Con’t from Friday:   Friends:  In early 2017, I wrote a series called ‘Let There Be Light’.  It was the original work, a short series, that was the catalyst for the Daily Light devotional studies.   Chapter II of that original series was “The Default Program”.   I continue to receive regular feedback from people from all walks of life who tell me that reading The Default Program opened their understanding as to the operation and function of the sin nature that dwells inside all human flesh with its purpose to keep non-believers blinded and separated from the light of God…and to keep believers from growing in their relationship with God and becoming all that God desires for them to be as to bearing much fruit.  People share that the information provided in this series helped them to come to a personal relationship with God and has helped them to grow in their relationship with him.   Thus I want to share Chapter II of the series with you over the next 4 days of Daily Light.  I pray that God will use it to give you freedom and power to experience more of His love and purpose for your life ‘so that’ you can have more light to shine His light out into the darkness of the world around you.   🙂 Don Hester

The Default Program (Chapter II – 3 parts)

Identifying and Understanding the Default Program  (Chapter II, Part 3)

We have carefully sought to establish that all men, as a consequence of the ‘fall’, are born with a ‘sin nature’ that is at work inside their body. The ‘sin nature’ is also identified in the bible as the old self, old man, and the flesh.  The sin nature belongs to the realm of evil and is controlled by Satan.  We defined this realm in prior posts as the ‘dominion of darkness’.   Its purpose is to create a false reality, an illusion, to blind the mind ‘so that’ it cannot ‘see’ the truth and light of God.   Its purpose is to keep men in darkness.

II Corinthians 4:4 NIV   “The god (Satan) of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light..”

1 Corinthians 2:14:   The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Romans 8:7-8 NIV   “…because the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God’s law nor can it do so.”

Galatians 5:17-23 NIV “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”

The sin nature has such ‘influence’ over the mind that it can create the illusion that the truth of God is foolishness.   It seeks to make the mind hostile to the truth of God.  From the time of our birth, the objective of the sin nature is to set the mind on a path of self-gratification as defined by the sin nature that is in contrast to and in opposition to God’s design and intention as to the ‘truth’ of how we are designed to function in life.  From birth, the default program of the sin nature goes to work to ‘blind’ the mind from ‘truth.

The bible divides all men into two classes.   These classes represent the difference between children of God or children of the devil, spiritual or of the flesh, believers or non-believers.  It defines the difference between actions, behavior, and attitude of the old man and the new man and those that are born of the flesh, or born of the Spirit.

The sin nature has a different agenda as relates to its objective for the two classes.   It uses different approaches and techniques to achieve its purpose within each class.   We will simply refer to the two classes as believers and non-believers.  Most of what we have defined heretofore speaks to the effect of the sin nature as relates to non-believers.  Its primary objective is to keep a non-believer as a non-believer.  To keep him ‘blind’ and in darkness to the light of truth about God.  To keep him from ‘divinely knowing’ God.   The default program of the sin nature literally installs a ‘block’ over the light of ‘truth’.  It is not that non-believers are unwilling to see the light of truth, to see ultimate spiritual reality, or to see God’s highest and best for us.  No.  It is that the effect of the operation of the sin nature literally makes a non-believer ‘unable’ to see, to come to, the light of truth.

Once a person comes to ‘divinely know’ God and belongs to the ‘believer’ class, the sin nature’s focus and objective shifts to a secondary agenda.   That agenda is to keep believers from becoming a ‘mature’ and fully functioning believer within God’s design and intention and plan.   The sin nature, the old self/man, the mind of the flesh, continues to work inside of the mind of a believer to keep them from becoming all they can become as a believer.   The default program of the sin nature uses schemes and tactics within its ability to install and re-play preconceived and erroneous beliefs and limited or false ideas and works to keep its programming as the minds primary ‘default’ go-to program. The default program’s primary mission is to keep the ‘old’ way of thinking and acting as the default go-to in our thinking and decision making process.

The sin nature’s default program, from our birth, works to define the ideas and thinking that drive our activity and our ideas. As an apostle and a ‘believer’, Paul wrote:

Romans 7: 23 NIV   “..but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members…”

The ‘mind’ of the sin nature, is referred to in the New Testament translations as the ‘sinful nature’ and the ‘flesh’. It is best defined in Romans 8:7-8 NIV  “The sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”

The first question of the Westminster Catechism is:   What is the chief end of man?  The answer given is:  The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30-31, Luke 10:27 NIV “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

John 10:10 NIV   “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they you may have life, and have it to the full.”

John 14:27 NIV   “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.”

God’s purpose and intention in creating us is ‘so that’ we can enter into a personal relationship with him ‘so that’ we will glorify him and live our life to the ‘full.” God designed us within our three dimensional capacity of mind, body, spirit, to have the ability to experience ‘life’ within a prescribed order of expression that he defines as ‘full’.  Not half-full or partially full, but ‘full’.  God designed for us to have a ‘full’ body/mind/spirit experiential understanding of love, peace, joy, happiness, and understanding.  He designed us to have an internal hierarchy of needs that causes us to ‘seek’ to fully achieve the highest level of satisfaction and gratification related to his design for the fulfillment and expression of those needs.  God designed what our needs would be and he designed the ‘source and supply’ for how we would fully achieve those.  He wired us to fulfill our needs within his design for fulfillment.   God designed that our ‘needs’ can only be fully realized and experienced  in and through an interactive and dependent relationship with him.   God designed our internal operating system to be connected to his operating system.   God designed that all of our needs to achieve ‘full’ on the satisfaction/gratification reality gauge required our being necessarily dependent on him/God to be source and supply for our needs.   God designed the requirement into our human operating system that we could not achieve ‘full’ status in our joy, peace, love, understanding, without having his provision of source and supply.  God designed our operating software to work in conjunction with his operating software ‘in order’ that the ‘full’ operating objectives and system potential could be realized and achieved.  (conclusion tomorrow)