How To Dress For Spiritual Success!

Today in chapel Pastor Tom Patton from Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA preached a powerful message on a vital transformation in Christianity often known as the 'put on and put off' sermon. Looking at Ephesians 4:17-24 we were encouraged and exhorted to live lives sold out for our Creator.
EPHESIANS 4:17-24
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

20You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.



Paul exhorts the Christian to put off the old man and the old ways of life, those in the sinful depraved life and put on Christ and those things that come with the life set apart for Him. God has saved us and we therefore are to be DIFFERENT then the world, we shouldn't be going with the flow of the culture but against the grain.

2 Corinthians 5:17 explains that we are NEW creations in Christ. That means that there needs to be a radical transformation in the life of those that claim to be followers of Christ.

If you think about it, the way that you dress sends a message to the world and to those that you come into contact with whether you want to believe it or not. You send out a message and whether you intend to do that or it is done subconsciously it is sent out. Now if the material things you wear send out a message how much more do the spiritual things?

Does the "spiritual image" you put out contradict who you are?? So how then can we dress for spiritual success.

1. Put off your decaying clothes (v 22)
-if you have learned Jesus Christ then take your dirty laundry off and get rid of it...the sinful former ways
-have a dress code for eternal life
-you will then be miraculously transformed by Christ
-you should no longer be wearing your heathen hand-me-downs that was your old self, your old manner of life
-everything else that you pursue apart form Christ is worthless and empty
-when we continue in our former ways our ignorance becomes endemic and our hearts become hard and calloused
-"no man becomes a wretched sinner all at once..." -William Barkley
-Romans 1:32

2. Psych up the Divine Mind (v 23)
-"gear yourself up"
-you need to understand what you have to do with your mind
-this will be a continual and ongoing process until heaven
-renew your attitudes and your minds daily by the grace of God
-think right, fill it up with right thoughts
-Philippians 4, 2 Corinthians 3:16-18

3. Put on Designer Clothing (v 24)
-new self is created by God, THE CREATOR, in righteousness, in holiness and in truth
-walk in purity and be who you really are---made renewed in Christ's likeness RIGHTEOUS before the Creator in His clothing!

Don't let the old nature lie to you telling you that sin is unavoidable therefore don't try to fight it off or that the truth of God doesn't apply to you!

May you by the grace and power of God be dressed for spiritual success!!!!