Fleeing the Old Man
17/02/08 07:55
There is
something about today’s Christian that I just
don’t understand. It seems to me that with
today’s new Christians there isn’t that
quick transformation into the new life. The change
seems superficial and only temporary –really
temporary. Within months, and sometimes weeks these
people seem to have abandoned the faith and given up
on any real hope that God will fulfill His promise.
They obviously wanted a new life but the change
doesn’t come. I don’t believe it is
God’s fault. Let’s look at the Word to
see if we can come up with some answers. The exodus
out of Egypt for the Israelites provides for us the
analogy of conversion. Just as Israel was enslaved by
their taskmasters, Jesus said that anyone who sins is
a slave to it. When God directed Moses on the night
they were to escape Egypt He told them just what they
were to eat and how to eat it: “This
is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into
your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff
in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s
Passover.” Three
months later God told Moses to remind the Israelites
that it was He that carried them out of Egypt on
eagle’s wings. The point was that God swiftly
brought them out of a life of slavery and into a life
of freedom. I’m sure you have heard the old
adage: you can take the boy out of the country but
you can’t take the country out of the boy.
Well, it was something like that with the Israelites
in their exodus. God swiftly brought them out of
their slavery yet their hearts yearned for the easy
life back in Egypt. Nobody said the Christian life
was going to be easy. Today, people often make the
mistake of thinking that once they become Christians
that God will give them smooth sailing. We want our
“Promise Land” today; migrating in the
desert is too hard. God never intended that the
Israelites spend forty years in the desert. They had
to because of their unbelief and rebellion. They
wanted to go back to their old life in Egypt. God
wants the new Christian to be radically transformed,
quickly changed from a life of slavery to sin, to a
life of obedience and freedom. Salvation is described
in the Bible as a change from death to life. The idea
of being born-again meant that we would be born into
a new and different life! Receiving salvation and
staying in “Egypt” just doesn’t
work! I think the problem for most is in the area of
temptation. We hang around it too long. It’s
easier to fall under temptation (and ask forgiveness
later) than to fight to overcome it. When
Potipher’s wife was tempting Joseph he
didn’t hang around. The Bible says that he fled
so fast he left his coat behind. Christians should
flee temptation just as fast. Doesn’t James
promise us that if we resist the devil he will flee?
It is God’s desire that we would be quickly
transformed and that we stay transformed forever.
Becoming a Christian is supposed to be a permanent
thing. The secret lies in obedience. The faster that
we obey is in direct proportion to the radical change
we will see in our lives.
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