Four things we lack

In my copy of John Owen’s Mortification of Sin, J.I. Packer writes a stirring introduction.  He suggests four things which today are insufficiently emphasized, causing modern readers to “suffer from the short-comings of much present-day Christian nurture” and therefore missing much of the significance in Owen’s work.   These four things lacking in today’s writings and preaching are the holiness of God, the significance of motivating desire, the need for self-scrutiny, and the life-changing power of God.    I believe Packer is right.   I want to take a look at each of these in turn and relate them to my own experience with recovery.

The Holiness of God 

Packer reminds us that the Puritans believed that holiness is the attribute of all God’s attributes.  It is what distinguishes God from all of creation “making him different from us in our weakness, awesome and adorable to us in his strength, and a visitant to our consciences whose presence exposes and condemns sin within us.”   When we down-play this, Packer reasons, we sentimentalize love and mercy, making God seem more like a kindly uncle than the One whom, when seen, caused Isaiah and John to come undone.

At the tail end of a relapse last year there was a seismic shift in my spirit that occurred while reading a commentary on Acts 5, the story of Ananias and Sapphira.   You’ll recall these are the husband and wife who died after they lied to Peter about their profits from a piece of land they sold.   The commentary was simple enough, stating the obvious from the text:  When we lie to others, we lie to God.   This is an affront to a holy God.   The Holy Spirit used this simple truth to help me see (again) just what sort of God it is I am dealing with.   If a lie to another person provoked such righteous judgment from God upon Ananias and Sapphira, how much more so would my habitual sexual sin?   Who was I to assume that my sins, which were many, were not shutting me out of God’s presence and courting death at every turn?    God is holy and calls his people to be holy.   We will not and cannot see him if we do not agree with him in this.   Our lack of emphasis on this today is to our detriment.

The Significance of Motivating Desire

Packer, and the Puritans before him, and Jesus before them, would remind us that it is not the outside of the cup that makes us clean but what is inside.   Jesus cares about the desires we nurture within us, not just our actions.   “Too often today,” Packer writes, “the moral life is reduced to role-play, in which prescribed and expected performance is everything and no attention is paid to the cravings, ragings, and hostilities of the heart so long as people do what is thought they should.”   Owen takes us deeper than this externalism, insisting that it’s not just the bad habits that must be broken, but the sinful desires driving them.

I liken this to to the difference between sobriety and recovery.  We have all heard the expressions “dry drunk,” meaning a person who is sober from drinking alcohol but still exhibits all the character defects that come with alcoholism.   It is so easy to get caught up in doing the right thing – putting on a performance – that we overlook the most important part: the heart.    Jesus promises to make us born again.   As I’ve said elsewhere on this site, Jesus didn’t die to make us better; he died to make us new.    This is good news!  Our lack of emphasis on this today is to our detriment.

The Need for Self-Scrutiny

In both Scripture and Owen, much is said about the deceitfulness of one’s own heart.   And yet, Christians today are slow to suspect themselves or each other of self-deception.  Our self-ignorance leads us to “think well of one’s heart and life when God, the searcher of hearts, is displeased with both.”    Owen would remind us to remain vigilant, always examining ourselves in light of what Scripture has to say in order that we might know which desires of ours need to be mortified.

Steps 4 and 10 are helpful guides in addressing this need (taking a moral inventory and continuing to take a daily, personal inventory).   As such, people in recovery may have a leg up in this endeavor, as we are generally more aware than most of the deceitfulness of our own hearts and the lure of disordered loves within us.    This flies in the face of the culture around us, though, even within much of the church.   We are more likely to be encouraged to go after whatever our heart desires rather than be encouraged to search the Scriptures to see how that desire aligns with God’s word.   Whether you have been walking with Christ for decades or are just getting started, we need to always remember that the enemy of our souls uses our desires to tempt us (James 1:4).   Our lack of emphasis on this today is to our detriment.

The Life-Changing Power of God

Both Scripture and Owen taught that at the heart of salvation is a change of heart.  There is a moral change that occurs by which the Holy Spirit induces Christlike attitudes and actions in us.  There is an “expectation that Christians through prayer to Jesus would know deliverances from sinful passions in the heart,” and it is sad, Packer writes, “that today so little is heard about this.”

I’m am writing this just following Resurrection Sunday.   As with every Easter, there are scores of articles written de-emphasizing (if not denying) the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus.   With even this fundamental truth – the one of which without there would be no Christianity! – being cast aside as non-essential, is it any wonder that we fail to believe in a power able to overturn the kingdoms of our heart and make us new creations with new desires?    The scriptures proclaim that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is at work within us.   And yet, far too often in recovery we give more power to our addiction than we do the power of the blood.   Our lack of emphasis on this today is to our detriment.

To conclude, my experience has been that where one or more of these elements are lacking in my life I am more susceptible to my hurts, habits, and hang-ups.   But when I begin each day in awe of God’s holiness, aware of my motivating desires, become willing to scrutinize myself, and rely on the power of God to transform me inside-out, than I am far less likely to fall into sin and far more likely to grow in my desire to be like Christ.

 

Hope Dealers

Every Thursday night I get to be part of an extraordinary event.  Each week over 100 people gather to share their struggles and their victories over addictions, compulsive behaviors, relationship issues, grief, pain, loss and more.   Recovery at Dayton, part of the Recovery at Cokesbury Network, is changing lives in our church and in our community in amazing ways.

There are a myriad of ways in which this ministry is touching the lives of those who have long been overlooked or forgotten or ignored but one of the major ways is that it offers a fresh start to every person.   At Recovery at Dayton everybody matters.  I get to tell people every week that while they may have been dealing or been dealt all sorts of things in the past, here in this place we deal two things: Hope and Freedom.   And we got it in spades.

Why? Because we believe strongly that Jesus is in this place and he is the champion of hope and freedom.   His mission is to set people free from their captivity and to bring rest and peace to the weary.  He has an abundant supply of mercy and hands it out generously.   And even if you don’t believe in him he believes in you, enough to die for you, and if you will keep showing up he will show up in unexpected ways and move in on your life and everything will change.

This past week I got to hand out 15 white chips of hope.  These chips don’t require any time of sobriety.  They are given to those who desire to receive the hope and freedom being freely offered and desire to begin a new life starting today.   One of those 15 who came forward was so grateful to be dealt some hope that he took a picture of his chip and posted it to Facebook:

I want to offer you the same chip today.  While I can’t give it to you personally, I want you to know that Jesus is present and has been calling you.  That you are reading this blog is evidence of that.  He has something he wants to say to you and it’s this:

I love you.   I gave my life for you when no one else would look at you.  If you will start doing life with me you will know freedom like you have never known before.  Just take the first step.

It’s our failures and mistakes and our brokenness which qualify us for this chip, and for Jesus’ love.  Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God (Matt. 5:3).  If you are tired of being sick and tired then you are in the perfect position for Jesus to change your position.   Take that first step and receive your chip of hope.

What next?

Find a group that can support you in your walk.   Find a local AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), NA (Narcotics Anonymous) or SA/SAA (Sexaholics/Sex Addicts Anonymous) group in your area.

Check out our Recovery at Cokesbury link for additional resources as well as information on how you can join one of our meetings if you live near one of our campuses.  You can also view online all the recovery teachings given each Thursday night.

For those struggling with pornography/sex addiction you can also join one of our online support groups at X3 Groups. I lead one of them on Monday mornings, but we have awesome group leaders leading numerous groups all week long.  We also have support groups for spouses!

You can’t walk this walk alone, and the good news is you don’t have to.  Take your white chip of hope today and take your first step towards freedom with others.

Please email me if you need some help in finding a place to connect.  I’d love to help:  recoveryatdayton@gmail.com

Two saying which have changed lives

After talking with a friend this morning I was reminded of two sayings – one a statement the other a question – which have changed my life and the lives of others who have been reading this blog for the past 2 years.   I think they deserve repeating, often.

They are:

 

1. Jesus didn’t die to make your life better.  He died to make you new.   (2 Cor. 5:17).

2. Is this is a sin too great for Me (God) to deliver you from, or is it a pleasure too great for you to surrender?

Consider these two sayings carefully and their ramifications.

For more on both of these see…

God Wants to Make you New, Not Better

How Would you Answer this Question?

 

 

The Glorious Question….what’s your answer?

I think one of the most glorious questions in history is the one Jesus asked the invalid of 38 years in John 5:

Do you want to be healed?

Imagine!  The creator of the universe asking this man that question!   But it isn’t a question he asks only of this man.  He asks it to every one of us.

Do you want to be healed?  Do you want to be made well?  Do you want to be whole?    How we respond to that question is every bit as important as the glory of the question itself.

That Jesus has to ask the question speaks volumes, doesn’t it?  I know from personal experience that the answer to that question is not always what we might expect.    The reason for this is explained just 2 chapters prior to this story:

And this is the judgment: the light has come in to the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (John 3:19)

Jesus is always asking the glorious question to us, every day,  and we often tell him no.   It’s true that the reason is because we love our sin more than God.   Like Gollum with his Precious, we are not keen on parting from the thing which has become our favorite god, the thing we have bowed to time after time.   Even though it threatens to destroy us and everyone we love, we cling to it nonetheless.

Do you want to be healed?    The question offers us a promise that seems too good to be true because we know how evil we are.   We know the power of our Precious.   It has held our attention for so long, with such intensity, that the thought of it being gone from our lives invites all sorts of other questions:    What will I do without it?   What will be expected of me if I’m healed?   What will I run to when I feel alone?  And the big one…

What if it doesn’t work? 

Isn’t that the biggest fear?   What happens if you put all your eggs in the basket named Jesus and it doesn’t work?  What if you step out in faith, go all-in, take the plunge, and you discover that there is no one there to catch you?

If you feel that way you are not alone.  I remember feeling that way, and I talk to many others who do, too.   Particularly if they are professing Christians.    The reasons come in many shapes and sizes but can generally be summed up one of two ways:  We love our sin too much to want to be healed and/or we are afraid God cannot make good on his promise to heal us.    We have more faith in the power of our sin than we do the power of God to heal.   It’s as though we want to protect God from failure.    Oh, how prideful we are!  Is there any limit to our evil?   

This is why for so many of us it is not until we are at the end of our rope that we will say yes to the question, Do you want to be healed?   It won’t be until we have exhausted every other resource, every other “program,” every other step, and have hurt everyone who loves us that we will then hear the question as though for the first time and cry out like the invalid of 38 years, “Sir, I have no one else!”

When we realize there is no one else, we lose the fear of falling into nothing because we see our sin has already brought us there.   I remember when I first heard the words, “God hasn’t brought you to this point to just make you better, but to make you new.”    I so desperately wanted those words to be true!   Though I couldn’t imagine it could be true of me, I knew that either God had to do a miracle in my heart or I was dead.    There was no one else.  I had tried it all.   God was either going to prove Himself as more powerful than my Precious, or there was no God, and the gospel was pointless.

Thanks be to God, He has been more than faithful!   His word is true, and His promises are real.   He says to you and I time and time again throughout Scripture, in fact, more times than any other command, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”

If you have heard Jesus ask you the glorious question, do you want to be healed?  tell him yes!    Do not be afraid, for He is with you, and will never leave nor forsake you.   Nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37)….not even defeating your Precious and creating a new mind and heart inside of you.

Do you want to be healed?   

Redeemed!

In the fourth chapter of Romans, St. Paul is talking about the God who took an old man named Abraham along with his barren wife Sarah and made him the father of many nations and describes Him in this way:

God…who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Rom. 4:17).

I praise God that this is the sort of God we have!   God is willing and more than able to do far more than put band-aids on a broken life.   He calls into existence things that do not exist!

I need to testify to something God showed me last week.   I was driving home from my denomination’s conference office following a meeting for candidates for ordination (that I was invited to such a meeting is a miracle in and of itself!) when I needed gas.   I pulled off the highway and into a gas station and as I was coming out I looked up at the flashing neon sign across the road.  An adult bookstore was right in front of me.   I was alone, with no one expecting me anywhere any time soon.   It was a golden opportunity.

That is, an opportunity for the old me.

The realization that such an opportunity had presented itself to me didn’t dawn on me till I was several miles down the highway.   It was then that it occurred to me that something which used to be so enticing to me and impossible to refuse didn’t even cause me to bat an eye.    There was nothing inside of me that wanted to indulge that old way of life!  I began to sing praises to God in my car as I basked in the knowledge that God had indeed created something in me that did not exist a few years ago.    When I arrived home I couldn’t wait to tell my wife how God has so captivated me by this new life that the thought of going back to the old me seems inconceivable!    God did this!

When I was in a meeting with pastors who would decide if I was fit for ordination I was asked of what my life in “recovery” consists.   I took that opportunity to say I don’t think of myself in “recovery” any longer because God has made me a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).    Instead, when it comes to sexual addiction I prefer to say I am “redeemed.”   I have been delivered from sin, from death to life.   I am no longer bound by the chains of addiction but free to look at it presented on a platter across the street and say, “Nope, that Chad no longer exists,” get in my car and drive on.  Praise be to God!

If you feel as though you are shackled and chained to something you can’t imagine ever being free from, there is good news for you!   There is a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not yet exist!   He did it for me and I know He is willing and able to do it for you, too.

My new favorite song is Redeemed.  Give it a listen.   This can and will be your testimony one day.

The Two (Different) Types of God’s Love (and why it matters)

I am reading the great revivalist, Charles Finney’s, lectures about revival.   Finney lived and preached and prayed until his death in 1875, before which he led the Second Great Awakening, a revival that swept through America and saw hundreds of thousands come to know Christ.   It has been said of Finney that just the sight of him would cause people to fall to their knees and repent to God for having been in the presence of such a holy man.    His work continues to point people to Jesus today, including myself, as evidenced by the page dedicated on this blog to showcasing the pre-revival work he would require to be done, which changed my life when I did it myself.

In my reading last night I came upon a couple phrases I was unfamiliar with in large part because Finney is writing in the 19th century and the meanings of words often change.    He was talking about the “love of complacency” and “disinterested benevolence” and in the context they both sounded like good things, though different.    After Googling it I found a great article that explains all of it in great detail (and it’s worth reading!).    At the risk of messing it up, Finney distinguishes between 2  types of love God has for us.  One is a selfless love of “benevolence” which seeks to see the whole world saved.   It’s the sort of love which compelled God to send His Son into the world.   The other, however is a love God has reserved for those who walk in righteousness, who strive to walk holy, as He is holy.    This is the love of “complacency” or, in 21st century language, “approval” and “friendship.”    Jesus said, “You are my friends if you obey my commands” (John 15:14).

This distinction – between the general benevolence of God to all and the particular love of God towards some – rocked my world a few years ago and was the thing I fought against most in my transformation.    My sin blinded me to God’s holiness for so many years that it became necessary, and easy, to believe the love of God was uniform and universal, in spite of my sin.   I remember saying in an interview once, “If God has loved and saved me, and knowing the mess I am, then surely everyone must be loved and saved!”   How I presumed upon God’s love!  I was guilty of the charge Paul lays out in Romans 2:4ff…

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

I was silenced, shut-up, by God’s word.   The only way out was for me to confess that I did not truly love God with the love of “complacency” but merely one of “benevolence.”  I was not truly known by God as a friend, but only in a general sense, in the same way God loves all the world.    When I confessed this  – when the truth became clear to me – my heart’s cry then and still today is that I would be known and loved by God as a friend!   And what a joy it is to know God as friend!

When you come to know this particular love of God reserved for His friends you know what it means to walk in the Spirit rather than the flesh.   You begin to see the difference between a walk that was enabled by God’s kindness, which was for the purpose of leading you to true repentance, and a walk that is empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, which is reserved for the “children of God.”   And this is not a spirit of fear, but one of adoption, by whom we are able to cry out “Daddy!  Father!” (see Rom. 8:9, 13-17), and through Whom we are able to crucify the flesh, live free from the sin that has enslaved us, and be used by God as instruments of righteousness (see Rom. 6:5-14).

Below are the concluding remarks from the article I referenced above about Finney.    I recommend reading it in it’s entirety, but here is a snippet:

It is the grand truth in the study of God, that “God is love”(1John 4:8). And, anyone who professes to know God, while walking disobediently, exhibits neither disinterested benevolence nor the love of complacency toward God or man. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His Commandments: and His Commandments are not grievous” (5:3). The essential or fundamental difference between disinterested benevolence and the love of complacency, is that disinterested benevolence is owed to all without regard to character, i.e., “For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life”(John 3:16), while the love of complacency is due only those who are holy or lovingly obedient, i.e., “He that hath My Commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him”(14:21).

The danger of confusing these terms that Charles G. Finney labored his life to teach the Philadelphian Church of the 1800’s, is that:

(1) The Ungodly will claim that, if the God who is love died for the world, then all men will be universally saved, e.g., Universalism. But, that would be to neglect the paramount truth that only those who “believe on the LORD Jesus Christ” shall “be saved”(Acts 16:31), because that only is the “faith which worketh by love”(Galatians 5:6).

(2) The Backslidden will maintain that obedience to the Moral Law is not only unnecessary for salvation, and that, outright disobedience to the same Moral Law does not separate us from the love of God. “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear”(Isaiah 59:2). It would be the same as if they advocated that it is unnecessary to love God with all your heart– as demanded by the Moral Law (Matthew 22:36-40)– in order to be saved, i.e., “But if any man love God, the same is known of Him”(1Corinthians 8:3). Further, they would be purposely obscuring the fact that “whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not”(1John 3:6), and that “if we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the Truth”(1:6). And,

(3) The Honest But Ignorant Saints will become so confused by an improper understanding of the love of God, that they will often find themselves falling back into sin, making little headway in their Christian walk, while finding their pace to be much like the Laodicean Church around them. “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the Oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat”(Hebrews 5:12).

Do You Want To Be Healed?

What is freedom, and what is bondage?  Many Christians try to have it both ways.  They want the freedom of living their own lives, inviting God’s presence on their terms, but never entering into the life of liberty in the Spirit that God intends for them.  Undeniably lukewarm, they possess the worst of both worlds.  They neither live in horrible, outward sin nor in the wedded bliss of the first love.  Since they love their lives in this world, they will not abandon their lives to Jesus.  Therefore, they do not really get to enjoy the pleasures of sin nor the glorious, overcoming life in the Spirit.  Instead, they live in a dismal, gray world which exists between the two extremes – all under the nice sounding title of “being balanced.”  The reality is they live in a spiritual ghetto.

 

~ Steve Gallagher, “Living in Victory” (pg. 150)

 

For a long time I lived in the spiritual ghetto described above.   I became convinced that I had a “shadow side” which was simply part of my make-up.   So convinced was I of this that I insisted others must learn to either love me “as is” or get out of my life.    I once even told my own mother to never speak to me again because she was “toxic to my recovery” as an addict.    What was so toxic?    Her telling me that I was in bondage to sin, not sex, and freedom could be found in Christ.

When you are an addict – to what or whomever – the promise of freedom can sound like  a cruel joke.    When one is so wrapped up in a sinful pattern, as I was, it is nearly impossible to hear truth as something liberating rather than infuriating.  

There is a beautiful story John tells in his gospel of Jesus coming upon an invalid of 38 years.   Jesus asks this man what might at first seem to be a curious question:

Do you want to be healed?   (John 5:6)

Do you want to be healed?  What a glorious question!   And how equally terrifying!   An outsider might find this a curious question, but the one bent over from sin for decades knows it’s import.   We know this question is not always met with a resounding YES! welling up from the depths of a broken, needy heart.   We know that there is a huge part of ourselves that loves darkness more than light, that cherishes our sin like Gollum clinging to his Precious, that doesn’t want to face the responsibility that true freedom would entail.   Yes, it’s a pig sty, but it’s my pig sty, we cry. 

I have a hunch that Jesus learned to ask this question early on in his ministry after encountering far too many people who refused to be made well.  They refused the freedom offered them because they did not believe it possible to achieve.  

Do you want to be healed?

The question still lingers for each of us today whether you be an invalid, an addict, an impatient spouse, an uninvolved parent, a greedy employer or a prideful pastor.   

Jesus does not ask a question of us that he is not fit to deliver upon.   When he asks, he asks in hopes that perhaps this time you have had enough with living in a spiritual ghetto and would like to taste and see that the Lord is good.   He would love to introduce you to a life of freedom where his exhortation to “go and sin no more” no longer sounds like a cruel joke but an invitation to a life you never dreamed possible…until this very moment.

Do you want to be healed? 

 

 

The Sin of Self-Gratification: Taking on the “M” Word (Part II)

Introduction: In the second part of this series I intended to outline some practical ways you can break free from the sin of self-gratification, particularly if this is a habitual problem for you.  However, as I got to writing I felt God leading me back to the issue of the heart, for that is where it all begins and ends.   Before we can even think about the “hows” of freedom we must reckon with the Why and the Way.   Both are the same:  Jesus.    Thus, the “hows” will come in part III and IV.    What follows here will sound harsh and heavy to some and salve and grace to others.   I know that when I was in the depths of my sin, which I called an addiction, I took offense to those who shot straight with me.   Looking back, I can see it was God’s mercy and the Holy Spirit drawing me.   My pride blinded me to it all, however, until I lost it all.    I don’t want you to have to lose everything before you wake up to real dangers of the fire you are playing with and the distance it has and will put between you and God.   I pray that God would use my offering here to draw us all closer to Himself.

In the first part (read HERE) I attempted to explain that this is first and foremost a matter of the heart.   If you are stuck in a cycle of self-gratification (masturbation) you won’t have real freedom until you lay down all your excuses and rationalizations for doing it and reckon it for what it is:  sin.   You must come to a similar place as King David in Psalm 51 who cried out,

Against you [God], you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment (51:4)

Without first repenting, the road towards holiness, which is God’s will for your life (1 Thess. 4:3), cannot begin.    Let me say a word here about what repentance is NOT.

Repentance is not being sorry that your life is a mess because of your mistakes.   For many years I cried out to God to help me stop doing the things I was doing but my motives were selfish.    I was sorry that I got caught or sorry over how all this made me look to others or sorry that others were upset and disappointed in me.   I was fearful that I might lose my family, my job, that someone “important” might find out, and even sorry that my work in ministry, which I took great pride in, might be hampered by my sinful choices made in secret.

I have found that many Christians, particularly those in some form of ministry (self included), want freedom from their addiction to pornography or self-gratification because they sense that it is preventing them from being all that they could be in their vocation.   This is not repentance but spiritual pride.     A great example of this is found in Acts 8 with the story of Simon the Magician.   Simon became a Christian and desired to be great in the work of the church.   When he saw the power the apostles had to impart the Holy Spirit he craved it for himself.  He wanted to be used mightily by God!   Who doesn’t, right?   But Peter’s admonition is sobering to all of us who desire to be great in our ministries:

You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you (Acts 8:21-22).

Friends, if you desire freedom from your addictions or hang-ups so that you can be a better pastor, youth leader, worship leader, Sunday school teacher, husband, wife, parent, friend – whatever – then your heart is not right before God, nor are your intentions.   Freedom comes only when we see ourselves in the pure light of God’s holiness and desire nothing more or less than to be in fellowship with him.   When we realize that without holiness we will not see the Lord (Heb. 12:14) we are on the path of godly sorrow which leads to life rather than our selfish worldly sorrow which brings only death ( 2 Cor. 7:10).

When I realized this about myself it changed the way I pray.  No longer do I pray as I once did, asking God to increase my ministry or make me useful or even great in His kingdom.   Instead, my constant heart’s cry is that I might know Him more fully, intimately and truly.   And not only that I would know Him, but that He would know me.    That I would be counted among his friends.   Jesus said his friends are those who obey him (John 15:14).   I want to be Jesus’ friend!   Do you?

God’s word declares that those who are “in Christ” have had their flesh crucified with Jesus and are raised again to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4).   Paul goes on to say in that same chapter that those who have been united with Jesus in his death have been set free from sin.   Therefore, “let not sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Rom. 6:6,12).   He concludes,

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.  For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (6:13-14)

Sin will have no dominion over you!   This is GOOD NEWS!    Jesus didn’t die on the cross for you and I just to make us better, more well-adjusted people in the midst of a fallen world.   He died to destroy the works of the devil and to make you and I into NEW creations!  (2 Cor. 5:17).    The extent to which we are not walking in this newness of life and freedom from sin is not because God’s word has failed but because we refuse to die.   Our pride tells us we are just fine with God and God is just fine with us.  We sing “I Am a Friend of God,” convincing ourselves that if we sing it enough it must be true while lacking the self-control and the obedience that comes from being crucified with Christ and alive in His Spirit.

The reason I am spending so much time on this, even at the risk of coming across as harsh, is because I would still be dead in my sin if it weren’t for people speaking hard truth into my life.   I assume most of my audience here are church-going people who have convinced themselves over time that their life with God is an 8 on a scale of 1-10 but would be a 10 if they could just rid themselves of this “one little problem.”     I know this because I said the  same thing for over 20 years!   It wasn’t until God’s word pierced my heart and showed me that my so-called “righteousness” was nothing but filthy rags so long as I justified my lust as an addiction I was saddled with as opposed to sin which Christ died for.

But upon seeing it for what it truly is – sin – the remedy became a reality in my life.   Not overnight.   There is a phasing out period that many will experience.   But the bondage will be gone.  No longer will you feel as though you cannot say no when temptation strikes but you will find that you have a real choice in the matter: to obey or not.   It is the Spirit of God at work within you, causing you to will and to do His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).   As we learn how to put off the “old man” and put on the “new” we will find that there is great joy in obedience and great freedom in holiness.

I hope you’ll join me for the next post as we examine practical ways we can put off the old and put on the new.