The Plumbline

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. (Colossians 3:5, 10-11) Put to death...put on your new nature. These are very clear instructions - put the old away, put on the new. Stop going back to the old - stick with the new. How? Be renewed - we need a renewal process to occur. It is not enough to just say 'yes' to Jesus - one must press in to know him well, forsaking all manner of sin, and embracing this new life in Christ with all the passion we once put into pursuing our sin! In counseling realms, we call this the 'put off - put on' dynamic. We 'put off' some behavior that is not good for us to pursue and we replace it with one that is honorable, upright, an...

God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out his good purposes. (Philippians 2:13)  When God enables us, he makes us able, giving us the power or ability, as well as the means by which to live holy and upright lives. Consider who is doing the enabling and we might just begin to see our course of action as different than what we might have originally believed it ever could be. On one hand, we work hard to obtain or realize a goal, without anyone really helping us realize that goal. On the other hand, when someone comes alongside, bringing talents we don't possess and apply those talents toward the end goal, we might just realize the project comes to fruition quicker and easier than if we struggled to do it alone. There is something about being enabled to do something which gives us a certain freedom or liberty to pursue it with a greater passion and purpose, isn't there? Imagine your spiritual goals. You should have some, you know! If you don't, the...

Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace. (Romans 6:12-14) The command is to 'not let sin control the way we live' - the action on our part is to not give in to sinful desires. Can our desires actually change over time? Yes, both physically and spiritually. We might not like a particular food as a child but find ourselves enjoying it as an adult. What happened? Our desires changed. In much the same way, a desire that led to us taking some action that led to sin in our lives can change. How? We get into the Word of God, allow him to change our heart, and the mind...

I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (Ephesians 3:14-19) God's people will continue to struggle with the influence of those 'religious individuals' around them who seek to 'bind' them with rules and regulations. In Paul's epistle to the Galatian church, he recounted the purpose for the Law of Moses - to point out the need for a Savior - but he also reminded them how impossibl...

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. (Havelock Ellis) Since we have such a huge crowd of men of faith watching us from the grandstands, let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up; and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us. (Hebrews 12:1) We make moment-by-moment decisions to let go or hold onto whatever makes us feel good, validates our feelings, or determine to be of some value to us. To be painfully truthful with you, I have held onto some things I would have been better off letting go of, determined somethings to be of great worth that really had very little worth, and listened to my emotions way too much in this lifetime. Those things only served to trip me up - keeping me in a place I didn't want to be. When I finally let go of what I thought was so important to hold onto, I found myself pursuing G...

Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, “God is trying to trip me up.” God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer. (James 1:13-15) Did you realize that sin actually grows in the dark? That is why it is so wrong for us to hide our sin - in the dark it has a greater chance of growing. We lust and that leads to looking - looking leads to action - trying to stop leads to us thinking about that sin time and time again. It is a cyclical thing. Shame makes us want to hide our sin - but that is the worst thing we can do when we sin. Don't conceal your sin - confess it. Sin needs to be brought into the light in order to be free from it. "You can’t whitewash your sins and get by with it; you find mercy by admitting and leaving th...

When I was much younger I first heard the saying, "Mountains out of Molehills". Have you ever heard that one? It is that kind of behavior that some would refer to as 'histrionic' - kind of always recalling the past and making WAY more out of it than we should. There have been times I have latched onto a memory of something I have done or said and done just that - made WAY more out of it than I should have. It was a 'slip' of the tongue, an action not becoming a child of the King, or a moment when all sensibilities just melted away and I indulged way too much. In an of themselves, those things mattered, but they didn't deserve the continued attention I paid to them by looking back all the time and recounting the 'depth of my sin'. We make mountains out of what really was just a little puff of dust in the scheme of things! A "mountain-maker" is kind of 'over-reactive' - there just isn't the 'substance' to make a mountain...