Yesterday, as I was cleaning out my sink after a haircut, my attention was grabbed by the smell of my youngest son's toothpaste. It wasn't anything fancy but it was the same type of toothpaste that I'd used when I was a kid. The smell brought back memories of my childhood and I was walking down memory lane for a minute. It was a good minute. It was so good that, for a split second, I thought, "maybe I should start using this again" I mean, I love the smell and it tastes like bubble gum, why not? I'll tell you why not. Had I started using this children's toothpaste on my adult teeth, they'd be in the worse shape in the history of teethdom (yeah I made that up)
There has to come a time in our lives where we come to the realization that we've just outgrown certain things. We cannot go through life repeating the same things over and over again because it'll cause us to become stagnant and unproductive. God is all about progression, "behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19 (KJV)) He's tire of the same ol' same ol'. How many times do we go to him in prayer asking for the same thing, the same deliverance, the same breakthrough? When do we get the fortitude to say, "the buck stops here" or "this far and no further!" God has given us everything we need to speak to a situation and make it change but are we using our tools?
Every New Years, people make resolutions to do or not to do a certain thing. For the past couple years, since I've been married, my resolution has been to lose weight and get back into shape. I'd start out ON FIRE! Eating right, doing a little exercise, I'd come out of the blocks looking like Sonic the Hedgehog. I'd get all cocky, like I was doing something big but then I'd began to slow down. I'd say to myself, "oh I'll just have a cheat here and there." But pretty soon, that cheat would turn into an everyday thing. Next thing I know, I'm right back in the same habit, doing the same thing, and feeling sorry for myself because I didn't accomplish what I'd set out to do. The same context applies to our walk with God. We sin, go to church, get some prayer, roll on the floor, get delivered, and we feel on top of the world because that burden of sin has be lifted. The next couple of days are good because you're talking to God on the regular, you're reading your word, and you are just determined to never go back to that place again. But as the days go by we get comfortable and cocky like we got this thing beat. So we skip a day of prayer because we're tired and whatever our issue was, we feel it's no longer that serious. The skipped day of prayer turns into a week and on top of that, we're not reading our bible. We think we've turned into this superhuman who no longer needs God because at that particular moment we're doing good. In all actuality, that's the time you need God most because that's going to be the time when that temptation is going to come and because you've decided to fly solo, you're going to go back to that same thing you just got delievered from! Whenever you feel like you no longer need God for ANYTHING, is when you need to get down on your knees and ask for forgiveness. "Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." (Psalms 100:3) We are his creation, his design, who better than him to know what we need?
I've come to the point in my life where I know that I can not make it without God. Every struggle that I've overcome was because of him. I've also come to the realization that my walk with God is a day-to-day thing. I'm not living for tomorrow because I might not see it but my prayer is, "lord help me, this day". Just like how God's mercies are new every morning, so are satan's tricks. He's going to try to get you to do whatever it is that's keeping you bound. If gossiping is your vice, then he's going send phone calls your way that have the juiciest gossip. If cursing someone out when you're mad is your struggle then he's going to send someone to cut you off in traffic only to see that person at the grocery store later that day. Every day, in every way, the enemy is going to try to steal, kill and destroy you. that's why everyday, in every way we need to recognize how much we need the Lord. Without allowing God to have rule over our flesh, we listen to the gossip, we give the person who cut us off a good piece of our mind.
It's time to mature in God. No more same ol same ol, he's not that type of God. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV)) If we're in him as much as we claim to be, then we have no choice but to realize that we've outgrown our sins of yesterday. Just like the new wine couldn't go into the old skins, our new self cannot go into our old life because if it does, like the old skins, we'll break.
-SP
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