Helping us break free

So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit. (Romans 7:4-6 NLT)

This is the point - when God puts things so plainly, it helps, doesn't it? You and I died to the influence of sin in our lives - it no longer drives us, but it is still there. The control has been broken, but the temptations still abound, don't they? Since we are united with Christ, we can lean into him when those temptations come, but do we? Or do we just go right along, giving into those temptations as though nothing ever set us free from them? If you are like me, you give in on occasion, but the desire to give in becomes less and less 'pulling' the deeper my walk with him becomes.

We are released from the old way of responding, but we may not realize just how totally free we are from sin in our lives. It can take us a while to realize the chains that once held us captive to our old hurts, habits, and hangups have been broken. Why is that? We have good long-term memories when it comes to those sinful patterns and hurts. The 'neural pathways' have been formed just like deep ruts along a country road. It is hard to realize we don't need to follow those 'ruts' any longer because we have become so used to just following blindly along their path.

Jesus' greatest desire is for us to seek his help in breaking free once and for all from those 'ruts', allowing him to change those neural pathways for good. If you haven't figured it out yet, this life with Jesus is a process of breaking old ties and forming new ones. It is one of letting go of old patterns and developing new ones. As the process is allowed to 'play out' in our lives, we find ourselves drawn less and less toward those old patterns - but it is a process. Processes can take time - they aren't always instant. Even an 'instant camera' like the old Polaroids didn't produce a picture we'd see instantly - they had to develop before our eyes.

The more we work on drawing closer to Jesus, the more these neural pathways that once were so familiar to us will be closed down once and for all. We will be forming new ones designed for our good and not our destruction. The heart may desire to change, but it can take a while for our minds and bodies to catch up with what the heart desires. Our minds can be telling us we don't want to pursue those old habits, but our bodies can crave them because we have trained our bodies to need their influence. When we give these things to Jesus, he goes to work. The process is underway, so don't despair when you don't see immediate change. Just lean in and get as close as you can to him. He will do the work. You can count on it! Just sayin!