Philippians 4:12-4:14
I heard a story about 3
co-workers, who were out of town for a convention and they were sharing a suite
at a hotel. Their room was on the 75th floor. So, you can imagine their
discouragement when, after a long day of meetings, they returned to the hotel
and found that the elevators were not working. To get to their room, they were
going to have to climb 75 flights. To try to pass the time, they decided to
have the first man tell jokes for the first 25 stores. Then the second man
would sing songs for the next 25 flights. And finally the third man would tell
sad stories for the last 25 flights. It was all going according to plan – the
first told his jokes for 25 stories, the second sang songs for 25 stories, but
when it was time for the man to begin telling his sad stories he hesitated. He
said, “I think I will begin with my saddest story of all. I’m afraid I left our
room key in the car.”
This story illustrates the reason
why many people who are pursing life-change get discouraged. Often, when we are
trying to make progress, we take “three steps forward and two back. ”Have you
ever had that experience? I know I have!
As we start our long journey to
freedom, there are two obstacles that we are going to have to overcome. First, we
must not travel alone. And second, we must not let discouragement stop us along
the way. There are no easy shortcuts to life transformation that is lasting. A
makeover of our lives takes time. In the end, we must realize that real
life-change is a process not an event.
As we make progress in our journey toward
Christ-likeness, there will be many stumbles along the way. While we find
ourselves sinning less and less, we will never be sinless in this life. One
reason that is true is because there are spiritual forces about us that will
not cease their attempts to derail our journey to freedom. In Ephesians 6, Paul
warns us about these forces and tells us to put on the full armor of God and to
be strong in the Lord. Just because we make some progress in overcoming in some
areas of spiritual bondage, doesn’t mean that the evil forces will leave us
alone; actually, it may mean that they step up their attacks to try to derail
our spiritual progress. But, not only do we have to battle against the forces
outside of us, we also have to battle the forces within us.
We have to win the battle against
our own wrong thinking and the evil desires that are within. As long as we live
in this world, we will have to battle with the flesh and the mind. We are not
going to win this battle randomly or accidentally. We must intentionally
subject the flesh and the mind, and we must undertake an intentional strategy
for reaching our spiritual goals.
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