Tag Archives: sin

confessions of a rebellious soul

This is a repost of a previously published blog post. I’ve dusted it off, added and deleted and tweaked, and now I’m reposting. Because I’m still going through this thing, and I needed to feel the weight of that. I also needed to encourage myself with the fact that I’m still in the fight. That I still want, and believe, that I can walk free from bondage. 

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True confession:  I’ve always hated the word ‘obey’. In all of its forms. In any kind of sentence.  Obey seemed oppressive. Controlling. Demeaning. Surely there was a softer way to put it. A gentler call to do what God wanted.

Surely it isn’t rebellion that feeds these thoughts. Surely. 

The change began a few years ago. That’s when I stopped arm wrestling my bondage to food and admitted that it was stronger than me. Much stronger. Overwhelmingly stronger. And I wept and wept because dammit I was tired. Tired of needing to be free of yet another thing and wondering when the last shackle will fall from my soul and thinking this one will be with me to the end.

Then I read  this book. Really, you should read it.

Turns out, it was step one. I had to stop pretending that I didn’t have an idol. Seriously, how can you be this overweight, this miserable, this unhealthy and think idolatry isn’t your deal?  I say you but don’t be offended. We all know I’m pointing at me. I just like saying you more than I like saying I. I think a lot of us are like that. I think it’s a thing we do. But I digress.

Another confession: I have an idol. Actually, my idol has me. Ha Ha. Get it? Yeah, I know, but if I don’t laugh I’m gonna cry and no one wants to see that. Trust me.

I saw the idol. Admitted what it was. Wished I could just wrestle it to the ground and then kill it. But that’s never going to happen. I don’t know about your idol, but I didn’t pick a weak one. No sir. This thing is the Incredible Hulk of idols.

Anyway. Then, I read about Abraham.

{Did you really think I would tell you a story that didn’t include some reference to the Old Testament? You’re new here, I can tell. It’s ok.}

“The Lord said to Abram:  Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” {Genesis 12:1-3}

Blessing flows through obedience. From one generation to another it flows through people who obey God. 

Next confession:  While I avoided the word obey, I’ve always known that obedience was a good thing. Something a Christian is supposed to do. And I did. I obeyed the easy parts. But if you’ve been following Jesus for more than an hour, you know there are hard things and mostly I just turned my head from those and pretended to be busy doing something else. Can I get a witness? It’s ok. Don’t raise your hand. This is about me and as much as I want company right now, I think you’d just distract me. Sooth something in me that shouldn’t be soothed. Excuse something I can’t keep excusing. But thanks for offering.

We’ll just move on to the next step in a process that has actually been harder than it sounds. And not nearly as glamorous.

“For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” {Romans 5:19}

Adam so disobeyed and I so disobeyed, but God so loved the world and Jesus so obeyed His Father and now I am saved. Because of obedience that comes from love.

Love and obedience are holding hands and they can’t be separated and salvation flowed through obedience. From a cross made bloody by a Son who loved  and obeyed His Father, it flowed to me.

Confession number (what number are we on?): I’ve had a number of bondages, but none of them were my fault.  That’s not the confession. The confession is that I believed that lie because it was so much easier than the truth.

Every bondage I’ve had came through disobedience. Not through generational blood lines. Not through curses or entrapment or some kind of disorder. I wasn’t born that way. It is true that food addiction, and addiction in general, runs wild and free in my family line, but that fact does not remove my ability to choose differently. I became addicted to things because I didn’t say no to them. I had a stronghold of anger in me because I disobeyed the scriptures on forgiveness and dying to self. I let the sun go down on my anger for years. Seriously. Years. 

I believe it is not generational sins that caused my bondage to food, it is the fact that I have gone to something other than God to find comfort and solace.

Disobedience brings bondage. And the truth will set us free.

“I will always obey Your instruction, forever and ever.   I will walk freely in an open place because I seek Your precepts.” {Psalm 119:44-45}

Freedom flows through obedience and that’s the truth.

And finally, we come to this…

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.” {Matthew 4:1}

You know the story. We all know that Jesus overcame temptation by speaking the word of God to Satan. Except He didn’t.

Let’s be honest. It’s just us here, so why not? It is not a lack of knowledge of the Word of God that keeps us circling the drain of defeat. It’s our lack of actually doing what that Word says. Disobedience, not ignorance, is our issue, wouldn’t you say, just between you and me?

Jesus overcame temptation and defeated Satan not just through speaking the Word of God, but by obeying it. By refusing to make bread when He was –no food for 40 days– hungry.

(I would have made the bread. I would have made bread out of every rock I could find. I would have surrounded myself with rock biscuits.)

Power and victory flow through obedience.

And that’s where He got me. Because apparently, dying from a bondage to food wasn’t enough motivation. But if you tell me that obedience is warfare that will break the back of the enemy, I’m in. Well, I’m interested in being in. I’ve long ago learned that I tend to over commit.

Confession # whatever: Here I go again. Choosing steps of obedience. I will fall and flail about while doing it, because I know me and I know this thing that is gripping me. I will not beat my idol. The only way to be free is to walk away. To obediently walk away from self-soothing and self comfort. From feeding my emotions. From trying to escape by way of the fork in my hand. (I have no idea what I’m even trying to escape, but if you know my story at all, you know that escape was my very first addiction, and that horse is very much still in the race.) I know from experience that it is harder than it sounds on paper. But I also know Jesus, and that alone gives me the advantage.

So if you think of it, pray for me. However God leads you, pray.

top 3 list, but bottom line, read the bible. find God.

In my previous post I talked about the top 3 reasons Christians aren’t reading the Bible. This time, I’m giving my top 3 scriptural reasons why Christians need to read the Bible.

You have been created with purpose, and there are good works that have been planned for you to do.  You need a thorough equipping in order to live the life and do the work God has for you, and it will only be done through Scripture.

But how have many believers twisted this one? By assuming that it means that scripture is useful to us for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training OTHER PEOPLE. So when (if) they spend time in God’s word, it is for that purpose — to prove that others are wrong. I have seen the fallout from those who have used Scripture against other people while ignoring what it says about themselves. It turns people away from the Word of God, and even from the Church. It wounds the Body of Christ.

I want to speak particularly to mothers and fathers. Do not attempt to train your children with the Word of God unless you are allowing it to train you. Do not wield an authority that has not been tempered with humility. We are never more humbled than when we allow the Word of God to tell us we are wrong and then teach us how to be right. If you do not train your children up with humility, it will be done with pride. And pride hurts more than the prideful.

The Word of God, describing itself:  I am alive. I am active. I am sharp. I am penetrating. I divide. I judge.

We know ourselves enough to know there are things that need to change. Thoughts, attitudes, motives. But the trend I have been witnessing is the people of God devouring anything that will tell them they are okay the way they are. Those soothing blog posts that tell us that we need to love ourselves, accept ourselves and be our own champions sound like truth to ears begging for something sweet. Sermons and podcasts that convince us that our greatest mission is to go out, love others and share the Gospel. So we have an entire generation of people doing just that. Just that. Because we forgot to tell them that before Jesus commissioned His disciples, He taught them, and He revealed their own hearts to them. He allowed Peter to deny Him, because Peter needed to know that denial was in him. He revealed the motives of brothers who wanted the best seats. He called His closest followers out for their lack of faith on numerous occasions. We like to look at the stories in scripture and see that His disciples were ordinary people, just like us. That makes us feel better about ourselves. But we fail to see that they became extraordinary people because they had been with Jesus, the Word of God, night and day for three years straight. The disciples did not remain the same people they were before they began following Him. Neither should we.

Jesus is the Word of God. Then and now.

To those first followers, He was alive and active. Sharp. Dividing. Judging. Is He the same for His followers today? Yes. If we are in the Word of God, allowing it to do the work of piercing, dividing and revealing. If not, we are a people learning to love ourselves to death, sharing a Gospel we are not really experiencing.

How can we live a life of purity? How do we seek Him with all of our heart? How do we keep ourselves from sin? Every answer is the same.

The Word of God.

How are you living according to the Word of God, if you are not living in the Word of God? If you are living according to the Word of God, then you are living according to His will and His ways. If you are not living according to His will and His ways — then you are living according to someone else’s will and ways. I’ll give you one guess as to who that someone is.

Where did David hide God’s Word? In the place where sin begins.

“But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” {Matthew 15:18-19} 

He didn’t hide it in his mind. While knowing the Word of God begins with mental knowledge, it cannot remain there. It must make its way into our soul (mind, will and emotions), into our heart. My personal opinion? We can know the Word of God in our minds, but still not believe it or trust it. But when we meditate on it, choosing to let it go into our hearts and bring forth change, then we are in a place of not just knowing His Word, but trusting it to be true and right.

So let’s review my top 3 reasons that Christians need to read the Bible:

  1.  We need to be thoroughly equipped to live the life God has called us to live. And, we need to be taught, rebuked, corrected and trained by the Word of God. We just do.
  2. We need the piercing, dividing, revealing work of the Word. We have no idea the things that are in our own hearts. We need the Word of God to tell us that we have hidden motives, thoughts, and desires that are contrary to Him, and that it’s just not ok to stay that way.
  3. We need the Word of God to keep us from sin. Bottom line. That will not happen through sermons, or through a brief or sporadic glance at scriptures. It comes when we have lived in the Word of God until it is living in us.

Jesus found me in a hospital cafeteria, covered in sin. I found Him in the scriptures, covered in blood and grace and mercy and kindness and truth and glory.

My life, my character, my motives, my thoughts, my belief system — all changed when I was found by Jesus and surrendered to His lordship. That was the timing of it. But the method of it was by immersing myself in the living Word of God, and staying there.

Read your Bible. Find God.

Heroes: Noah—Why I quit smoking

We’re walking through the Hall of Faith together, in Hebrews 11. Links to the previous posts will be at the end of this one.

By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

(Noah’s story is in Genesis, chapters 6-9)

For years I had tried over and over to quit smoking, but nothing worked. I was firmly, undeniably, enslaved and I hated it. And then a series of events and one scripture passage happened.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” – John 5:14

And the fear of God came upon me at last. To be honest, I had been praying for a real fear of God, because I didn’t feel like I had any. I had a sincere love for God, devotion to God, affection for God and hunger for God. But I did not fear Him.

Until He told me, through His word, that there was something worse coming if I didn’t stop what I was doing and change course, and I believed Him and found my godly fear.

A fear of the Lord is defined as having reverence, or deep respect for Him. Some people also define it as being in awe of Him. All of those are correct. But for me, something was missing.

I knew God, loved God and walked with God. How could I not fear Him?

So here’s the deal. My deal, let’s just call it my deal because it may not be your deal at all. I have been fed on the grace and love and goodness and kindness and the “abba-ness” of God, and let me tell you, it has been nourishment for my broken soul. And feeding on the power of God to defeat the enemy, move mountains, heal sickness, and turn hearts, has lit.me.up with excitement and energy and determination and purpose. So so good.

close up buffet table arrangement cattering

But at the banqueting table of the fullness of who God is I have politely passed by a lot of what did not make me feel good, you know? The stuff that went down hard and felt strange to my pallet. I found that my spiritual appetite more or less mimicked my physical appetite. Eat what tastes good, don’t eat what doesn’t taste good.

Ironically, it is because God is good and kind and loving and full of grace, because He is my Abba-Father, that He led me to truth.

God always keeps His word. Even the hard to swallow ones.

So when He says that continuing in disobedience will bring something worse to me, He means it.

shut-the-door

And when He says that destruction is coming, He means it. And when He says He has made a way out of that destruction, but the day will come when He will shut the door of that way out, He means it. And when He says that if you have not obeyed His command to turn, believe in Jesus and be saved, you will perish, He means it.

And when He says that it is not His desire that you perish, He means it. 

By faith Noah took the way out provided by God. But He was motivated by godly fear.

Because He believed God meant what He said.

Previously:

Heroes: Cain & Abel

Heroes:  Enoch