Sunday, May 4, 2014

The War Within



"If Anyone is in Christ he is a new creature, the old is passed away."  2 Corinthians 5:17. So many times, I have read that passage and yet I suppose I couldn't  really understand it. It is as though my,"prayer time"  and my so called, "real life,"  fought  continuously to be kept separate.  It was a raging war, one in which I didn't  really engage in, unless they collided.  You all know that moment when your conscious decides not to be polite, it  decides to speak louder than usual and there is this struggle  in your natural body to fight for your rights, no matter what.  Well, after doing my bible study this morning,  it occurred to me that I have spent too much of my time and energy, in what I call that "dead zone".  It was a dead zone because, I never seem to win the war, temporarily I would feel great, free and wonderfully happy.  But then some little memory would enter in,  just a little bit and the process would just continue and into battle I would go. I mean really, isn't it  ridiculous to be at war with yourself?    I would go willingly in that daily battle, buckled up with God's armor.   His word in my mouth, with the knowledge that Jesus died for me and He promised me that peace and love and blessings would follow.   If  I only believed.  Well,  I do believe with all my heart,  but I think somewhere deep inside I must also believe it was  for other people in  far off lands.   If my dear Lord and Savior paid it all, why for the life of me , was I fighting this losing battle every day to keep my mind free of negative thoughts.  I mean I just couldn't understand  how to forgive, whole heartily, without  battling the memories.  Eventually the memories would fade but every once in a while those memories would come back to haunt  me.  I wanted my inside to match my outside.  Quite frankly, something was wrong, because, I knew Jesus paid it all, so why was I still paying?

So I decided at this stage in my life to go into this, "dead zone," so that I could gain some insight on what this scripture was saying and how I could apply it.  While in  communion with God as I was letting Him speak, I let down walls and God spoke to me in something I read,  "Cease trying to forgive those who fretted or wronged you.  It is a mistake to think about it.  Aim at killing the self now -- in your daily life, and then, not until then, you will find there is nothing that even remembers injury, because the only one injured , the self, is dead.  As long as it recurs in your mind you deceive yourself if you think it is forgiven."  Wow, "as long as it recurs in your mind you deceive yourself if you think it is forgiven."

So in a nutshell, I just thought I was forgiving, but I wasn't handing it over to God, I was still holding on to just a little bit of the hurt,  in case I needed it for future reference.  If you are battling something in your mind , you are still trying to win this battle by yourself.  You are not allowing the new creature to dominate your mind.  Your mind  becomes your battlefield.   In and of ourselves we cannot forgive, the very act of forgiving means putting our hurts into the foreground and that injury becomes more instead of less. We cannot forgive  others, until we believe that we are forgiven, we cannot give something away we don't have in our possession. The new creature, this scripture is talking about, is created in our minds, through our beliefs.  Until we rid ourselves of our old self and become a new creature , we will continue the battle, but there will always be a battle.

I decided long ago not to do battle, I choose to hold no offense towards anyone.  I believe that love is the answer, it is who God is.  So when we can accept God's love for us, we bring God into the situation and that is  that is how we win the war, God's love for us will cause us to love others and see them as God see's them. 

We all fall short and  the world is not all about me.   I will choose to find out what is on the other side of that rainbow, I will remember to continue to let it go and let God, to enjoy this wonderful life and to get rid of the old baggage, (old self).

Well,  we really can't take it with us anyway.    Happy trails.