What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.
~ Morpheus to Neo, in The Matrix
Then they yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor, and ate sacrifices offered to the dead; they provoked the Lord to anger with their deeds, and a plague broke out among them. Then Phinehas stood up and executed judgement, and the plague was stayed. And that was counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever.
~from Psalm 106
Oh beloved, it is true. There is within us sometimes an epic battle and it seems that we are about to lose. We look at the strange fire around us and are fascinated by the sounds and curves and smells it gives off….
Stop right there.
And beloved, grace abounds in this chief of sinners writing this entry. However, what also abounds in believers like him (and you!) is not just the forgiving aspect of grace when we fail – but the Unlimited Power to stay away from the temptation to mix our old lives with the New Life we have in Him!
It does seem that the problem we have today is not like the simple choices made by heroes like Job (I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman… from ch. 31 of that epic poem), or Joseph (…How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?… from Genesis 39). Rather, us “modern” believers want to keep wondering how much of the world we can work into our lives and still have everything work out OK.
Ummmm…. are you still wondering friend? Stop. The answer is zero. Always has been. Always will be.
But we do not like the answer. So, we will often continue to look for ways to mix just a “little of this”, or a “little of that” into our situation. And always upon always, the result is disastrous.
However, a stunning truth of His Word is that every single one of us is, in and of our own selves, are completely unable to do the right thing. We will fail every time. Even though there may be a delay in our failure, every attempt will end in disaster.
Enter the good news… Even more stunning is the truth that, in Him, by Him and through Him, we simply will not and cannot fail… Really.
Oh friends, read as Paul hammers the pages of his introduction to his letter to the Ephesians and and simply tells it like it is. “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, …that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion…, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Can we see it? The same Power that swallowed death with Life is the Power we have against sin. We have but to yield to it, reckon this truth true, and simply begin to walk in it. The question is not whether this is possible. The question always is whether or not we will, like Phinehas, pick up that javelin and heave it at the offending garbage in our lives.
Do you want the Power? It is available to all who ask for it. And that beloved, is the question.
