Choosing Not to Listen

     We all have temptations. We all have feelings and desires coursing through our bodies and our bloodstreams. It can be difficult to combat. We do have the Holy Spirit within us but though we do feel His presence in our lives it is not often in the same way as the pounding of the heart or the whispering of the mind or the yearning of the flesh. The Spirit speaks to us and the world screams.

     When in the midst of struggle or just in the day to day we all feel like something. I feel like watching a movie, I feel like going out, I feel like doing something I shouldn't; but what is that? Have you ever wondered? Think about that statement, “I feel like...” Your thoughts are clearly separate from that desire as you think about them. This raises the question, is this feeling an expression of your conscious desire or are you experiencing a sensation whose origins are outside of yourself?

     Our bodies do not control us, nor does the world around us and yet we yield command to feelings and to sensations all the time. This thought came to me today as I thought about why I find it so hard to write when writing is something I want so much to do. Why is it that I never feel like writing? More to the point, why do I so often actually feel repelled by the idea? Now some might argue that it is because I don't really want to write (trust me, not true) but this goes beyond that one example. How often do I read my Bible? How often do you? How many excuses do we all make every day and how often do we conveniently fall back asleep and so find ourselves without time? Why do the people of God so often deliberately avoid doing something that is neither painful nor terrible? Why do we fail to pray?

     It would seem that what we are dealing with is the voice of the flesh, that worldly whisper that would drive us from the good and the right. Why it took me so long to think on this I cannot say but we know that we carry with us still the nature of the old man and is it any surprise that he struggles against us? We feel it's push and it's pull on our hearts and mind and it has us convinced that that sensation means something.

     But it doesn't.

     It's just a feeling. That tug on your heart, that pressure in your chest is nothing more than a three-year-old tugging on daddy's ankle as he tries to walk away. We feel it sure, but it has no real power to alter our course. The Christian is free from the controlling influence of sin. We are servants and sons of God now and no longer slaves to evil.

     I have often struggled with how difficult walking in the spirit can be but I think I'm beginning to truly see now that the words of temptation were only loud because I was listening and the hold of the flesh only seemed strong because I rarely tested its grip. The Spirit of God resides within us, we have power available that is greater than anything and can never be exhausted. The devil is the father of lies and what he has wrought in the world works on much the same principle, deception.

     Stop listening. Pull back. Look away.

     Walk free.

“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.”

(Galatians 5:16-17)

In the Light of Failure

It is easy to get discouraged.  We are all keenly aware (or should be) of how often and easily we fail, and it can be difficult to bounce back.  When we sin, often for the 'nth' time, we tend toward despondency, towards listless regret; we lose our focus on God because we feel so far away from Him.  It can be easy to wallow in our failure.

Failure is part of our experience.  We are not glorified yet and we still carry around the corpse of the "old man", our sin nature still hangs around for the rest of our earthly years.  Part of being a Christian is God chipping away at the power that nature has over us and making us more and more righteous but the process takes time and there's a lot of stuff to chip off.

In the midst of our failure though, there is hope.  When we feel lost in our own darkness, when we feel that we cannot look into our Father's eyes because of the mud on our hands, we have to go back to the beginning.  Jesus didn't come to die for good people, God didn't save perfect men, we are all sinners saved by grace and His love comes to us not in the light but in the darkness.

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
(Romans 5:1-8)

We cannot lessen God's love for us by our actions, He loved us when we were at our very worst.  Now as sons and daughters who have failed Him in the moment we are in a far greater position then we were before.  His love has been shed abroad in our hearts and His Spirit resides in us to bring remorse yes, chastisement yes, but hope and love and mercy as well.

It may be hard, to go to Him again and repent, but repent we must.  We must use that shame to strengthen our resolve, to sure up the defenses for the future.  Prayer and study and faith and determination will work together to forge a far better tomorrow, and every day God is chipping away at the stone; there will be a beautiful sculpture there one day.

There is a temptation to run from God when we have failed but if we turn from God to what  do we turn?  We already know that there is no salvation apart from Him so it is to Him we must turn for forgiveness and renewal.

"...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ..."
(Philippians 1:6)

God will complete His work in us, we will find ourselves in glory one day.  At the end of the age we will stand perfect, the finished work of God.  In that day we will be free from the sin and temptation that has plagued our lives and we will rejoice and sing praise to God for His work.  Until that day we must return to Him again and again for the renewing grace and inexhaustible mercy that only He has.

We must not give up, to mourn overly for sin is to give it greater power than it deserves.  Christ's death defeated all our sin: past, present, and future.  We must not let our failure loom over and above the consummate work of Christ.  We fail and we will all fail again in the future, but He has never failed.  God is always there, waiting to forgive, eager to reconcile, waiting for His sons and daughters to return home.

To Be Better.

I want to be better.  A common thought, wouldn't you say?  As a Christian I am acutely aware of my need for improvement and of my current failings.  I look into the box that is me and see a lot of things, most of them old and broken, many of them dirty, some of them dangerous.  Again and again I revisit the old familiar sins and my hands and my mind move to the rhythm of music I wish I didn't know.  Again and again I wake up later with my newly purchased regret and wonder why I didn't just...not.  I want to be better.

Actually...I don't.

I'm tired of trying to be better.  I'm tired of trying to improve, to renovate, to renew.  Worst of all I cannot help but deny the single obvious truth that better isn't good enough.  Better just means I've pumped some air into the same punctured tires, oiled the kinked chain, and tightened the broken pedals as if that will do anything to really improve the machine.  I don't want to be better.

I want to be new.

Better is a fresh coat of paint, new is a whole other house.  Better is a set of replacement tires, new is an entirely different car.  Better is a patch-job, new is new.  When Adam tasted sin and cursed us all we started to break, getting more and more run down, moving farther and farther from what we were; I don't want to be a better broken thing.  I want to be a new creation.  I don't want to be a zombie, an old carcass propped up so it can shamble around, I want to be remade.  And thank God that's exactly what He promises.

I read my Bible and I see that we aren't promised better, we're promised new.  We're promised a new robe that swallows up and absorbs the old tattered clothing and leaves us decked out as kings.

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him"
(2 Corinthians 5:1-9)

This house we now inhabit -this body- is that run down crack-house at the end of the block, the one with the peeling paint and shutters that hang on by one nail each.  Yes it functions as a house but only just.  One day that house is going to collapse but I don't worry about death so much because I'll just be moving out, moving up (cue The Jefferson's Theme).  God has a whole new house waiting for me, waiting for us, and it's greater than we can imagine.

Even now I know that I don't have to suffer the way I have before, I don't have to live the way I used to.  I may have to live in this old house for a bit longer but I don't have to live like this house.  You see I've got a new landlord.  He bought the property and in exchange for my new lease on life He expects me to mow the lawn and paint the walls and fix the roof, but He also pays for it.

My strength isn't enough to do new, it's not even enough for better.  God saves us yes, but He also empowers us.  We are free, free to follow Him, free to turn our backs on the sin we  always followed, free to face the evil that kept us down, free to grab the whip from the enemies hand and stand in defiance because our Father is standing beside us!  Free, I want free.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

So I don't want to be better.  I don't want to settle for better.  I want new.

I have fallen, fallen so many times I sometimes forget what it's like to stand.  Yet I press on.  I have not, am not, will not ever give up!  I will walk this narrow road through the power of God in me because I know what lies in the ditch that runs on either side.  I know the man I am apart from God, and there is no way that man could ever drum up enough better to even be worth the attention it would require for God to damn me.

Forget better.

I'm going to be new.