I know that Christmas can be very tough for people with all the expectations we put on ourselves and others. I share this (slightly modified) devotional with you, sent to me by someone whose walk with the Lord I admire.
Rev. Reagan W. Cocke
St. John the Divine Church, Houston
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!” Wow! Cool! I am new and perfect and holy in the sight of the Lord – what a blessing that is! Wait, what is that horrible thing that I am dragging behind me? A dead body? Oh, the stench! What am I doing? I have got to get rid of this thing before someone sees me with it – it ruins the whole new look! But I can’t, not yet. I can live with it a bit longer; there’s so much there that I can’t live without, you’ll understand won’t you Lord?
I have this argument with the Lord daily, I think. Rather pathetic isn’t it? But oh so real. I have grasped the knowledge of what Christ has done for me in a real and tangible way and I can support it with all sorts of cross references in Scripture and other truths but the reality is that I am struggling to make this a reality in my heart. For the heart is the wellspring of life and I need to switch what the overflow of my heart is. Too often I am willing to settle for the comfort of what I already know no matter how sinful it may be. The Lord is using two areas in my life to refine me and help me make this a reality: my marriage and a relationship with a friend. When the artist sang Love is a battlefield, I don’t think she really understood how true that is. We know marriage can be messy as we oppose each other across common ground and fall prey to the enemy and his tools. We become polarized in our stuff – what is right for me, what I deserve and what you don’t do for me. Our trenches become so deep that we don’t realize that we have been fooled into a false reality by the enemy. But we don’t wage war as the world does. We have the weapons to demolish strongholds and arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God! Then why do I choose to fight only half the battle most of the time? Because that’s my stuff and I know it and it fits like an old robe and I’d rather be right than righteous. But thankfully the truth reigns supreme and the seed that the Lord planted in me when he called me to himself is alive and growing because I love the Lord and that love is stronger than any dead body I may be carrying around, and that love makes me hungry to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.
He suffered for me, for someone other than himself. It is time for me to suffer, to cut the ties to the old and the familiar, the decay that keeps me from the glory of the righteousness of God. He suffered for me so that I would have an example of how to lay down my life (my wants, my needs, my desires) so that my husband could shine in the Lord by feeling the Lord’s love through me. Christ suffered for me so that I could have an example of how to love in the face of animosity toward me. It is this realization that is (finally) shaping my walk each morning. It is why I consciously struggle to follow Romans 12:2, Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.
It is not an easy battle, those trenches are deep and that dead body is awfully familiar, but I have the heavenly weapons: the name of Jesus, the blood he shed on the cross, the faith that he has given to me, the Word and the testimony he is building in me, and I will demolish strongholds and arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the truth of Jesus Christ! Amen! Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. I will continue on in my struggles so that I will know in an active way restoration with the Father, so that my husband will know it through the love I reflect and that my friend may know it through the grace I can extend toward her from the Lord. As a commentary states, “The Bible does not define faith as believing what is impossible, but rather believing what God has said.” I have faith and I believe that I can move these mountains in my heart and leave this dead body behind for good. Amen.
Thank you Jesus, for your sacrifice upon the cross for each of us. Thank you that by that sacrifice the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom and now your grace and mercies rain down new and fresh on us each and every day from the throne of the Living God. Bless us this day and renew our strength to fight the good fight and press on toward our goal in Christ Jesus – our new, righteous and holy selves. Praise the Lord!
I pray you remember that the cross screams out across time and space that in spite of our sinful nature, the Lord is for us. He bought us with a price. We are his, adopted by the Father and filled with the Spirit. The great message of Christmas is that Jesus came for sinners like me and you, to set us free from the bondage of sin and the sentence of death. The old has gone and the new has come, and all this is from God. We live and we shall live forever because Jesus came.
