Why is that there always remains a traitor within us all? In myself, I have to face in him day after day. It is a frustrating fact of my life. This is the old man that Paul talks about. This old self tries to save himself, holding on to the sins of my youth. I found myself, today, crying out to Jesus for help. “Jesus, put to death this false-self with in me.” In Romans 8:12-14, taken from The Message it reads:
So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
In the verses before these verses, it speaks of how we were once under the old law, and there is no longer any condemnation for us, and we have life by the Spirit, now. That’s summing it up very quickly. But as I read this today, I just pleaded with God to put to death this old self, who seeks only for himself pleasures and earthly delights. I hate it. I want freedom from it all. And that is what I was begging Christ to help me with.
One of my prayers lately has been this: “Jesus, teach me how to love. Teach me how to repent. Teach me how to seek Your face.” I was reading Isaiah 55 the other day and came across these two verses, 6 and 7:
Seek God while he’s here to be found,
pray to him while he’s close at hand.
Let the wicked abandon their way of life
and the evil their way of thinking.
Let them come back to God, who is merciful,
come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness. — The Message
I saw how God wanted Israel–well, the wicked of Israel–to come back to Him, and He would lavish them with mercy and forgiveness. And I thought to myself, if I am turning back to God, then to whom am I turning the rest of the time? That made me think about repentance. I can see how in the old testament there is a large importance for repentance; in reality, Jesus said the same message, “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'” (Matthew 4:17 NASB). Thus, whether old or new, both testaments speak about repentance, so it must be important.
I thought about repentance. I thought about turning back to Him, for in my life, I have had to do that a lot. But what if I needed only to turn to him? Why am I turning to all these other places? Usually, it is to my own ways and my own desires, which never really satisfy. I like how The Message translates the Isa. 55 passage: “Let the wicked abandon their ways.” I think that is so rich. That gives me such a vivid picture of repentance. Repentance = abandonment. Not abandoning Jesus or loved ones or family, but abandoning the false-self, the old self–my own selfish ways and ideas. It painted a picture of me having all this stuff and seeing that I was pleased to have it all but still without peace and love, I left it all behind, for life with less things, for a life with greater love, for a life made of a more excellent way. I could be wrong about the whole repentance thing. But I like to think of it as abandoning. I have to leave something behind. Something that may be comfortable, or something I have done for years. No matter what though, it always works out in the end.
Green or Black? 