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Good Morning! I can't think of anything that is more destructive on which to meditate than to meditate upon our regrets.

Regret is defined in Webster's dictionary as "a pain of the mind that affects the conscience". Regret is something that begins in the soul but tries to take control of one's spirit, or temperament.

Our spirit is designed by God to sustain our infirmities. It has three primary roles in which it serves the trichotomy. The roles are for worship, conscience and intuition. These are the three ways in which God communicates with the spirit of man.

God only worships with man in his spirit. He won't worship with our mind, will or emotional beings. We cannot truly worship God in our soul. The Bible says that true worshipers "worship God in spirit and in truth". You cannot worship without the spirit. Worship is two way communication with God in the spirit accessing the middle Man-the Man Christ Jesus who remains "the Truth".

The second way God communicates with man is through our conscience. The conscience is the part of mans spirit that is our warning device prior to sin. If we do not heed our conscience then it produces conviction and acts as an alarming device to indicate we are away from God. The alarm is a stimulus that indicates our need of repentance in order to restore our "walk" that we may once again worship with God.

And finally the third way that God communicates with man is through intuition. This is leading, or Spirit led direction. He has promised in Psalm 32:8 to "guide us and direct us in the way in which we should go." In John 16, Jesus promised to give us a Comforter that would "receive of Mine and show it unto you". That's personal revelation from Christ, delivered by His Spirit to our spirit in the inner man in the form of intuition. Intuition IS the "way in which we should go".

When we are living our life in His righteousness we experience great freedom from the power of sin that dwells presently in our members. At times like this, its presence is there, but its power has been relegated to dormancy as we have chosen to reject its influence and choose the Christ life. This is a position of contrition, for we are surely aware of the fact that all we are is a manifestation of Who He is.

This is our eternal life flowing through us and what a joy it is to be in such a position. To maintain this position IN Christ, It requires only submission to the communications of our worship, submission to the promptings of our conscience and submission to the leading or leanings of our intuition. It is through this tri-fold submission that the Brilliance that is Christ will shine.

Sound serene? You bet it does and it is! But chaos seeks to rule and rein in many a man's soul. The outside pressure (or oppression) from the devil is intended to stimulate our soul to reject His communication of worship. Rejecting our worship leaves us vulnerable to satisfy fleshly appetites. Once fed, that temporary soulical satisfaction will grieve our conscience and stave the intuitive leading of the Lord.

When this takes place we have allowed the sin that dwells in our members to regain a position of prominence in our lives. It will leave us searching for light but "beholding obscurity. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night. . ." (Isaiah 59)

This of course is where the devil wants all of God's children; living their life under the influence of the indwelling sin in our members. But when we are living "after the Spirit" that conscience will ring out, both loud and clear in times of worship to reject that principalities prompting! We have an advocate to remain free from sin and to gain our access back to our "position of contrition" when we sin.

And this victory is certain to those who will but submit to the Voice of his conscience in conviction with simple confession. So let me conclude with an explanation of Satan's plan B. If our spirit is strong and we are rejecting sin, his plan B is to work on our soul to get us to regret our sins.

Yes, "if the devil cannot get us TO sin, he will get us to look AT our sins"; sins from the past or even current sins that we may be currently battling but beating! It is that regret, that is to say the "pain in the mind that stunts our conscience".

At times like this we cannot recognize in our spirit's conscience that we are living right for we have begun the process of thinking wrong in our soul's mind. That bad thinking will quickly bring our conscience into condemnation of the devil. We lose our "position of spiritual contrition" for Satan's "position of sinful domination". At this time we will not be able to remain spirit led for we are giving place to the devil and that valuable real estate will be seized in soon to be revealed domination.

In Deuteronomy 9:27 Moses encourages us toward proper thinking when he points out that we should "Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob". Bu then he says that when we remember them we should "look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin. . ." Rather, we are to look at the Covenant God has made with these men.

Likewise in our own lives, as we make mistakes that hinder our walk with God, we need to recognize that we have an "advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous and He is the propitiation for our sins and not only ours but the sins of the whole world". That's a lot of sin! A lot more than mine has ever been or ever will be! He has propitiated it and stands in advocacy when I choose to return unto it.

That is His covenant with us: to stand as an advocate for the sins done in the body. So our choice is to listen "to His voice" of advocacy or "the hiss voice" of accusation.

If you are strong enough spiritually to avoid sin (present), then don't get caught off guard by dwelling on your sins (past).

A QUESTION FOR TODAY'S MEDITATION: "Am I trying to change my life today or am I willing to exchange my life today?"