ON THE VANGUARD

THOUGHT SHIFT
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.”
Romans 7:15-17

Yesterday I left you with a question I ask of myself, but I am pretty sure you may have found yourself at one time or another asking as well. Why do I run to and from the opposite of what God is calling me to run to and from? I may have left you hanging when I answered that question by saying I need a shift in my thinking. But it is true. As I have come to realize that I can do nothing without Christ, I am also coming to realize that my thoughts are not always, or even half the time, the thoughts that He has. My thought pattern is tainted, skewed, and quite honestly lacking good sense many times. The words Paul wrote in Romans 7:15-17 were custom made for me.
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom 7:15). Paul and I are sharing the same idea here in saying that we know the right response, the right character to own, and the right way to live, but why then do we find ourselves doing the exact opposite. Where the sign reads to go left, I find myself wanting to go right. If the sink is putting out clean water I find myself still drinking from the toilet. And if the skull and crossbones are printed on the label marking the bottle toxic I still find myself unscrewing the cap to take a sip. Why do I find myself like Jonah, running from the very command that God has given me?
God has given us His law. As a parent I can respect this. I lay down the rules for my kids and I expect them to be obeyed. Failure to obey them leads to consequence. Are we so naïve to think that when we step outside God’s law that we will not find consequence? True, we will find forgiveness when we repent, just as I offer to my children when they fail to obey, but there still is consequence.
We need to make a shift in our thoughts. We need to pull ourselves away from our ‘self’ and replace the self with God. For instance, one of the methods that I used in pulling away from my addiction was to imagine God sitting right next to me while surfing the internet or watching movies. With the idea that I was sitting next to God, my thoughts changed from ‘my self’ to ‘my God’. The sin that was living in me was beginning to be replaced by a desire to obey God. But without even allowing my mind to be changed, and my thoughts in line with God’s thoughts, I was doomed to be no better than I was. I would have spent my life living in that lukewarm place and running from God.
The change in mindset produced a change in spirit which began a true change in character. It is only because of this change that I am now able to do the right type of running, that like Joseph who ran when temptation came looking for him. It was against God more than anyone else that Joseph knew he would be sinning against, and he was not about to fall into that lifestyle. This should be our resolve as well. Instead of me running to sin and from God, I want to be found doing the opposite and running to God and what He is calling me to and running from the sin that longs to take me down. I have resolved to make the thought shift needed in this hour. Will you?