lots of thoughts on my mind lately…some that are more consuming than others.
i had an overwhelming moment this morning…as my mind whirred with what i should be doing and with what i needed to buy and with where i needed to be…i came across the cover to an album in my itunes, One Day Live…i only have one song from the album. it’s called One pure and holy passion…and man that song gets me everytime, but it wasnt the song that grabbed me today…it was the cover…a man curled up on his face caught in a moment of worship and it was at this moment that God said to me, “Quit chasing the world!”
“What??? Am I? How Lord?”
And it flooded me how relentless I am in picking up the same old things and once again making them part of my life when I know that it is not what I want. Paul stated this in Romans 7…by saying,
14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
I am a child of God. I am not ignorant to his ways and his workings in my life and yet I find myself stuck in a moment…trapped by lies and walking hand in hand with the world at any random moment. It is the quiet whisperings that become a slow entrapment into that way of life I knew before…and it comes so slowly…it doesn’t slam into my face with a neon sign…sin is so very sneaky…Satan appears in the most enchanting ways with the most beautiful lies and even the most devout follower of Christ finds himself a slave once again to some sin. And it is so dreadful…that moment when you wake up a week, a month, a year later and look around with disgust at who you have let yourself become…
someone once said, how could you know joy if you had no sorrow?
how could you know light if not for dark?
how could you appreciate the calm if not for the storm?
sometimes it is the realization of the heights from where we have fallen that makes us see sin as sin and light as light…
as i emerge from these moments in my life, as i find my way and walk toward the light once again…i imagine myself like the man on the cover of this album…on my face, broken, willing to do and be anything God wants me to be…humbled at his sacrifice…and loved…for i was bought with a price…the son of God gave his life…he bled for me so that i might live…not as the world lives, not for my own gain…but to honor him.
May my one and only passion be to serve and love as my Saviour has done…everything else is just chasing the wind.
