Thursday May 12, 2011

Read Romans 6. Isaiah 42:6-7

Broken lives! Wrong choices! Sinful desires! Far too many believers live lives in a less than victorious way. A man hides his pornography addiction behind closed doors. A woman covets a strong Christian leader for a husband, while secretly hating the man lying next to her in the bed. A teenager sneaks alcohol from dad’s beer fridge in the garage, desperately wanting to be cool and to be accepted and loved by the group at school.  Another teenager gives herself to her boyfriend desperately praying that she’ll finally find someone to genuinely love her. And yet these people stand together in the one church hall, praising God, praying to Him, speaking out a vocal “Amen” and enjoying the fellowship of God’s people.

Jesus came to us to release us from the dungeon of sin. He came to open our eyes, to heal us, to break the chains of bondage and sin. He came to free us. Through the work of Jesus at the cross we are no longer slaves to sin. We have the power of God to walk away from sin. We have the Holy Spirit within us empowering us to stand victorious, to walk in paths of righteousness and to close the dungeon door behind us once for all.

Christian believers have died to sin with Jesus at the cross. Sin is no longer our master. Sin no longer pulls the strings. Sin no longer has any control over us. Yet sadly, we often return to our past sins, thinking that we’ll find peace and happiness and satisfaction there.

What has gone wrong? What has happened? Many believers do not consider themselves dead to sin and alive to Christ. We deliberately leave open that gateway in our hearts to the ‘pleasures’ of sin from the past. We fail to put up a ‘No Trespassing’ sign on the edges of sin to stop us wandering off again. We keep that pathway to sin open ‘just in case’.  We fail to grab the grace of God and guard our hearts from the temptations and lusts of the world. We are too busy, too harried, too worried, too controlling, too scared, too.... to spend time with God and to meditate upon His grace and love to us. Often we fail to make time for God and walk further and further away from Him by the choices we make each and every day. With each step, each choice, sin becomes more tantalising as the distance from God grows.

I once contemplated running in the City to Surf Marathon - a gruelling 10km run. My first thought after that ridiculous idea was the training that would be required. I imagined the hard work that would have to be put in to allow me to at least jog (or walk quickly) the entire 10kms.  I could imagine myself being carted off in the ambulance if I didn’t train! Spiritual training is every bit as vital as physical training. We are running a spiritual marathon. Unless we train we will end up at the spiritual hospital. Growing in spiritual maturity takes hard work and requires choices to be made that are not for Christian infants. Spiritual maturity requires us to start eating the meat of the Word and not just spiritual milk. It means getting serious and being determined to be spiritually fit so that we can run the race with perseverance.

Have you ever told God that you are determined to get spiritually fit? Have you ever thought about what it means to be training spiritually? Have you ever sought to put together a program to grow your faith, much like an exercise program?

Prayer:-

V Pray that God would be growing you and your congregation in spiritual maturity. Pray that everyone in your congregation would be desiring to be spiritually fit and ready to fight the good fight. Pray that God would be at work among us powerfully through his Word and Spirit.

V Pray that our brothers and sisters in Vietnam would be growing and maturing in their faith despite the opposition they face. Pray that God would strengthen the pastors and teachers to be courageous men, valiant and willing to set the example in life, speech and doctrine.

V Pray that our weekly giving would be abundantly excessive to our weekly needs so that we can share the love of God with the needy, the poor and the homeless. Pray that each and every single person or family unit would be at least tithing to the Lord.