2 December 2015 + Love Dare Day 4

Prayer

     2. Renouncing Conformity

Scriptures:

• Romans 6:13-14

Observations:

So, this is in the context of the passage talking about our past slavery to sin and our new life in Christ.

Specifically, here's the breakdown I see:

• Do not present yourself or parts of yourself as instruments for sin
• Present yourself and parts of yourself to God as instruments for righteousness
• Why? Because sin has no more dominion over us
• Why? We have been brought from death to life
• Why? Because we are no longer under the law, but under God's grace

Really, what Paul is saying here, if I may take the liberty of paraphrasing, is, "Guys, because of God's grace, you no longer need to focus on not sinning. God's grace given to you is sufficient to keep you from sin and render you effectively righteous through Christ. So, focus on God and stop giving yourself up to sin!"

I kinda imagine Paul's tone here to be that of the loving, but exasperated (and slightly snarky), fatherly uncle figure.

The shift in focus from not sinning to God is crucial. As long as we continue to focus on not sinning, we continue to focus on our sin, while relying on ourselves. In focusing on God, we focus on God, rely on God, and we find ourselves obeying God, which means we wind up sinning less, ultimately becoming free from sin. And that, in part, is what I think Paul was meaning in yesterday's passage on being transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Application:

I really need to take in today's and yesterday's passages. I find myself often focusing on my sin. I'm not trying to present myself as instruments for sin, but I find myself trying to pretty myself up so that I can present myself to God. Where, since the coming of Christ, did God ever say we had to be perfect before we could come to him? God came to us in our imperfection to redeem us and impute Christ's righteousness upon us. God did all the work so that we can come to him. That was the significance of the tearing of the curtain in the temple, as described in Matthew 27. Christ, God himself, is our mediator. We no longer need the proxy of a high priest.

This is something that I really needed to understand. I pulled out from different ministries I was involved in because of my sin, feeling that I could not contribute as I am. 

Where I say, "I'm not good enough." God says, "My grace is sufficient."

Does this mean I'm ready to jump back into ministry, not necessarily, but it does show me that I really need to be clinging to Christ above all else. I need to submit myself to Christ and let him remake me instead of trying to remake myself as I see God.

~ ~ ~

The Love Dare

Day 4: Love is Thoughtful

"If you don't learn to be thoughtful, you end up regretting missed opportunities to demonstrate love. Thoughtlessness is a silent enemy to a loving relationship."

Following this statement, there is an excerpt talking about how men are much more prone to this than women, being able to hyper-focus on one specific thing to the exclusion of all else, while women are more able to multitask different activities and thoughts and tend to have a more relational mindset than men do.

I can attest to both of these statements. The number of times I've heard my wife ask something to the degree of how I could be so dense/clueless/thoughtless is a little too high to be proud of.

Prayer:

(In private)