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Past Thought for the week messages Who's slave are you?
Past Thought for the week messages Who's slave are you? | Who's slave are you? |
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Did you know that according to the Bible every single one of us is a slave? It’s true! You can read about this in Romans 6:16 where Paul, the apostle, writes, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience, leading to righteousness?” I looked up the definition of a slave. Here is the first entry: ‘A person who is held in bondage to another; one who is wholly subject to the will of another; one who has no freedom of action but whose person and services are wholly under the control of another.’ In the light of this definition Paul is making the case that even though God has given us free will so that we can choose who or what we obey, nevertheless our actions are always influenced in some way by somebody or something. In context the choice that we face is either to serve sin or to serve the Lord. The second entry I read in my dictionary defined a slave as ‘One who has lost the power of resistance; one who surrenders himself to any power whatever; as, a slave to passion, to lust, to strong drink, to ambition.’ And we could surely add to this list the word -‘food’ Now this is where it really begins to hit home! After all, if you didn’t find food difficult to resist, you probably wouldn’t be reading this, would you? When people come on a Fit For Life Forever course they are usually only too well aware of the destructive magnetism of food and are desperate to be set free from their bondage. They have seen how uncontrolled eating has led to loss of health, loss of looks, loss of energy, loss of self-esteem and loss of the joy of living. They long to be free and rightly so, but nothing seems to work in the long term: Diets, work-outs, pills, toning gadgets, even cosmetic surgery and stomach stapling – these all work for a time, but the inner bondage and cravings remain. Eventually we succumb to the old habits and are left feeling disappointed, ashamed and hopeless. But we need to understand that freedom from any sinful or negative influence in our lives comes at a price – and that is that we consent to come instead under the influence of another, that is Jesus Christ. He has the power to set us free, but for His work to be effective in our lives we shall have to surrender our lives ‘lock, stock and barrel’ to Him. He must become the Lord and Master of our eating behaviour; we must become His slaves! Does this seem like a tall order? Jesus spoke about another choice we all face – between the broad way, which leads to destruction or the narrow way, which leads to life. The flesh naturally shrinks back from the narrow way, because all we can see are the apparent restrictions of the way. However, in reality, those who choose this way soon find that it isn’t restrictive at all, for it leads to eternal life – not just in terms of length of days, but in a far superior quality of existence. The way is as broad as God Himself. Those who make themselves ‘prisoners of the Lord’ are, in fact, the freest of all men! So as you pray for God’s help in overcoming your disordered eating, think not only of the bondage to food that you want to be delivered from, but rather of how you might make yourself more fully His. This is the key to victorious living. In closing I want to quote the same verse I began with, from Romans 6:16, but this time to write in the words of The Message version of the Bible, which offers a totally different, yet wholly compatible perspective. We read: “You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits.” A ‘freedom that never quits’ Now that’s what I want! We truly can be Fit For Life FOREVER!
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