Sometimes We Grow Weary

Wednesday, June 26, 2013         Sometimes We Grow Weary

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV

“Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? The part about ‘new life has begun” I can grasp, but the “old life is gone,” not so much. For me it seems my old life, my old habits, my old way of thinking are never too far behind me, and on some days they seem to be front and center. Actually, the Apostle Paul addressed this earlier in chapter five when he wrote, “We grow weary in our present bodies” (2 Corinthians 5:2). I believe this weariness comes from the baggage we carry on our journey to make the life in Christ our way of life.

This journey of transformation, by the renewing of our mind, is at times a real struggle because the 100 million bits of new information gathered by our five senses each second must contend with our memory before we make a decision. Obviously, the vast majority of this information processing takes place subconsciously and our past experiences have great influence over how our mind processes new information. These experiences shape how we respond, or react, in our journey. Because at times we do grow weary in this process of unlearning old habit patterns and replacing them with the new way of living in the Spirit, we want to remember that it is possible for us to do through training that which is impossible to do by trying real hard.

Much of our difficulty comes through the tyranny of our emotions. Past failures, hurts and disappointments can exert a powerful influence over our ability to choose obedience when the Holy Spirit is leading us to engage in new relationships and opportunities for witness and service. We can learn to step back, and reflect on how we are processing new information to be sure we are not allowing past experiences to out-weigh present realities in our decision- making.

During times when it seems our emotions may be leading us to respond with fear to the Lord’s leading, we can also remember that as followers of Jesus, we are called to be men and women of action: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV). As disciples called to action, we can learn to discern when the Holy Spirit is leading us to engage our environment or when our emotions are leading us to stay seated.

The Holy Spirit always leads us in a manner fully consistent with Scripture. Therefore as we are learning to discern God’s leading from the responses of our flesh to our environment, we want to fully rely on Scripture.

  

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  In addition to this BLOG they are distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com. The Kindle version will follow soon.

·        The second edition First Think – Then Pray has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.