“Sin is a dethroned monarch; so you must no longer give it an opportunity to rule over your life, controlling how you live and compelling you to obey its desires and cravings.
So then, refuse to answer its call to surrender your body as a tool for wickedness. Instead, passionately answer God’s call to keep yielding your body to him as one who has now experienced resurrection life!
You live now for his pleasure, ready to be used for his noble purpose.
Remember this: sin will not conquer you, for God already has! You are not governed by law but governed by the reign of the grace of God.”
(Romans 6:12-14 TPT)
By chance I came across a life coach whose work is based on eastern mysticism. He quoted some yogi and another wise man from a mountain and I kept on thinking… that sounds a lot like the Bible!
I kept listening because the truth is the truth, regardless of who says it. And it resonates with what I was working through in Romans.
He referred to how we like to call our work “hard” and that we are taught to work “hard” and study “hard” – so much so that we start to believe that “work is hard” and “studies are hard” – it becomes a hateful thing.
What if we say “work joyfully”! Or “study purposefully”? It changes how we approach our day… (remember Avedah, the Hebrew word for “Work as Worship”?)
If you honestly think about it… It is really simple.
Like Paul says in Romans 6:13 – The power over our lives has been broken. Grace is in power. We do not need to try harder not to sin. Just don’t.
There is no power that compels you anymore…
Remember the point in the movie “The Matrix” where Neo realises he can just decide to stop bullets flying? Previously he was fighting, he was dodging, he was working his behind off to try and win over the evil… until that moment…
We don’t need to try harder not to sin, just don’t. Our day-to-day life? It is now a celebration of freedom, a resurrected life! Choose Joy, Speak Life!
”…You live now for his pleasure, ready to be used for His noble purpose…”
(Romans 6:13, TPT)
Which gives so much freedom!
I imagine that this is how Isaiah was capable of saying to God “Send Me!” before knowing where to, or for what purpose…
“…And I said, “Here am I. Send me!””
(Isaiah 6:8 NIV)
So today, I will not work hard, I will work Joyfully… and everything I need to learn, I will study knowing there is a greater purpose.
