Written by Dawn Rutan
I was recently reading a Christian fiction book in which a man told his daughter in essence, “Don’t align yourself with evil by saying ‘That’s just who I am.’” Ironically, it was about an Amish girl having to give up her artistic talents to obey the church, which is not something most of us would think about in hearing a statement like that. How often do we hear “That’s just who I am” or “That’s the way God made me” in relation to traits that we are asked to surrender? Many people believe the enemy’s lie that we can’t change and try to justify hanging on to something that is clearly against Scripture.
The blog from Desiring God recently posted an article Lay Aside the Weight of “I’ll Never Change” by Jon Bloom. He addresses two ways to come to terms with who we are:
The first is to cultivate contentment with who God designed us to be, which results in a wonderful liberation from trying to be someone we’re not. The second is to lay aside the burdensome weight of the fatalistic resignation that we’ll never be any different than what we are, which results in an enslavement to our sin-infused predilections.
That is the two-fold process of believing God and refuting the lies of the enemy. God says we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). He indicates that it is possible to lay aside the weight of sin (Hebrews 12:1) and not let sin reign in our bodies (Romans 6:12). But it takes a lifetime of practice to remember these truths and act upon them when the enemy attacks with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in the face of temptation.
Another fictional character made a noteworthy comment in Jan Karon’s Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good: “I wanted to do what I wanted to do and figured it was [God’s] job to stop me” (434). The problem is that God does not always intervene when we get on the wrong path. The experience of Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus was a unique event and not likely to be repeated. More often than not, it takes a series of smaller events to provide a wakeup call. But the consequences of our choices still remain. Even the Apostle Paul had to deal with the consequences—being distrusted by the Christians he had previously persecuted, turning away from the people he had formerly considered allies, plus the memories of all the things he had done in the past.
Still Paul would write, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). God’s intervention brought salvation, yet Paul had to work at living in the new identity that was his by grace.
If God could make us alive when we were dead in sin (see Ephesians 2:4-5 and Romans 8:10-11), He certainly has the power to free us from the power of sin (1 Corinthians 15:57), transform us (2 Corinthians 3:18), and conform us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). Peter gives us a high calling: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:14-15).
I know from personal experience that it is easy to get discouraged by the constancy of sin and temptation, and to doubt that freedom is really possible. I want to live each day with an awareness of that freedom and see it become a reality in my life. That is my hope and prayer for this year.
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).
