Holding back?

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's desires will follow!

Give yourself completely to God. What does that actually look like on a daily basis? It could be we spend a little less time on the tablet randomly searching social media feeds, giving that time instead to exploring what God wants to teach us through his Word. It might mean we spend time with others instead of always being on the go. It might also mean we just get quiet before God and listen to what he wants to say to us. God has likely been showing us how to 'give ourselves completely to him', but we haven't been hearing what he's been saying.

Use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. That is a pretty practical instruction, isn't it? Take your thoughts, give them to God. Allow your emotions to be settled by God. Use your talents as God directs you. Your whole body - nothing left out. This may be the rubbing point for many of us all because we want some 'small part' of our lives to be 'our own'. We don't want to have to give it over to God. The good news is that you don't 'have to' give it over, but if you choose to give it over, great things are about to happen! We won't know what those might be until we determine to let go of whatever it is we are holding back. Just sayin!

Bundle Up

A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong. (Tecumseh)

If you have ever tried to resist temptation with one tactic repeatedly, finding it just didn't work as well as it should have, it is probably because we need more than one 'twig' in our bundle of 'temptation resistors'. Temptation comes at us one way today, another tomorrow. Each time it comes, we need the 'right' tactic to resist it. It could just be that the 'tactic' you have been utilizing is no longer working because your 'enemy' knows that tactic well enough to 'skirt it'.

Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life. 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 1:12-15)

I used to think the 'enemy' of my soul was just the devil, but I have long since come to realize that my own desires can be an even greater enemy at times! When we don't acknowledge that we have desires that might be a little too 'self-directed' and oftentimes even 'self-defeating', we won't develop any tactics to overcome those types of temptations (the ones from within). Yes, we have an enemy (the devil) who'd like nothing more than to see us trip and fall, then live under a load of guilt and shame for having fallen. We have an 'internal enemy' we often blame for our falling, giving the devil just a bit more credit than he is due!

If all our tactics to deal with temptation are designed to tell Satan to get behind us, we might just be missing the ones we need to tell our inner 'lusts and desires' to get squared away! Satan doesn't tempt me to cheat on my diet - my inner 'lusts and desires' do. Satan doesn't tempt me to overspend - my lack of self-control does. Are you beginning to understand? We need 'many twigs' in our bundle of tactics - those that address the outright attack by our enemy (Satan) and our own 'self-defeating' lusts and desires. Once we realize there are different 'forces' at work, we can ask God to help us formulate the best plan, so we are prepared for either type! Just sayin!

Best, Good Enough, and Just Enough

The desires of good people lead straight to the best, but wicked ambition ends in angry frustration. (Proverbs 11:23)

Desires go a long way in determining the end results. Integrity - lives lived out according to God's plan and purpose, with honesty and humility. Anytime we have "twisted desires", it leads to "twisted hearts" and the outcome will be less than good. I think twisted ambition is what gets us so frustrated most of the time. We get our undies in a wad - either at another individual, over something we cannot control, or totally because we are mad at ourselves - all because of some "twisted" desire or ambition. When we learn to "untangle" our lives a little bit, it is amazing how much differently things actually appear! Life is filled with all kinds of choices. There are "good" or "best" choices, aren't there? Sometimes the difference between the two is a very fine line. I have been guilty of making a whole lot of "good" choices in life, but I really have to wonder if I have always made the "best" choices. If I were to perfectly honest, not every "good" choice has been the "best" - but the outcomes were pretty amazing anyway. I can honestly say some of my "worst" choices yielded some pretty awesome things in my life - not because bad choices produce good results, but because God is able to redeem even the worst to create something good out of it.

Ambition is kind of a fickle thing - it is okay to have desires, but when they drive us into actions without any forethought, they become detrimental to our well-being. Think of ambition as a "driving" force. Imagine desire as the feeling behind ambition - it creates the sense of "need", while ambition sets our feet into motion to see the need fulfilled. This is probably why our studies have focused so much on controlling our feelings! The way we "feel" about a certain thing makes all the difference in determining if we will pursue it or not. Sometimes I don't "feel good" about some particular option available to me - if I ignore those "intuitions" I might just come to an end result which I would have liked to have avoided. You may have realized this in your own experience, as well. God's plan is for us to learn to align our desires with his purposes - this is what truly brings safety into our lives.

The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed; those who help others are helped. (Proverbs 11:25) Work hard - get a paycheck. Have a paycheck - pay your bills. Help others - you are helped yourself. You see, hard work is a good thing - having money in your account is awesome! Getting a paycheck is tremendously satisfying - living debt-free is overwhelmingly liberating. Reaching out to others in need is rewarding - seeing a return on your investment in the blessing another receives is priceless. Search for good - find favor.
Search for evil - you will find it. Desire for what is right and good leads to finding favor with God and our fellowman. Ambition misdirected toward evil just ends in evil. The reward of right choices is something we experience here and now on this earth - contentment. Favor is experienced in both the mind and in our actions - we get our minds set straight and our steps ordered. When these two things occur, contentment is certainly not far behind. All forms of discontent are really linked to either not having our minds at peace, or in engaging in some missteps along the way.

Sometimes we fail to recognize the value of what we have been given. We have been given all kinds of "good" in life - but what awaits us is really something pretty "great" - the "best" is our target. If you look at a target, there are concentric rings which come to focus on some really small circle in the middle. All the outer rings have "hallow space" in between them. Getting anything inside one of those spaces is good, is it not? Yet, the "solid" circle in the middle of the target - the small circle - is the best, isn't it? The "best" is not the biggest, nor the easiest to hit - the smallest is. Did you ever stop to ask why it is a solid circle in the middle? I think it might just be to help us focus on it! All the other "hallow space" just leads us to looking directly at "dead center" on the target! Best is always going to be "dead center" in our lives. Whatever, or whoever, controls "dead center" determines the "score" in our lives. Just sayin!

Ever want to throttle someone?

We all have desires - some good, some bad.  Most of the things we desire are probably in the "good" category - like a loving relationship, job which satisfies, and for our kids to grow up to be solid citizens.  Some of the things we might just desire give us more headache and heartache than all the other desires combined, right?  Our desires are sometimes not as "righteous" as they should be.  There are times when I am with someone who is just going off at the handle and I just want to tell them to shut their mouths, grow a pair, and move on!  Am I the only one?  I doubt it!  In fact, if we were painfully honest with each other here, there are times when we struggle to just barely keep those feelings below the surface!  The longer the moaning and groaning goes on by the other guy, the harder and harder it gets to just keep quiet.  Yet, no matter how much I "want" to tell them these things, I know if I do I will either alienate them or create more issues than I really wanted to deal with in the first place. This may just be why we are warned to not live to satisfy our desires - they aren't always that righteous!  The end result of many of these desires we might just have is going to be one we wouldn't have wanted if we could just have stopped to consider the end result from the beginning.  Therein is the rub...we don't stop long enough to consider our thoughts or actions.  

My dear friends, we must not live to satisfy our desires. If you do, you will die. But you will live, if by the help of God’s Spirit you say “No” to your desires. Only those people who are led by God’s Spirit are his children. God’s Spirit doesn’t make us slaves who are afraid of him. Instead, we become his children and call him our Father. God’s Spirit makes us sure that we are his children. His Spirit lets us know that together with Christ we will be given what God has promised. We will also share in the glory of Christ, because we have suffered with him. (Romans 8:12-17 CEV)

Most of our struggle with sin is simply a struggle with our desires.  We don't have a clear-cut understanding of where it is we are to "draw the line" in our lives when it comes to the things we want to do and what we should actually pursue.  Desires impel us to fulfill them.  Plain and simple - unchecked desire of any kind will continue to haunt us with the demand to fulfill it unless we replace that desire with something else!  When I want to bust open the bag of potato chips while watching TV, perhaps I need to pursue a different course of action rather than just trying to overcome those thoughts about the bag of chips in the cupboard.  I have learned if I will just get up and do something else, the desire often subsides.  I substituted the desire with a new action - I took action "against" the desire.

I don't take this action "against" the desire alone, though.  In the daily struggles I don't find myself alone - I have the Spirit of God to lean into and rely upon to assist me in this "replacing" of desires.  The truth - I am not hungry.  The lie - I need those chips.  How do I replace truth for the lie?  Only as I ask the Spirit of God to help me with the thought pattern which leads to the wrong actions.  Now this is an over-simplified illustration of how God's Spirit comes alongside each of us to help us replace sinful thought patterns which lead to sinful actions.  In essence, it is like we have a personal coach.  We don't have to face the struggles alone - we have someone resident within us to help us not only sort out those desires, but to help us replace them with the right ones.  I find the more I try to avoid the individual who moans and groans about life the more I seem to encounter them.  If am not going to avoid them, then I need a plan on how it is I am going to interact with them when they are around.

This is where the Spirit comes in.  He is there to help me (and you) to actually hear the "undertone" of the moaning and groaning so we can actually step in and help the other person "get over" whatever it is they are so worked up about.  Some of you are saying, "Why does it have to be me to help them get over it?"  Fair enough question, my friends.  The reality each of us faces is the desire to have someone else take care of the issue - we'd like to just walk away. It is easy to walk away - quite another thing to stand in the face of what is uncomfortable and problematic.  I don't know why we may find ourselves dealing with the desire to walk away from life's annoyances, but I do know we don't always get rid of them if we are always just walking away!  There are times we might just do well to walk away - you cannot reason with hatred, argue with stubbornness, or as the comics say, "help stupid".  But...we can speak truth in love, hold onto the hope God's truth will sink in, and avoid further conflict by leaning deeply into his grace to get us past the desire to strike out, walk away, or just plain do something we might otherwise regret.

I don't ever recommend we stand there and just take a ration of unrighteous anger or personal abuse.  I do think there are times we just might do well to walk away when these types of offensive behaviors are manifest.  We control our emotions, have the opportunity to change our thought process, and make choices about what desires it is we will respond to.  We don't have control over these things in others.  This is sometimes where we get ourselves too far out onto the limb - we try to change them rather than allow the Spirit of God to control us!  Desires have a way of misleading us - so when we submit them to the leadership of someone who already has mastery over these desires (the Spirit of God), we stand a better chance of not allowing those desires to lead us into areas of sinful actions in our lives.  We begin to respond differently to our desires when we allow them to be filtered through the one who gives and brings grace.  Just sayin!