A lifebuoy is offered

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, and 'good'. We stop and we start. Seems pretty basic, doesn't it? Yet, we have the hardest time with this when it comes to putting it into operation in our lives. As silly as it may sound, when a counselor advises us to write a letter, putting all our thoughts, hurts, and even our anger into that letter, then rip it up, there is a cathartic effect to that task.

While God doesn't ask us to 'write a letter' putting in all our hurts and hangups, he does ask us to bring those things to him, allowing him to be the one to 'destroy' them in our lives. He asks for us to have a catharsis - where sin once dwelt, let it go, be done with it, move on. Put something else in its place - the Word of God, a new action that brings honor into our lives, or even just the peace he gives when we finally let it go. He moves heaven and earth to help us be free - why do we still hold so tightly to those things that he asks us to purge from our lives with his help?

If a drowning man was offered a lifebuoy, do you think he'd reject it and just keep sinking deeper until he finally drowned? Only if that was his ultimate intent! Most of us are drowning in our sin, not sure where our help will come from, but when Jesus offers us that lifebuoy, will we take it? I think so! When he offers us a way to be free of the things that weigh us down and give us such trouble in life, do we let them go? If we are smart, we would! Just sayin!

The perimeter of sin

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, then maybe that is the place to start - with an honest conversation with God about what it is in your life that requires some adjustment in order to be a better example of his love and grace. Spiritual goals may seem a little lofty at first - like wanting to be free of some life-dominating sin or point of consistent compromise in your life. You might not imagine yourself fully "free" of those things, but you can "hope" there might be a point when you would be out from under their weight. At first, the impossibility of "being on the other side" of the habit, sinful pattern, or consistent compromise seems a little bit like you might never be "truly free", but you know scripture declares that you are not only "set free" but being continually "renewed" in that pattern of being "set free". This is referred to in two terms in theological circles: Salvation and Sanctification. Salvation makes you free (you are saved out of whatever it is you were in bondage to). Sanctification makes you continually free (helping you to live free of those bonds over and over again until you stop returning to the place of your bondage completely).

An elephant can be chained to the immediate ten-foot radius around a peg and a chain attached to his rear leg. For a while, he will pull and pull at that staked chain to attempt to be free. In time he will come to think his "freedom" only consists of the ten-foot radius around that pegged chain. In a while, he could even be unlocked from that chain, and he wouldn't move out of that area. Why? He has developed the pattern of bondage. He has accepted his confined place and no longer believes he can escape it. Sin is kind of like that in our lives - for a long time we might resist the hold it has on us and even chafe against it a little. Given enough struggling to be "free" of that sin and we might just come to the place we give up on ever being free. At salvation, the moment we say "yes" to Jesus, the chain is loosed, and the shackle is removed. If we only focus on the thing which held us in bondage for so long, we may never explore the freedom outside of that ten-foot radius! We will believe we are still bound - but if we get outside of that radius even just a little, we begin to experience life as it should be - free and full of good things God intends for us to enjoy fully.

God's plan is to remove the shackles AND the peg that held us in bondage. The evidence of bondage is long gone, but sometimes we continue to remember the peg and shackles as being there, making it almost impossible to escape 'sin's radius'. Remember, he not only 'unshackles' us, but he removes every trace of the thing that held us in the perimeter of sin. Just sayin!

The Fool Within

"What were you thinking?", I said. Then I realized I wasn't thinking! It is necessary to set my understanding straight on occasion, or you allow the 'inner fool' to go on thinking that thinking was "spot on". What happens when we don't respond to the foolishness? We allow a plethora of other stuff to continue on as though it did not matter. The inner fool looks for validation - when it doesn't find resistance to its actions, it takes this as validation. It is difficult to stop, take the effort and extreme amount of patience to speak with the fool around you, but sometimes it is harder to speak to the one within you! Yet, it is the very best course of action to prevent a flood of ill-effects from that 'inner' folly.

Answer a fool in simple terms so he doesn’t get a swelled head. (Proverbs 26:5)

We use simple terms to speak to the simpleton. No fool (even our inner fool) is responsive to some lengthy theological argument - the simplicity of scripture taken in is all the fool may need to understand that choice as not being the wisest. Ours is not the role of correcting the fool, but we can bring truth where it doesn't exist naturally - even to our inner man. When we do bring or take in truth, we need to do it with simplicity and accuracy. The 'inner fool' cannot figure out subtlety. What is needed is direct, head-on instruction to know where we got off course and how to turn things around. Once truth is put out there, it is up to us to embrace it and walk in it, or to reject it and continue to stray off course.

Too many of us fail when we are faced with the folly of the fool because we want to "own" the road out of the mess we find ourselves in. We need to allow the inner fool to experience the muddle of the mess and then figure the steps we need to take to get out of it. We have the road map with the truth we take in, but we don't might need a little hand holding from a higher source to ensure we read the map correctly! The road map is in our possession once we take in truth - the responsibility to consult it with each step doesn't stop just because we have the map.

We may want to avoid the confrontation with the inner fool, but we really cannot because those actions are impacting our lives. We have to know how to approach the inner fool (in simplicity), with what it is we approach (the truth), and then how to let go of the foolishness so we can embrace the right actions (in the care of the capable hands of the Holy Spirit to convict us where necessary). Just sayin!