The Chase Chapter 5: Change of Kingdoms

Ok seriously, had I read this part of the book before spiriling into a month of depressed defeat, I probably would've had my answers from the get go.

This is an awesome chapter so lets pull out some stuff in it that really spoke to me.

"Does it seem like the same issues and sins always come creeping back into your life?"

Yes

Seriously I love the questions this book asks b/c their realistic. Anyway the book tells us not to get comfortable with our sins, and why? B/c Christ put to death our sins so we would no longer be held back by them.

"We don't have to live like sin is controlling us... unfortunately for most of us, that freedom passes by us and we end up frustrated."

You see, choosing not to sin is exactly that, it's a choice we choose to take. It's not forced upon us, we aren't given no choice but not to (b/c, hello we've been talking about LIVING A HOLY LIFE! ding ding other choice) its a path we choose, far too often to find ourselves walking down. Why?

Why do we sin?

One answer I know, is b/c we enjoy doing it.

The book gives a bunch more, like it's what were raised into being natural. Like follow your parent's habits, we as humans follow the world into sinning, but we shouldn't be making excuses, ultimately we choose to sin, what we need to do is choose not too.

No matter how hard you try though, your old life of sin keeps creeping back though...

Exactly what got me depressed in the first place.

I love how the book describes us moving away from a country where sin is soverign, we don't have to let sin control us anymore, but we do, b/c why?

It's comfortable and what were used to. Other words, it's a habit, and like most habits other habits, its a bad one, we need to stop doing.

We need to rely on God to help us with beating our habit of sinning, and to not get beat down by it over and over, but to run into Christs open arms for help and future strength to win the battles to come.

We need to all spend more time in rehab learning to live in this new life, instead of going back to the comfortable old life. I didn't become a Christian to live an easy life, and if you did, you picked the wrong crowd to hang out with. We will be looked at differently, insulted for doing whats right, and mocked for standing up for what we believe in, by hypocritical society.

"We can wrap up all of this by remembering that God has made a way for us to be holy. Because of what Christ did on the cross, we've been freed from our sin's control and we can now resist it. The responsibility is ours- we must resist sin."

It reminds of a message I once wrote about how faith is established.

Basically I got this vision of me sitting down at the dinner table with God, and it was sorta a pot luck between the two of us. We each had to bring something, both had to bring something unique that the other couldn't bring. One was trust, and that comes from God, the fact we can trust in him, and we have to bring obeidience to go along with his trust, so that the turkey of living a faithful life tastes really good.

But ya, we have to bring our effort, God has already brought his son Jesus to die on the cross, for our freedom of sin. The buck has been passed to us, and don't worry, your going to drop it, but the best part is, God is there to help us pick it up again, just like he is always willing to pass the salt if our corn of obedience is a little dry.

-Brent