Growing in our relationship with God not only involves building up our inner spiritual person, it also requires our outer man be broken. Paul says later in chapter 8, "If by the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live." God uses outward circumstances to crack our outer man, and as that outer man is put to death, the Spirit of God within us become more visible. In order to experience this life out of death, we have to actively cooperate with what God is doing in our lives, reject illegitimate pain reducers, and have a position-oriented perspective.
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