Testing The Lies We Tell Ourselves
~Romans 12: 2
On Sunday, I shared a story about Gracie--a German Shepherd puppy Valerie and I got when our youngest daughter Katie was little. German Shepherds are strong even as puppies. Gracie was stronger than most. We had a cable lead we let her out on when she needed to go outside. It was tethered to our flagpole in the backyard. Gracie didn’t like that lead in the beginning. She didn’t like being chained up. And she’d pull on that lead, and strain against it, and yank on it. She was so strong, even as a puppy, she’d shake that entire flagpole. Eventually she learned she couldn’t break that lead and she quit trying to.
But things changed. Gracie grew to over 100 pounds—she became a very big and powerful dog. But we never got a stronger lead. Although she could have broken that lead with very little effort, she never tried. Gracie remained captive to a limitation that existed only in her mind. The idea that she learned when she was a little puppy--the cable was stronger than she was.
Many Christians continue to be dominated by sin because they haven't renewed their minds to the truth that they are no longer slaves to sin but have been freed through Christ. When temptation comes, we often default to our old way of thinking. We say to ourselves: 'I can't resist this. This is just who I am.'
But Paul calls us to a new way of thinking: 'This is not who I am anymore. I am dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.' We change. As we grow in faith, those temptations and weaknesses and sins that used to be so challenging for us don't have the same hold over us they once did. However, just like Gracie sometimes we live with a lie. We continue to believe we're still captive. We don't realize how strong our faith has become.
Give that cable lead in your life a good hard yank and see what happens. You might just be surprised.
~Pastor Todd E. Creason
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