.... you are that one’s slaves
whom you obey… —Romans 6:16
{CHAMBERS} “The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin
to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for
having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to
blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey
God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him. […] There
is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the
bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to
anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having
yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— “I must
have it now,” whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release
or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the
power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only
One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus
Christ. “…He has anointed Me…to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Luke 4:18
and Isaiah 61:1). When you yield to something, you will soon realize the
tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, “Oh, I can give up
that habit whenever I like,” you will know you can’t. You will find that the
habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy
to sing, “He will break every fetter,” while at the same time living a life of
obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of
slavery in any person’s life.”
{ELGIN} Once again, I felt I
needed to quote Oswald Chambers' devotion almost in its entirety. What is it that
controls your life? Being a Christian,
in its simplicity means that your sins are forgiven through the blood of Jesus
and you are a child of God. But it its
depth, it means that you are not your own, you were bought with a price, even
Jesus on the Cross, and you now serve God primarily .. not yourself … not
others. But the reality is that your sinful nature does not want to die. It continues to rise up .. to edge God out ..
to rule your life .. to influence what you think and do. Paul wrote about it in Romans chapter 7:21-25 ..
“So I find this law at work:
Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being
I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against
the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within
me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks
be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
We overcome our old nature by
surrendering to our new nature … which is empowered by the Holy Spirit because
of Jesus death and resurrection. The problem
is that we try to contend with a power that we cannot overcome on our own. (Matthew 16:25) “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The problem is that we think we can and try,
even though we continue to fail .. and so validate exactly what Paul was
describing in his life as being true in our lives as well. To live our new lives successfully, we must
yield to the spirit and trust in Jesus.
Let me leave you with one of my favorite verses.
Joshua 1:7-9
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses
gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be
successful wherever you go. Keep this
Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you
may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be
prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and
courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be
discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
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