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- Written by: Don Goulding
For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. (Romans 7:22, 23)
Spiritual growth only comes to me with bloody violence. My old Mr. Sin Nature is a wily beast. One of his tricks is showy enthusiasm for biblical head knowledge. He encourages me to study and memorize scripture, but his slimy goal is preoccupation from living out the truth.
Another Mr. Sin Nature tactic is to read the Bible too quickly. He won’t hold still under the stinging poultice of a few chosen words, and instead, prefers entertainment by the storyline. These, and other ploys, force me to sit on the urchin.
I begin in a place where I can be alone with Jesus. I ask what heart work needs the most attention, then read no more than a chapter of Scripture. How I choose where to read matters little as God maneuvers any method to get me where he wants. I find he consistently points me to what I need.
Next, I let the Spirit highlight the handful of words on which I’m to focus. Then I wrestle with my squirming old nature, and pin him under those words until he squeals, “I give.” Repentant prayer and brief journaling knock the final wind out of the monster.
I have to repeat this process each morning because, after years of letting the sin nature run wild, he thinks he can poke his nose into every good thought. Only when I’m methodical and strong handed is he containable. For now, I have to cohabit with the rascal, but I have another guest who forces him to sit in the corner. I need Jesus in my house every hour. Not only does he pardon my keeping the sin brat, but he also helps me babysit the wretch.
Prayer: Lion of Judah, this is war. Help me overcome myself.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13, 14)
It’s scary to look back on our failures. Before Jesus, we had to look back. It was the age of backward looking. The law required strict record keeping of slips and gains. Everything depended on my ability to climb God’s impossibly holy mountain. I was nervous, and grew sick from my guilt. It’s a dismal existence when a flawed human is forced to live looking back on his mistakes.
Jesus paid a dear price to keep us from the fright of looking back. How blessed I am to live in the age of looking forward. Because of the substitution on the cross, the failures of my past are nonexistent. They have been erased from the annals of time, forever removed from God’s books. Whatever mistakes I make between now and heaven will also crumble into oblivion the instant the present becomes the past.
I look down the mountain, and there is nothing but a few bright successes, and many blank voids where my sins used to be. It’s a rather boring view. Up ahead–now that’s a wondrous landscape. The way is steep, but in the treacherous places, there are colorful future successes. The top is crowned with yellow-white beams from the paradise wherein my Favorite dwells.
Satan wants us to look back until we sit down and stop climbing from discouragement. I won’t fall for it. For me, from here on out, there is only forward.
Prayer: King Jesus, keep me looking forward to you.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life because of me will find it. (Matthew 10:39)
Winter came to a close as sunshine warmed the soil after a rain shower. Moisture seeped into a dormant seed, and within days, a pale stalk pushed through the loam. In the night, the newborn plant was discovered by the eraser-of-a-nose on a young rabbit. Delicate whiskers twitched as the rabbit opened his tiny mouth, and chomped off the plant shoot.
A misty dawn found the rabbit still nibbling buds. In mid bite, a hawk snapped him into steely talons. The keen eyed bird was anxious to bring her prey to her downy eyas, frantic with hunger. But in her absence a falconer collected the chicks to train for sport hunting. He whisked them into the city, where his freckled son belted out, “I get the big one, I get the big one.”
It would seem for every creature, including man, that “the full exertion of all their faculties and all their energies is required to preserve their own existence and provide for that of their infant offspring” (A. R. Wallace). It’s the way of the food chain.
Jesus invites me to step out of nature, and forgo the struggle for physical life. He asks me to lose my life, sacrifice for others, and scorn personal advancement, so I can have life in the Spirit. He requires me to be more than an animal.
The true apex of the “Pyramid of Organisms” is where, by grace, my flesh succumbs to my spirit. And so, at the point where my old nature pushes through the loam, it must be chomped off, snatched up, and abducted. It must die, because my spirit only grows closer to God when there is death in the old me.
Prayer: Jesus, help me take my place at the head of creation by dying to self.