or visit our online store. This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Dufresne Ministries.