07 Jul Summer Link Clemson: Breaking the Habit
“Worship is turning our mind’s attention and heart’s affection to the Lord, praising him for who he is and what he has done.”
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We were created by God to be worshipers of God. That was his mission behind creating us. We were created to be in communion with Him, and as a piece of art is to reflect its artist, we were created to reflect our Creator. He created us so that He could be worshiped by that which He made.
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However, our sin ruined all of that.?
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The fact that we decided to live our life our own way and reject a life reflecting our Creator, did not earn us a slap on the wrist, it earned us an eternal separation from God.?
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Our rejection of God’s intended way of living produces our slavery to sin. As Paul says in Romans 6, we became slaves to sin which leads us to death.?
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As I read that passage in Romans, I focus on the fact we are slaves to sin. When I hear that word, I think back to middle and high school, when I learned about the time of slavery in our nation. As I try to put myself in their shoes, I think of the fact that those people were not created to be slaves. They were put on this earth to live a regular life as we do.?
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I also think of them being freed from their slavery and what that had to be like. When they began to live regular lives, I wonder how often in certain situations they were prone to resort back to their habits of living as a slave to deal with them.?
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The same applies to our own spiritual lives.?
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We have been freed from slavery through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Through His death and resurrection, the same sin that once powered over us no longer has that strength.?
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However, even though sin no longer has power on us, the habit to sin still does.?
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Just as those slaves could have resorted back to the habits they developed when they were in that bondage, we do the same as Christians. Though we are in Christ and have been reconciled back to God, we have the habit to want to resort back to the ways we lived when we were slaves to sin. However, by His grace, he reconciles us back to Him and reminds us of the new lives we have in Christ.?
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As we lives in the freedom Christ offers us, let us aim as a body of believers to do these two things:?
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1. To remember that we are not defined by our past slavery in sin, but we are defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.?
2. Remind ourselves that sin no longer has power on us and to break the habit to live in the same way that we did when we were in slavery.?
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“But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” Romans 6:17-18
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By: Jordan Nates