Free!

"The death he [Christ] died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ... For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law but under grace." --Romans 6:10-11, 14

God hit me between the eyes with this truth during my freshman year of college. I had been struggling with a particular sin for several years, often almost completely crushed by guilt, but I thought that was just the way it was. In this life, there are certain things you struggle with--besetting sins, if you will--that you just can't get free of until Heaven. But then we studied Romans 6 in our bible study, and everything changed. Then I dared to believe that scripture was true and that Paul wasn't kidding when he said that we are dead to sin. If you are dead to something, it no longer has control over you. When we're really tired and say we're "dead to the world," we usually mean that our surroundings (the world) have no impact on us and no influence. Likewise, since we are dead to sin, sin no longer has any necessary influence over us because we died and rose with Jesus. Seriously, this is a life changing truth!

Nevertheless, I forgot it.

For a while now I've been in a season where I feel like I'm just not growing in my walk with the Lord. I'm not really spending much time with the Lord because I often think I only want to read the word and become a woman of prayer just so I can feel good about myself. When someone asks about my summer, I want to be able to tell them all about how God is working in my life and feel that I have done what I was supposed to do. I am being crushed under the weight of rotten motives that I feel like I cannot escape.

Did you catch that? "I feel like I cannot escape." That is the lie. Are my motives sinful? Yes. Did Jesus die so I could be free from my rotten motives? Thanks be to God, Yes! I have succumbed to my sinful nature by letting this particular sin of bad motives control my life and my walk with the Lord. The truth is that I am dead to these motives. They have no control over me unless I give it to them. In Christ, I am free to confess my wrong motives and then continue to walk with the Lord!

We can say with Paul, "Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation--but it is not to the sinful nature to live according to it" (Rom. 8:12). Rather, we are able to run in the path of His commands, for he has set our hearts free! (Psalm 119:32)