Have you ever had an appetite change? I was asked this question once and it got me thinking about how a person’s tastes tend to change throughout their natural life. It is not uncommon to initially dislike certain foods as a child, only to acquire a taste for it in adulthood; teenagers are known to rapidly change their preference in clothing, music and even friends as they strive to establish their own uniqueness. Accomplishments and failures, hopes and hurts all contribute to changes in one’s tastes and appetites over time.

Spiritually speaking, the question about change in appetite adds clarity to our spiritual walk in Christ. God created us with an inborn, natural appetite for Him, but Satan changed our appetite by developing our taste for the things of our own nature that we see mirrored in the world.

Satan’s plan is to redirect our appetite so that we would fill ourselves with things that are outside of Christ and His kingdom to satisfy our appetite for God (His love, goodness, and power to heal). Satan is king and lord of all these substitutes for God.

So then, when we are brought into the house of God by accepting Jesus’ covenant, our appetite again goes through change as God begins to develop and exercise our senses with the things of Christ. The foundation of truth is key for this change to take root and for us to continue to thrive in God’s new covenant environment. But the foundation key is in the hand of God’s apostolic stewardship and it is through these called men and women that truth is set as the new foundation of the heart.

God starts with a new foundation of truth to rewire our thinking. Our appetite changes when our thinking changes and our thinking changes as the new foundation is installed.

Philippians 2:5
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

What happens when the new foundation is not installed? How does God change a believer’s appetite? He doesn’t. It’s not that God no longer desires to transform a believer’s appetite, but that all avenues He created to give the Holy Spirit access have been blocked by Satan. Satan cons believers into a dark season where he deceptively substitutes deliverance ministry, fasting, and the gifts of the Spirit to replace God’s work of regeneration in the soul.

What kind of deliverance have you been praying for? Whatever challenges you face, whether they are physical, emotional, or mental, where the mindset is so entrenched that you feel that only God can change it, deliverance is pushed on believers in place of God’s daily work in the inner man to form Christ’s nature within.

The miracle of regeneration is the most sought after and the most preached about topic in the false religious system. Many are hungry for change and pray for deliverance because they don’t know any other way to get God involved with the transformation they so desperately seek. People of all ages and all walks of life are in pain. They are challenged to find out what a transformed life looks like to God, but end up using God and His Word as they strive to establish their own uniqueness.

We hear many testimonial motor-mouths who are so involved with their own needs, wants and hurts that once they get started testifying of God’s involvement, don’t stop to consider God’s plan. “Holy Spirit intervention that comes through God’s supernatural power” is the coverall statement that is made in an effort to claim a transformed life through the gifts of the Spirit rather than the covenant stewardship and tools of Christ that God uses to build a relationship with us.

Don’t misunderstand, the gifts of the Spirit are real and they are in operation today, but they do not transform the inner man. This is one example of how Satan shifted the appetite of ministry leaders.

God’s challenge: Believing in the gifts of the Spirit does not seem like something outside of Christ and His kingdom, but when the gifts are railroaded to replace the work of regeneration through our priesthood, it does lead believers outside Jesus’ covenant and that places you outside of His kingdom.

Did you know that God set the tracks for your transformed life in the knowledge of the covenant, not in the gifts of the Spirit? Spiritual transformation happens every day for believers who have accepted Jesus’ covenant, but disowned by those who have strived to enter into God’s house some other way.

A person can receive healing by the gift of the Spirit as God pours out His grace to awaken souls to Him and still not receive divine healing for the soul, leaving the fruits of iniquity untouched by the hand of God.

Jesus pointed this out in Matthew chapter 7, that not everyone who claims to do the work of God is actually doing the work of God.

Matthew 7:21-23
²¹ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

²² Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

²³ And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Jesus defines God’s work of regeneration as the inner miracle where He daily heals the soul of the many scars of iniquity inflicted by Satan while we were in his kingdom of darkness. If we are not taking part in that goal, Jesus says, “I never knew you.”

The reason being that many, despite their testimony that they are seeking deliverance and moving in the gifts, are still working with the record of their own soul in an attempt to find God there. That’s the fleshly gospel, or the gospel that is according to the flesh. (Rom. 8:1)

Did you know that though appetites are changeable, our souls were not designed for change, but for God, the Changeless One. We are in a world where change is inevitable and long for the equity and completion that only God’s fullness in Christ can offer.

If our appetites rule in place of God’s grace and truth, our experience of lack and loss will always lead us to strive for or against change, and this is why so many mistakenly look to the gifts of the Spirit rather than Jesus and His covenant.

God places us in Jesus’ covenant so that the change we experience is Christ-Centered. What most don’t understand is that the “fleshly” gospel is that it is focused on the intangible features of the fleshly nature, namely our signature skills, our moral code, our God-Code, the knowledge we picked up in the world, and the fruits of iniquity. These are the things we know naturally. (Jude 1:10)

If you’ve ever heard the expression that the preaching of the gospel has become so relevant to the world that it has become irrelevant to God, it is because the gospel is misdirected at preaching self and how to get God involved with self.

As Teacher Maria vonAnderseck always says, “SELF” is “FLESh” spelled backwards. To preach a fleshly gospel was just as big a problem for the apostles in the early church as it is today.

2 Corinthians 4:5
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.

Apostle Paul clarifies that he is not preaching a gospel of change based on our natural inclinations with any of the intangible features of “self”. We preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is His covenant.

To reason within ourselves to please God is to resource our natural makeup, instead of reaching to the spiritual (sanctified) things of Christ. Again, preaching self speaks of reverting to the five features of the flesh for building material to know God and build a relationship with Him.

For example, there is a drive in the flesh (God-Code) to predict outcome and demonstrate logical progression which becomes frustrated if it reaches into the knowledge of the world to find a path that can be trusted. Being creatures of knowledge, people want to find a consistency they can build on, but they have a tendency to look for it in the wrong place because of the conditioning of our first birth. It takes grace and truth to reveal Christ and remove confidence from the wandering of logic to the living communication of God’s throne.

We were born into an environment of separation from God and developed tastes around contact with these things that were less than His fullness in Christ, namely the features of the flesh, which is man’s record. We are naturally drawn to our own record to find completion in self. So, it takes a constant stream of grace to daily awaken us from that trance with an urgency to know God rather than ourselves.

And it takes the anointing He set upon the stewardship of His living apostles to frame our new experience with God according to His perfect measure, so as not to pollute and defile our conscience with anything less than Christ. It takes God’s direct involvement to oversee and effect this whole process from start to finish in each cycle of growth.

God did not sanctify the knowledge of the world. He sanctified Jesus (who identified Himself as the truth, signifying that He would be present in His holy knowledge). So, we cannot use the knowledge of the world to separate ourselves to God; attempting to do so overreaches Jesus and offends the Spirit of God.

Colossians 2:8
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

In this verse Apostle Paul instructs believers that there will be ministers who will place confidence in the record of man and not the record of Christ. Their entire faith, being built on self (the five features of the flesh), backfires on them when the Holy Spirit does not give substance to the knowledge being resourced.

This creates a breach in the soul. To identify with that appetite for self creates a loop of condemnation and hopelessness causing the soul to implode as it resists grace in the name of this false identity. The knowledge of the world appears advantageous to the imagination but provides no substance for reciprocation to God.

To get into Godliness and what that looks like to God, we’ll take a quote from Apostle Eric vonAnderseck’s Term Glossary:

Godliness describes the virtue of Christ that is expressed first in His power and then in His fruit that is born in the soul. The godly live by the virtue of Christ, and thus manifest in their reflections the temperance born of the Spirit.

Just as you learn to speak the language of the covenant by studying the elements to know how they give value to Christ; you also grasp the language of spiritual growth and transformation to learn how to talk about the challenge and what it means to overcome in the same way as God – for fruit bearing.

And as fruit bearing is understood from a covenant perspective, you understand that we’re not talking about practicing the virtues of Christ, we’re talking about practicing the knowledge of Christ in our priesthood with the tools God assigned for our contact with Him. The virtues of Christ are a natural outflow of our labor in our priesthood.

• Those who live by the power of God (sanctification and holiness), live by the tokens of Christ.
• To be Godly is to be fruitful.

And that’s what we’re doing. We’re laboring with the things of Christ to allow the Spirit to work His fruit in our soul and multiply His virtues in us.

On the contrary: Thought-therapy is the counsel of the moral code, it is not Godly therapy, for it is not Godly counsel for the heart. It is not God’s thoughts for you. Those who seek after the counsel of the moral code use thought-therapy to address the struggle they experience when faith is a mirror of self. They are betrayed by their own reflection and desire to resolve their issues.

So many times, a believer is led to seek out deliverance ministry because they don’t understand the pain they feel, they don’t understand the makeup and design of their own soul and they don’t know how God tames the unruly appetites of the flesh.

When God’s grace and truth rule the mind then God tames the unruly appetites of the flesh. We must know that our nature is less than God, and to be ruled by a power less than God oppresses the soul because it denies Christ’s fullness.

The nature of man is inclined to look for signs of life in death (the temporal things of this world and the intangible features of our fleshly nature). We are inclined to look for peace in wrestling with things that change, and that’s not God’s will for us.

Our natural appetite to find God in the features of our own self (fleshly nature) is not an absolute authority, but a power to be governed. It can be jarring to learn that many of the things we once naturally identified with in ignorance are less than God’s design in Christ.

God’s call to die to ourselves daily (Col. 3:9; 1 Cor. 15:31) now makes sense. We willingly suffer the loss of previously treasured ideals and goals we ignorantly set for ourselves and for God by our aspirations, principles and imaginations. It is in our daily cycles of growth that we experience God’s direct involvement as we submit to His process of cleansing and healing as He buffers us with His peace.

In their epistles, all the apostles wrote about God’s daily work in the heart. We experience the same daily increase of fruit today as they did. We take the same joy in God’s work today as they did. This is what change looks like to God. (2 Pet. 1:3-4)

The divine change which God thus works within the soul is a return to innocence which only He can affect. God accepts no look-alike, fake fruit, meaning that a person can change his habits, but only God can heal his soul. If you don’t want Godliness to get off track, God’s exhortation is to stay on track with Jesus’ covenant.

Godliness that is worked out through self-guided teaching is something the early apostles warned about. Apostle Paul instructed the saints that many profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, but their faith, never being connected to the things of His covenant, they deny His work in them.

Titus 1:16
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

God ministers the same warning to the church today regarding the good works that believers are given as a religious lens to see Jesus. The good works produced by one’s moral code is reprobate (worthless) in that it does not reflect Christ in His record and thus is powerless to bring change.

God’s change in appetite from the earthly to the heavenly things of Christ means that we no longer reach downward into the features of the flesh, searching for a power to connect to God.

Colossians 3:1-2
¹ If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
² Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.

So, in verse 1 I underlined what we are to seek – those things which are above. That’s a changed appetite. God gave us a new tool kit in Christ. He is our shield against Satan’s suggestions and He is our robe of righteousness before God as our faith begins with grace and is sustained in the tokens of His mercy where His peace buffers our hearts in His care.

The Lord testified of His divine work in us in a recent dream in which I am part of a team of five individuals. We talk and eat together at the same restaurant table and group up later at a gymnasium. One who walked among us is “Doctor Mercy” and He functions like a field medic, assisting those in the gymnasium. What’s interesting is that the staff in His hand emits a tether of light that alternates between gold and blue to strengthen and revive those in need. That was the end of the dream.

Let’s take a look at this divine dream to draw from the symbolism God uses to teach us about how He is healing the church.

The team of five symbolizes the five callings of God’s spiritual government (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers). God offers refuge for His people through the oversight He gives through each calling. (Eph. 4:11-12)

The team working as one unit, talking the same covenant language and eating the same spiritual meat together speaks of unity, just as the strength of a hand having all five fingers intact, acts as one hand.

The gymnasium represents Jesus’ covenant, as it is a place where a form of education takes place in regard to sports and fitness. This symbolizes the body of Christ and how through the oversight of God’s restored government skills are honed and resistance increases strength.

Doctor Mercy represents the Great Physician Jesus (Mk. 2:17), and His work in us by the Holy Spirit as we are active in His covenant priesthood. The mercy of God is defined as His active involvement in our faith, effecting healing in the soul by His staff of righteousness. He is our tether to God and He is our light and life.

God’s mercy is present as the Holy Spirit inhabits His knowledge to enlarge our heart, nourish our heart, and draw faith from our heart. God’s mercy is in the tools of Jesus’ spiritual covenant to initiate a divine exchange, and it is in these things that God renews and strengthens our hearts in faith and in fruit.

God does not call on us for our opinion (how we think or feel He should do things). God calls us to reason with Him on the terms of His living knowledge; to acknowledge, mold with, and submit to the way He values Jesus. The Lord inhabits the knowledge He sets order to, so He delights in rewarding our labor of faith with more of Himself.