Dead man

Two days in a row! I don’t know if that’s ever happened. But I guess I just wanted to add a little more to what I wrote yesterday. I want to try and expound on why I think I feel this way sometimes.

I think the main reason, if there be no other, is the presence of sin in my life. I notice that when sin flares up a little more than usual in my life, that I consequently notice that I feel more distant from God and/or God feels more distant from me. But I think it’s more of the former than the latter—I AM more distant from God when I sin. I hate it. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I can say in my mind, “don’t get pissed off in traffic, there’s nothing you can do about it, just take it easy and drive,” and then almost immediately fly off the handle and want intensely to kill the dude going 30 in the fast lane with his blinker on and no intention to change lanes. I store up this hatred inside me when I get where I’m going, and it just kind of eats away at me slowly until I get to where I am, where I just feel lost and without direction.

But God is always there, faithful to the end. Scripture says that even when we are faithless, God is faithful (2 Tim. 2:13). How true it is! God promises to finish that which he began (Phil. 1:6), and no one—not even us—can snatch us from the hand of God (Jn. 10:29), for salvation belongs to the Lord (Ps. 3:8), not to us. Now that’s some rapid fire doctrine right there. I can’t explain how mysteriously sometimes the grace just hits me and I come to my senses and I praise God for what he’s done for me in Christ. He leads me back to the path of righteousness, and I find true joy and rest in him.

Why I do not live daily and hourly in this joy, I cannot really comprehend. I don’t know why I stray and sin and think that I am somehow finding happiness in disobedience, when all it brings is empty despair. I don’t know when I will learn to stop trying to feed the old dead man, and start feeding the new living man (Eph. 4:22-24). It makes no sense to try and revive the dead man, because he will never get up and walk anywhere. But in my foolish mind, I think I can somehow put him on my back and make him dance like a puppet, when all that happens is that he becomes exceedingly heavy and burdensome and I can’t take the weight any longer, so I eventually stumble and fall. He’s not alive, he’s dead, and you can’t make a dead man dance with any amount of willpower. I don’t know why I am blind sometimes to the freedom and life that Christ offers. I wish it were easier to live as the man God made me to be, but it’s a constant struggle with this freakin’ dead man I am morbidly obsessed with on my back. God give me, and others that may struggle with the same, the faith, strength, and courage to throw him off and bury him a thousand feet deep in the Earth so that we may not continue to stumble but be renewed to press onward to the path of righteousness.