v16"Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?"
the kjv says servants instead of slaves, but either way it is the same idea.
this is the deal. i have issues. (hopefully i am not alone?) i take something that has happened to me, against me, or against someone i love. then what i do is i think about it...a lot. i analyze it, like...what was the person thinking when she said that? what did we ever do that would make them say or do that? then i start feeling a little bit upset. not too much. like, it doesn't affect everything...yet. but then i think about it a little more. i start to have imaginary conversations in my head. like, i picture myself talking to this person and saying exactly how i feel. you know, exhorting...to make it sound spiritual :) then i realize that it IS affecting me. i am starting to get a little snappy with my kids, or my husband. i start to feel a little more annoyed, and i have to say...PRIDEFUL. as if I would never do anything like what this person has done! sometimes it goes one step further, although i have to be pretty blatantly in the flesh to let it get here, but i open my mouth and talk about it to someone else. usually only my sisters. i mean, that's not as sinful right?? wrong!!
this is where the verse comes in. i am literally becoming a slave to this sin. this sin of not thinking of others as better than myself. it's crazy because when i picture this, it changes things. this feeling that is making me so upset, i am taking a pair of handcuffs and putting one end on my wrist, and the other on the "wrist" of the sin. why? why would i ever want to do that? if i was in my right mind, and knowing how NOT GOOD it feels to be upset i would want to run as far away from it as i could!! satan has a way of tricking us, huh? this is where the next verse comes into play.
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." this is wild. this is how i described it to my 6-year-old. this is a bad guy (show him his little pirate dude)
he is NOT allowed inside your head (show him a hat) but SOMEHOW he got past the traps and got inside the hat!! what are we going to do?!?!? capture that bad guy! (argument and pretension) we put him in the dungeon and say that he HAS to obey. he has no choice!! we bring him to the King of the castle. and then we put a good guy in the hat instead of him.
is this making sense? we need to set up a trench full of hungry crocs and guards. but if somehow, someway a bad thought gets past. we then just capture him, and give him to the KING.
amazingly, we FEEL better! crazy how that works.
let's do that today. every time a bad guy comes in and wants to handcuff himself to you, don't let him! capture that dude, and make him obey Christ.
:-) Great post, Rach! I'm a visual learner, too...loved your illustration!
ReplyDeletewow. this was so good!! that helps me so much too! thank you!! :)
ReplyDeletejust what i needed to hear!
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