Why Do I Keep Struggling With The Same Sin?
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Now, before I started following Jesus, um, I had absolutely no ability to deal with addictive behaviors and habits and things like that. And so I was a sinner who sinned and I was pretty good at it. In fact, some people probably say you're better at that than pastoring. But that's a different story. But that's who I was.
It also, it fascinates me sometimes I hear Christian people, they get all up in arms about someone that's behaving like a sinner and it's like, well, that's what they do. That's what I did. I had no capacity. So when I finally gave my life to Christ and I surrendered my life to Christ, something immediately in me changed.
I knew, I knew that something had happened because the world did no longer have the control over me that it had. I had the ability to actually say no to things that were continually hindering me. But anyway, as I started my journey with Christ, and then I, weeks went by and then months went by, I suddenly noticed some of those habits creeping back in.
Those patterns were reemerging and a little voice whispered to me, "Well, nothing's actually changed." Nothing's actually changed. And I knew that I knew that I knew that that was a lie. Because I knew that I had changed. I knew something in the infrastructure within me, it was like darkness had gone and light had come in, and death had left and life had come in.
But it didn't stop the fact that I was still struggling. So then I said, "Well, obviously, I've gotta get more focused. So I'm gonna be more focused, I'm gonna try harder, I'm gonna become more disciplined, and that's gonna produce lasting change." And it would last for a f- little while, and then it, I would kind of relapse again.
And I was trying all these practices. I wonder what practices you have developed over the course of your life, whether you're following Christ or not, to try and manage when life gets out of control. We have them. When you are leaning into temptation or this addiction, you have a practice that you reach to to try and combat that.
The same thing happens when you're in a relationship, and the relationship's not going the way you think it should go, and suddenly something will come out. It's an infrastructure that you use to try and control that relationship and get it back to where you want it to be. It's how you respond when the pressure comes on.
That's when you find out what are these patterns and what are these things that you're relying on. Now, you've probably tried all the things that I've tried at different times. I thought, "Man, I just need more accountability. Gonna make myself accountable to more people. That's the answer, accountability."
And I do that for a while, that didn't work. I'm gonna journal. I'm not, I'm not gonna do devotions just once a day, I'll do it five times a day, and I'm just gonna keep journaling and journaling, and that's the answer. And it would last for a while, but then it would fizz again. Then I thought, "Well, it's counseling, so I gotta have some counseling, 'cause there's obviously something wrong with me."
And that didn't help either. So then I said, "Well, s- it's prayer. No, I need to fast. That's what I'm gonna... I'm gonna spend ages. I'm not gonna eat for, like, five weeks." I've done that. And I... But the same thing, it would just work for a little while, but then it would come back. And then I thought, "Oh." And I reached the place which most of us reach, and we interpret these fall overs as personal failure.
We think it's personal failure. But if the Apostle Paul was here, he would have a different story. He would say, "It's not actually a personal failure, it's a system failure." There is a system that is failing you, and that's why we're doing this series, Old Habits Die Hard. And I've just gotta lay the foundation today, and I'm going to cover a lot of ground, uh, because I want as much of the seed to go out there that you can just, like, drop into your mind and your heart and your spirit so you can kind of figure this thing out.
Because if we have the right understanding, we'll end up with the right diagnosis. And so many of us have got the wrong diagnosis. And if you get the right diagnosis, well, then you find the right cure. Otherwise, you're running around in the dark. Now, I learnt this as a very young pastor when I first started, and this woman rang me and she said, "I have to talk to you," and she came in, and she is literally, she walks in my office, I mean, she is hysterical.
She's bawling. There's snot everywhere. I don't know what to do with a woman like that. It's like she's just go- she's losing it. Anyway, I managed to calm her down enough and I said, "So look, what, what's the matter, hon? Tell me what's going on." And she said, "I don't know what's the matter with me. I am sick and tired.
All I attract is the same kind of men, controlling, manipulative, lazy, drunken, abusive men." So I said, "Well, let's talk about life. Tell me about your life." And we went round, and I couldn't, I couldn't find anything that I thought might be causing this problem. And God doesn't speak to me orderly a lot. He speaks to me through the scriptures.
But occasionally, often, He just goes this, and He, He just whispered to me. He said, "Ask her about her dad." I said, "Oh, okay, honey. Well, tell me about your relationship with your dad." The veins in her neck, like, just, like this, and she went red. And I th- I thought her head was gonna explode, and she was so angry, and she was just...
And she said, "I hate that guy. He's a controlling, manipulative, lazy, drunken..." Oh my goodness, what am I doing?
And she realized it wasn't a habit failure. She was having a system failure. She realized it in the middle of the rant. She got all the way through and went, "Oh, my goodness, this is my dad. I am attracting my dad to me all the time. Why is that?" 'Cause there's a system failure. And for her system failure, the healing began when she forgave her dad.
Forgiveness was the system that she needed to do. So this is so, this is gonna be so much common ground for us because th- we all have this instinct within us with human beings that if something's not right, what do you do? You try harder. You go for the try harder trap. That's all I gotta do. If something's not right, the pattern's not right, I just need to try harder.
I need to find a different structure. I need to make sure failure doesn't repeat. Build a better system. More discipline. That's right, more discipline. I need to go to the gym more often, work out. But then that fails. Doesn't work. Well, but accountability then. No, well, that doesn't work either. A new strategy.
And the trouble is, everything we do is relying on our effort. It's all me-centric, and it's a very human thing for us to do. But we assume that the problem is the behavior. That's the assumption. But Paul would say, "Mm, nah." It's not the behavior. The issue is the nature behind the behavior, and this is where your system error is What if, this is a what if question for you, what if all the systems and all the structures and all the things that you are trying to build to control and keep these habits and things under control, what if they're actually making it worse?
What if they're actually pouring fuel onto the fire? Now, if Apostle Paul was here, he'd leap up in the seats now and go, "Amen, brother." That's exactly what it is. The issue is you've got competing systems vying for the devotion of your life. And he would go on and he would explain why, and he does this to a group of religious leaders, and they have a conversation.
And we're gonna step into this conversation and just watch what happens, because there is so much in it. So he's talking to the religious leaders in Rome, and, uh, they have kinda got a little bit distracted, and they're kinda confused about the whole system and how everything works. And Paul is talking about, "It's Jesus, and it's Jesus alone.
That's the answer." And they're freaking out. They're all freaking out, and they're going, "Well, hang on. Wait a second. Wait a second. If we don't... If we just say it's all about grace and mercy, people are gonna go unrestrained and sin more. They're just gonna sin more and more. We need the law. The law has gotta be there to control people and stop them from sinning.
We need the law of Moses." Now, this group of people were actually called Judaizers in the Bible. So they were people that fell in love with Jesus, but they wanted to follow Jesus by the operating system of Moses. So they were called Judaizers. So they come up with what they think is a really good theological argument for Paul to stump him on this Jesus only path.
So let's go. Romans 6:1-7 says, "What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning, Paul, that grace may increase?" 'Cause that's the logical place. Well, okay, if God's merciful and gracious and things, then we should just go on sinning. And then Paul comes back and says, "By no means! We are those who have," remember that, "died to sin.
Who can... How can we live any long- in it any longer?" How can we, how can we live in it any longer if we've died to it? Keep going. "Don't you know that all of us who are baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?" Hmm. "We were therefore buried with Him through baptism," we saw some of that just before, "into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
For if we have been united with Him in a death like this, we will certainly also be united with Him in the resurrection like this. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him, so that by the body ruled by sin," or the body of death, "might be taken away, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."
Paul's addressing the issue right here with them. And the issue is, if God's forgiving and God's gracious and God's merciful, we should just keep sinning so we can get more grace. And he's try- but what he does is he immediately leaps onto it because he, he knows the, the problem is a lack of understanding.
You don't get it. You're missing it. You think, you think the issue is the habit, the thing that you're worried about. The issue's not. The issue is the system. How can someone that has died to sin continue to sin? Now, if you've never given your life to Christ, you're gonna learn a whole lot about what's involved this morning.
If you have given your life to Christ, you're gonna discover the reason why you dis- you struggle and why old habits continue to die hard. When you came to faith in Christ, something died, and that something was your old sin nature. It's the one that you inherited from your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, not so great grandparents, Adam and Eve
You inherited this body of death from them. All humanity inherited it. When the law came along, it just condemned you to death 'cause it lets you know how far short you fall and your inability to do it, so you're condemned to death. What Paul's trying to help them understand, that old nature was crucified with Jesus when you surrender your life to Him, and then it's buried through water baptism, and then you come up in new resurrection life.
So even though sin was in the world right after Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled against God, decided self-governance was the way to go, and even though all that brokenness and all that death and all that darkness and the whole horrible mess that occurred, uh, people didn't still, really didn't understand what sin was.
They didn't really understand what it was. So God had to give them a law, the law to let them know just how far they've fallen, how far down they've gone. So that body of death is something that we really need to understand 'cause in Adam, all human beings are born into death. They're born into darkness Adam and Eve started in the light.
They started in pure relationship with God. God warned them, "If you do this, that's not gonna go so good," but they did it anyway, and then death entered the world. Curse entered, and it entered all of us, and so we inherited this body of death. Now, when Paul was sharing this with them, these religious leaders, they were...
They had a living example going on right there in the world because Rome is incredibly creative and incredibly brutal, brutal on how they deal with capital punishment. So one of the, one of the ways that they would deal with capital punishment is, like, say, say I killed Richo here because he just really upset me.
He didn't like my shirt or something like that, and I got angry and I killed him. So therefore, what Rome would do is say, "Okay, okay, here's your penalty. We will take Mark's carcass, and we will chain it to you, chain it to your back, and you become chained with it." So then his body decomposes, and that gets really nasty and smelly and awful.
He's already dead, but my punishment is the death that I caused him will bring about my death. I will actually be eaten alive to die. That was very creative of Rome to come up with that. But when he said, "You've got to get rid of the body of death, guys," they knew exactly what he was saying. They knew that Paul was saying, "Whoa, okay, so you're saying something has happened, and something has died, and we need to bury it and get rid of it?"
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Now, I loved my grandma, but when she died, I did not prop her up in the lounge and keep her in the house. Why? Because she's dead. Dead things decompose. I said, "You can have that. She's no longer here. She's gone, but you can have that part." So think about that, body of death.
Body of death. Die with Christ. Has to be got rid of. Has to be got rid of You can't fix it. You can't fix it. So let me just take a bit of poetic creative license here, so don't everyone leap on me if I don't give you all the theological things along the way. But let me just help you understand the, the whole picture, the whole thing from before to where we are now, 'cause I want you to understand there's systems that are driving us, and you gotta make sure you don't have a system failure, otherwise you will not get the right result.
So in the beginning, before anything happened and before anything took place, God was in kind of like a divine design room. Somewhere, he, he's just, he's in his divine design room, and he's kind of like dreaming up, uh, what this world will look like. And he's getting in there, and he's looking, "Oh, man, we gotta create the universe.
Put the... Sun's gotta be exactly that far away, otherwise they're all gonna melt. You know, we're gonna put it all in there, and we need some thermodynamics. And oh, wait, wait a second. We need a bit of gravity, too, 'cause I'll fluff off everywhere." So he's designing this whole thing, all before anything takes place.
At the same time, this is gonna be hard to get your head around, every human being that's ever going to enter this world, he's also designing with a unique soul, with a unique personality, with unique gifts and unique talents, that they're gonna be given a purpose on Earth. And he's divining. All this is in his mind or in his divine design room.
And then he's reaching that place. It's time to go. So he starts to speak, it says, and the Holy Spirit goes to work. And he goes, and he's speaking. Oh, and the world comes into being. And suddenly the sun and the moon and the stars and all of creation is coming into being. It's amazing. It's amazing. And he goes, "This is really, really good."
And he goes, "Now, I need to start this process of getting humans into the world. I gotta start with two humans. I gotta build them from scratch." So he creates Adam and Eve, and then he breathes the breath of life into them. And at that point in time, they get their distinct, unique soul, their character, the thing about them.
And then he takes them and he says, "Now, we're gonna start walking together. We'll be in fellowship with each other. It's gonna be amazing. And now, now, this, I'm gonna put you in a garden. And so you can get in the garden, and then when you're in the garden, we're gonna... This is, this is paradise here, and if you stay with me, we'll keep walking together, and paradise will eventually fill the whole Earth and the whole universe, the whole thing."
But In that uniqueness of our soul, He gave us something because He want His creation to love Him because they want to love Him. And love is not love when you force it, so you have to give free will, which is what we have in our soul. We have free will. And so He gives them free will, and He spells it out for them.
Like, you can't get any... If you go and read it through Genesis, you can't get any clearer. "Adam, if you do this, you could choose to go it alone. Stay with me, it's never gonna be perfect, but this, uh, paradise will keep expanding. You go alone, everything's gonna turn to custard. It's all gonna go bad. You're gonna lose eternal life.
You're gonna lose our relationship. Sin and death and brokenness will affect the whole earth." Now, you'd think that Adam would go, "Hey, that's, that's not very good. Maybe I should just stay connected." But He created human beings. So what did Adam and Eve do? "No, thanks. I think I, I think I can figure this out myself.
I will find my way of doing. We wanna self-govern. We don't want you to be doing that for us. We wanna do it ourselves." And they break everything, and everything just falls. Darkness falls. They're cut off from eternal life. They're cut off from their connection with God. Their relationship with each other is decimated.
And you can read it all through just the Book of Genesis going on. It's so broken, so broken. But they still had the breath of life in order to function in this world But now, the only thing they've got to deal with the mess that we've created, all they've got is their unique soul, their personalities, their gifts, their talents.
So as you read on through Genesis, it says, "And so everybody decided to do what was right in their own eyes." And it turned out what was right in everyone's own eyes was wrong with God. And He was really unhappy about this. It got to the point where He says, "Every thought of human beings is just evil all the time."
So He says, "I've had a gut full. I'm done. I'm gonna wipe 'em out with a big flood." But fortunately, there was one family, Noah and his family, and He decides, "You know what? Let's give it another crack. Let's give it another crack, try it out on the family." And so He starts again. The problem is Noah still carried Adam's old nature within his body.
And so it wasn't long before everything went bad again. But at least God gave us a rainbow, a rainbow to promise He won't destroy us by flood again. He's very encouraging. He said, "I won't des- I won't destroy you by water. Next time it's gonna be by fire." No, He doesn't say that. He actually does say that, so I put that back in.
So He, He got it. Human beings trying to figure out life without a connection with God, without a connection to eternal life, and it's becoming more and more of a mess. So what's He do? He raises up Moses. He gives them the law. Says, "This is the law." And they're going, "Great. Okay. Whatever. This is the law."
Yeah, but the law was designed for one purpose: to show you exactly how far you fall short of God's high standard. And then when it pointed out that you f- way short, then it was really nice, it then condemned you to death, and it became your captor, held you captive, until God makes another way. But the law came in to try and stop the whole of, um, humanity just descending into anarchy, and to help them see, "Hey, we're not doing so good here.
We think we're doing good in our own eyes, but it's not really reaching what is God's standard." Then, of course, over time, Jesus is born. Born of a virgin, sinless. Comes into the world. That's Christmas, and it's good news for everyone because they've been long awaiting someone to rescue from the tyranny of this law because they can't keep it.
They can't make it. It's condemning them to death all the time. Anyway, he, he grows, becomes a man, and then he starts talking about this new way. We're gonna, there's gonna be a new way. Nobody really liked it in the religious leaders, but there's gonna be a new way. It's gonna be something new, something different.
And he said, "By the way, I am going to be the way into that new way," which they also didn't really like that much. 'Cause people who are attached to the old won't let it go for the new
Those who love the status quo or profit from the status quo, which the religious leaders did, are least likely to let it go. So this is the situation, and then Jesus starts walking around. He starts showing us what God the Father was like, and he's-- it's nothing like what I've heard in the past. And, and he starts showing he's a loving, good, heavenly Father, and he cares for them.
And he starts... It's like, "Whoa, okay." And then at the appointed time, he goes to the cross. Cruel, horrible Roman cross. And he says, "I'll do what you can't do. You can't fix yourself up by the law. You're never gonna make it back. So I'll take the punishment that they deserve for what humanity did. I'll go to hell on their behalf.
I'll do that. But because I'm holy and because I'm righteous, hell and death is not gonna be able to hold me." And on the third day, he rises from the dead. Rises from the dead, and his first message is, "Whosoever wants to can come." Not just the Jews. This is open. This is all skate for everybody. Anybody who wants to come out from underneath that law and into the new dimension of the way of grace and truth can come in through Jesus.
And that's why he boldly said, "I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me." So salvation is a free gift. Yes. But it's not duty-free When you sta- choose to follow Jesus, when you surrender your life to Him, you're identifying with His death on the cross, His burial, and His resurrection, so that you can actually go through that same birthing process as a new creation.
That's what the people went through in waters of baptism. But what it means for you when you're thinking about old habits die hard, when you surrendered your life to Christ, the old nature, the body of death of Adam, was crucified with him, was buried with him. Which means it's not your old nature that's causing you the problem, because it was crucified with Christ.
That body of death was dealt with by God. When we surrender our life to Christ, the light and the love of Christ comes into us, dispels darkness, dispels death, and also puts to death that old Adamic sin nature that was trapped by the law and condemned to die. So What is going on? Why do you still have the struggles?
Now, this body of death thing, it's not just a nice metaphor, it's the theological architecture of the new covenant. You gotta understand it because you can't fix your old nature. You can't reform it, you can't improve it, and you can't manage it. If any of that could've happened, Jesus would've left it there, but He said there's only one thing we can do with it: kill it.
So it died, and it was buried with Christ So what is going on here? Before I went Christ, I just sinned. I couldn't help it. That's what I was. I, I... That's my nature. I sinned, I'm a sinner. That's what we do. I had no ability. Then I gave my life to Christ, then suddenly it's, it's great, everything's fantastic.
I realize the world doesn't have a hold of me, but then this thing creeps back in again, and these habits. And I'm going, "What is going on here?" And I used to think it's my old nature. I had to keep crucifying my old nature. It's not. That's done. But the way I approach my habits, that's where we run into the f- system failure of doing this.
That's where the system failure. It's the ha- it's not the habits, it's the habit underneath the habits. In Romans 7 next week, I'm looking forward to... Paul Enz is gonna share on this. We're gonna really begin to put some legs on this. But I just want you to get the foundation of understanding what's going on.
If the old nature is dead, my question is, why do so many believers keep trying to fix it up?
And pretty much everything you see on YouTube, everything you see anywhere advertising is about helping you fix up What can't be fixed up If it's dead, why do so many believers keep trying to manage and fix it with a better system? The law was about this. The law equals self-effort. It equals self-regulation.
That is the nature of the law and self-governance That's what the law was about. That's how it came about. Because we had to control what was lost when Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled against God and lost eternal life, and this curse came in, we had to do something with that. God had to do something with that because people are gonna implode.
It's gonna become absolute anarchy, so then He gives them the law, but that's what the law was. The law was designed for you to work harder so you can self-govern, fix yourself up, get yourself right, and make yourself right so you can earn God's love. That is the law. The problem is, you couldn't do it. No one could.
And so you go, you, you work your entire life, "I'm gonna fix this thing up," and He goes, "Oh, by the way, you fell short. Dead." It condemned you to death, but that was the purpose of the law. So listen, every time you struggle, every time you face a habit, every time you face that and you try and put another system in to control it from a human point of view, you are reaching back into an old system that you're not supposed to do.
That system is the very mechanism. The law provokes sin. That's what it did. It provoked it more and more. So if you reach back to try and follow self-effort and try and fix it up, you actually throw fuel on the fire. It's going to get worse. And that is the irony of the Christian world at present. And that's why Nick was saying to you, not everything on RightNow Media would we hold to because they're still trying to fix it up.
'Cause here is how it is. People have surrendered their life to Christ. That's a great thing. "I've surrendered my life to Christ. I've... Brand new. God's in the house. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's wonderful. Okay, now I need to fix myself up." Uh-oh, you just bounced straight out of grace and straight back under the law, 'cause you're gonna fix yourself up.
"I gotta be harder, I gotta be stronger, I gotta work, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do that." Who's gotta do it? I. I thought it was Christ in you that had to do the stuff. See the trap? It is a real trap. So the habit isn't actually... The ha- the, the oldest habit isn't actually sin It's not actually sin anymore.
The oldest habit is reaching for the law to try and fix it. And that is the trap predominantly of the church in the West at the moment, is that we've started our l- started our faith in Christ in the Spirit, but now we're gonna try and work it out and fix ourselves, and you're back in an operating system that Jesus and Paul said, "You should not have anything to do with that.
That's done. It's served its purpose." So across this next week, I just want you to be thinking about, thinking about the things that you have going on in your life. And I want you to think about the way that you're trying to manage the system. Is it helping or is it hindering? Are you discovering that this is helping the issue, or is it actually fueling the issue?
Is it, is it making it worse? 'Cause from the new covenant, the new covenant is not about a better system. It's about a different identity. It's about a different identity. Who you are in Christ, and then Christ outworking His love and His holiness through you. You can't manage it. If we could've managed it, Jesus wouldn't have put it to death.
But God knows you can't solve the Adamic old sin nature of the body of death, which is what we're all born into, until we receive Christ. At that point in time, you stand a chance of doing something different. Without it, you're done, because you can't get away from it. It's inherent in us. I use this example every so often, and I want you to think about this, is, um, when I received Christ, Christ came into my life.
I knew that it happened. I knew I was different. I knew the world didn't have as much of a hold on me. His light and His love was in me. I knew that, and that was great for a while, but then suddenly things started to fa- uh, fall off, and this is where I didn't understand it back then, but then I realized He refers to our body as a tabernacle or a temple.
Now, inside a temple are lots of spaces, lots of doors, lots of rooms. So here's the situation. Even though Jesus might be in the dining area of my life, He may not have made His way to the office yet to talk to me about money and my approach to money. He may not have made it to the bedroom to address my sexuality, because I've got that door kept locked.
Now, there's a problem with that. 'Cause now you got a situation where Christ is in here and you got the competing system, holiness, is trying to be the master. But you're now leaning back into something, you're keeping secrets, you're hiding something. So therefore, that's in the dark, so now your body will actually trigger to that and start to mirror that because that's what's in hiding.
See, your, your issue is not just a systems failure, but it's your flesh. This is the body. This is a natural body. It's here. It's the vehicle that I use to get around, but my vehicle had been driving around the body of death for 21 years, and it'd been doing a great job. Great job. Man, it was like... So now I've surrendered my life to Christ, Jesus has come into the house, He wants holiness.
I got areas I'm not really, I, I'm not comfortable, Jesus, with you coming into that area just yet. Okay, well, that's gonna sit in darkness. So now my body is confused. It's confused. Well, hang on, I want my old master back, and back in that room, that's where my old master is. That's the sort of behavior I want, so I'm gonna pick up on that and I'm gonna start emulating that.
But the minute I throw that door open and I let Christ into it, and He comes in, like we said last week if you were here when we talked about Isaiah, and Isaiah finds he's undone, he's sinful, and he, he doesn't try and get away. He cries out and God sends a coal and heals him, touches him, purifies him.
When you open the door in that area and surrender in that area, the Holy Spirit, His fire, His coal, here it comes, purification comes. Your body now is no longer in confusion in that area because now the new master is Christ, the new master is holiness, so I'll do what it's telling me to do. But if you have d- doors that are closed that are filled with darkness, the things that are outside of what is God's best for you, your body is gonna get confused.
Because one thing's going on, Jesus wants me to walk in holiness and He wants me to get rid of these habits, but I've got this secret area over here that nobody knows about, and somehow we feel like God doesn't know either. That's pretty dumb, 'cause He sees everything. But I got this secret area that's hiding, and if I just keep it over there, now what I'm gonna do is I gotta, I gotta make sure that thing doesn't come out.
So now what have I gotta do? I've gotta follow the law now. I gotta now manage, build a system, put something around it, because I don't want you discovering that about me, because if you discover that about me, you won't like me very much.
I gotta tell you, if, if you're new around here and you that, you're thinking, "Yeah, that's exactly, if people knew what I was really like." There was a time that I would've said, "Yep, we're like that." We're not like that anymore. We're not like that anymore. Nobody judges anybody. We're not here to judge, we're here to love.
And you have the ap- opportunity to get those things out and open that door and get some help, and people walk through with you. So I hear it all the time now, when someone is particularly struggling in an area, I, I mean, I used to... This used to make me cringe, and I think it's what sent me into depression in the last church where I was involved with leading, was someone would come out and say they're struggling with this particular thing, and the person that's listening would go, "Man, I can't believe, can't believe you're struggling with that."
And I'm thinking to myself, I know you. You are struggling with the same thing, but you make out this persona thing, like, "I'm, oh, oh, man, I can't believe you're like that. That's, you wicked sinner." Where, no. You know what I hear now? Someone comes out and they go, "Man, I'm really struggling. Man, I blew it in this area."
And the other one says, "You know what? I struggle, too, and occasionally blow it. But you know what? Let's take it to Jesus. Let's let Jesus into that space. Let's let Christ into that, and let's ask Him to purify us so that we don't keep stumbling." You throw the door open on that for a little while, and suddenly your, your body doesn't even want to go down there anymore 'cause there's no need.
There's no dark room. There's nothing closed. This is the dynamic of actually you getting free. It's about spiritual renewal, but it's not spiritual renewal in you trying to fix yourself. It's renewal in you surrendering every area and allowing Christ to come in, every single area. The, our word for the year, if, if you haven't been around here for long, it was, is recalibrate, and I think this is what God is doing.
The church predominantly, and I see it all the time, and I hear it all the time, "Well, I've just gotta do this, and if I do that, and when I do this, this is gonna happen. And if I do this, then God is gonna bless me, and if I fast for 40 days, God's gonna bless me." He's not, He doesn't have to do anything.
That's an old mechanism. Under the law, people say, "Why did they do that?" Under the law, that was how it worked. The whole system was set up, "If you do this, I will bless you. If you do this, I'll curse you and smash you." That's the reason why the pagan nations was told to pray for Israel, because if Israel behaved, they...
went well for them, too. If Israel did not behave, they knew what was gonna happen. God would send someone down to smash 'em, and we'd get in the line of fire. So the pagan nations would say, "Yes, yes, yes, Israel. Pray for Israel." That's what it was all about. But under the new system, you're not trying to fix yourself.
You're not trying to fix yourself. You just die to that. You die to it. And last time I checked, and I've been to a f- I've done a few fu- funerals, and, uh, sometimes they have an open casket, and I know the person. And so, uh, if I knew they were struggling with a particular sin, I would just lean up to the casket and say, "Want to indulge one more thing?"
No one's ever answered.
Mind you, I'd probably freak out if they did answer. But, but you get, you get what I'm saying? Dead people don't sing. That's why it says you died to sin. When you recognize that you're dead in Christ, your old nature's dead, and this new creation is emerging through your unique soul that God has put in you from the div- divine design room, that's when things get really, really exciting.
Really exciting. We used to be people that were dominated by sin. It would run us, it would ru- rule us, and it would ruin us. But now, now we're just the people of the way. You cannot manage what you are supposed to bury. Old habits die hard because there's muscle memory in your flesh, and it wants to go back.
If you leave a vacuum in there, even though Jesus is in part of the house, if you keep areas locked, your body's gonna be in confusion 'cause, "I'm li- kinda like my old master. I'd rather go back here and do this." And so it's gonna keep pushing that at you, and you're gonna have that struggle. When you open that door and say, "No, no, no, everything is in submission to Christ," your body then comes into alignment, and you don't have tension, you don't have anxiety, and you don't have all these things.
Why? 'Cause you're not trying to control and manage. You're not having, "Oh, man, what did I say to that person over there? I can't remember what I said to that person over there." I can remember as a pastor when I... We were taught this stuff. Never, ever show weakness. Never, always, you've always gotta be high, you've always gotta be perfect, and this, that, and the other.
I couldn't remember who I'd talked to, and I was terrible. So then I'd be, "Oh, me, I'm fantastic." And then, "But then you said the other day you're not doing so good." "Oh, yeah, well, that was the other day, wasn't it?" You know, like. And I cr- it creates this horrible, horrible masking which is not helpful to anybody.
Now, that's not who we are. We're on a journey of learning to follow Jesus, coming to Christ, surrendering all the rooms in our house. And the more rooms that get surrendered to Him, and the more consistently the Holy Spirit's allowed to have access, the habits just stop Habits just stop because there's no confusion So that's why old habits die hard, because there's a system failure when we don't recognize that we're dead, and so now we're trying to manage and fix up the old nature by using the same technique as the law that didn't work It's just gotta be surrendered.
And once it's surrendered, the fire just goes out. Let's pray together. Father, I just thank You that this, this is gonna be a really, really great series. I'm, I'm already getting the sense that, that some people are going, "Oh my goodness, this is gonna be an uncomfortable series." And the reality is, if you fight God on it, yep, it will get a little uncomfortable.
But if you choose not to fear, and you choose to say, "You know what, Jesus? Have control of all this," then things will begin to change in every area of your life, and you won't have to be worried, "What if this comes out? What if that comes out?" You'll just say, "Lord, here I am." Like Isaiah, when the thing comes up, you just go, "Lord, woe is me.
I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips," or whatever it is. And that action there sends heaven down to purify you, to heal you, and to restore you. So Father, my prayer is that over this time we'll realize, across this week, that, man, I'm maybe grappling with the wrong system. Lord, now I understand why my, I'm s- I f- why Paul said, you know, like, "I wanna do the good thing, but I keep doing the wrong thing."
Yeah, it's 'cause there's a system error going on in there. And Lord, I pray for everybody that goes on this journey that at the end of it we'll come out going, "Amazing. This is amazing." Because the thing when you, when you finally get free, and you finally get healed, and you finally get whole, you can do anything for Jesus, and anything He asks you, you'll put your hand up for.
But He'll come to you and say, "Oh, do this, do this," and you'll go, "No, no, no, no. I can't do that." Why? Because I'm frightened that this thing will come out. Get it out in the open. Open the doors, let Jesus in, and then you'll be available for Him in every area. So Father, please just keep leading us, keep guiding us, and gently encouraging us just to lean further into You.
We thank You in Jesus' name, amen