Wholeness part 3

Spiritual Procrastination

In my 8/18/20 post, I made the rather bold statement of "Most Christians are too busy playing ring around the cross to embrace the resurrected life." As great as forgiveness is, it's meant to give us a chance to work out our salvation (Phil. 2:12) not as a license to sin. (Rom. 6:15) Whether we are consciously doing that, or just lack the persistence or know how to pursue greater glories. The result is the same, a plateau in our spirituality. We will never find wholeness while we are stagnating.

I don't want to oversimplify this and make it seem easy, because it's not. Those that portray it as easy tend to be very prideful and arrogant, so it seems that they have merely traded one sin for another. The sinful nature of the flesh is indeed a powerful force, a force that cannot be overcome in the strength of the flesh. Yet so often that is just what we try. So in essence, we apply a fight fire with fire scenario, which creates an inferno. Believe me, trying to resist sin via the flesh can indeed turn into a virtual inferno of passions.

We truly need something more powerful than the flesh to be able to overcome the flesh. That is where the Holy Spirit comes in. We may hear this continually, but still, the Spirit can be a very abstract concept to wrap our minds around. He cannot be rendered down to a formula approach, or a systematic definition. Maybe this is why we tend to downplay him in our faith. Yet, we wonder why the church seems so powerless. See my previous post for more on the Holy Spirit. 

Keep in mind, the Spirit will not just give you the strength to overcome. He will reveal to you the truth behind your sin as well. Which in many ways can be the most daunting part of the process, but necessary for long-term change. See my Enter the Wound Challenge post for more on this.

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. -Ephesians 4:22-24

It's not just a matter of putting on a new life, we must shed the old one as well. Anything old that we miss can soil the new. While this verse may make it seem easy, Jesus used more graphic imagery in Mark 9:43-47. While it may be off-putting to some, I find it comforting that Jesus lets us know that he understands just how deeply attached our sinful nature is and recognizes that it's no easy task to deal with it.

Trying to drag too much of our old life into the new one can indeed impede our wholeness, but it is a process. A process I dare say we can be such procrastinators on. Like anything else, when we know we have a lot to do and not much time to do it in, we can be very deliberate with our time and get things done. Yet, when we have lots of time we can get very inefficient with our days, and leave much undone. A very dangerous game to play with our wholeness.

The Visual PARABLEist