Confronting the Sin that Entangles Us

Don’t you love when the Spirit begins speaking something to you in a way that changes your life?

Actually sometimes I don’t love it because instead of saying, “You go, Girl! You’ve arrived at spiritual perfection!” the Spirit is whispering, “Be transformed into the image of Christ. He makes all things new!” and instead I am stuck in old patterns, mired in the muck of daily sin.

Oh, not what we consider the biggies–no murder, no adultery, not even stealing parking places from little old ladies at the grocery store, but instead the sins that entangle most of us–greed, lying, gossip, you know the ones……

Oh, I know that until He takes me home to streets of gold or until He returns, I will never get there to sinless perfection like my Lord, but I long to be further down the pathway than I am.  I just seems like I struggle with the same stuff over and over.

How about you?

As I said, the Spirit has been speaking in my life and I’d like to share that with you.

As I shared a few posts back, I went through a season of discouragement and for a glass-is-half-full kind of girl, it was a dry time. Not only was the glass half empty, there were times I was sure the living water had dried into dust inside the glass!  I was so blinded by the almost constant barrage of difficult circumstances that I couldn’t see His mercy and grace. I knew it was there because we walk by faith not by sight, but I couldn’t feel His presence. And it made me mad!

After all, I was serving Him. I spent each week doing what I believed He’d asked of me to the best of my abilities and gifts and in my place of grief and angst, it seemed I got nothing but more trouble for my effort.

Do you see the problem with that last sentence?

I had become all about me.  Yes, I was serving Him, but out of my own strength and ability.

It is a shifting shadow. The enemy is wily, whispering, “You do so much for him, and no one appreciates it.” I wrapped myself in self righteousness and tried harder with the same results.

Well, you know that story but here is the rest of it…..

After you have cloaked yourself in an almost impenetrable wall to avoid getting hurt, how do you dismantle it so that you can again live and be free?

The last month the Lord has given me several resources and pictures to do that.

1) Bob Sorge who is associated with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City wrote a book called “Dealing with the Rejection and Praise of Man” (ISBN 978-0-9621185-8-6) and I highly reccomend it. On the back cover blurb Sorge writes “Learn how to hold your heart before God in a way that pleases Him in the midst of both rejection and praise from people.”  Wow!  Just what the Great Physician ordered for those in a desert time because of the rejection of men or those riding the high wave of the praise of people! www.oasishouse.net

2) IHOP KC is experiencing revival. You can go on the web and watch live feed from the prayer room as young men and women of God cry out for our nation to turn to God, pray for healings and worship together. It will change you as you join in and pray. www.ihop.org is the main website and you can link to live services or to the prayer rooms. IHOP is celebrating 10 years of 24/7/365 prayer and worship which is an unbelieveable accomplishment if you’ve ever tried to organize a prayer vigil for your own church or organization. Somehow, most churches don’t put corporate prayer as a priority but IHOP does.

3) Rooms, by Jim Rubart, is a new book that is going to change your life if you read it.  I met Jim at a marketing seminar at the American Christian Fiction Writer’s www.acfw.com conference last September. His first novel just came out and it is selling like wildfire because it is the kind of book that you find yourself telling friends, “I just read this book. You need to read it.”

In Rooms, a young man on top of the world of riches and fame receives a myserious inheritance from a relative he does not know–a beach house that seems to have been built as if he had designed it himself. His first thought is $$$$. Sell the house for millions and move on, but after one visit, he finds himself drawn to the house. The house is an allegory of the man’s life and I don’t want to spoil it but lets just say it is food for thought about our own lives and what we hold dear.

In the house is a room that he has locked away from Christ’s entry because of shame over what it contains. In a dramatic twist, when the room is finally opened, Christ is less concerned with what is in the room and more with why the room exists.

That spoke volumes to me. If not sinning was only a choise of just saying “no” wouldn’t most of us choose to say no to the sin that entangles us? Obviously, it is more than that. If we choose gluttony or addicition to alcohol or drugs or adrenalin or work or praise of men, there is a reason. Rooms is available at all major bookstores (although Amazon.com recently sold out–way to go, Jim!)  Get the book, read it and enjoy it, but more than anything else let God speak to you through it. What is the root at the base of the sin that entangles you?

4) Did you wonder what the picture of rocks and roots has to do with all of this? We got back from a wonderful week in Sedona AZ and I snapped this picture outside the Chapel of the Holy Cross built between two huge red rocks.

 To get to the chapel, you climb a winding road and along the way, I noticed these two rocks split by a plant small in comparison to the majesty and girth of the rocks. Yes, they are sandstone, but they are stone. Like a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, there is no doubt that the rock could smash a lowly plant.

But as the Spirit whispered Truth, I could see that the plant had started with a small seed, taking root in the dust and dirt left in a hollow in the boulder. Then watered by splashes of rain falling into the indention, there was just enough of what the seed needed to grow. As it gained ground, the roots began to take hold and push into crevices in the rock searching for water and nutrients. Finally, the roots were too much for the rock and it split allowing the plant to fully grow.

Just like sin.  Just like my life. I had allowed the seeds of sin to take hold and errode away until the result was like this rock. What was was a small thing was now an invasive, strangling mess.  I once had a friend who during prayer felt God telling him he was a “weed-eater Christian.” As he sought the Lord what that meant, he got the picture of sin being wacked off at ground surface just to grow back.

Isn’t that a great picture of the sin that entangles us? We work hard to demolish the sin that we see. But we never remove the root that tangles us in the sin in the first place.

Yes, we are sinners. Yes, our flesh always wants its way and we must die to ourselves. But we also have a wily enemy that whispers the lie of the Garden. “Did God really say….” and so we let the roots of our sin lie below the surface until circumstances cause us to stumble. We rise again to cry, “I thought I was over that! I promised I’d never do that again! O wretched man, am I!” or something to that effect.

The first step is to let Christ in. Instead of locking it away from our Savior, what would happen if we would instead lead Him to the room of our sin and ask His forgiveness……and ask Him to show us why that sin entangles us in the first place? Revolutionary!

I don’t have it all together. I am a woman with feet of clay. I stumble and fall. It is part of the journey. But the Christian life is not about perfection–that has been achieved in Christ. It is about relationship with the one who is Perfect. He desires that instead of just looking good on the outside, we take care of the root issues of our sin that we might be free of the sin that ties us down and destroys us. It is for freedom Christ set us free.

What entangles you and are you willing to open your heart to His mercy and grace?