There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle
–Albert Einstein–
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Have you ever found yourself acting in a way that surprises you? Maybe doing or wanting to do something you used to do before you were saved? Or acting like a total heathen, yelling, throwing things, and pouting? No, I didn’t think so – me, neither!! But some Christians still struggle with things like that.
As Christians we might hear someone say, “But you don’t know what I’ve done” when thinking about their past before they met Jesus. They are focused on guilt and often can’t get past the memory of how bad they think they were because of that guilt. They don’t realize their old man and everything he did, died, is buried, is gone in God’s eyes. Everything.
The Bible says that our old man (the way we used to be before we were saved) was crucified with Jesus so that we are no longer slaves of sin and no longer have to act like that old man we were. It also says that while we have put off the old man with his deeds, we ALSO have put on the NEW man.
This is where most Christians miss it. Many of us keep acting like the old man got out of the grave and is still bossing us around, and we can’t figure out why.
Bottom line: YOU put on that new man. You do that when you renew your mind by learning to be like the image of God. The Living Bible translation says it best: “You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you.”
If we never crack open our Bible, read it and apply it after the day we make Jesus our Lord and Savior, our old man will keep getting out of his grave and telling us what to do and how to act – and we’ll listen to him! We’ll constantly try to walk right and constantly blow it.
Next time the devil comes around and whispers in your ear that you are a terrible Christian and you’ll never act right, do two things:
- Remind the devil when your old man died** and that the old man is not bossing you around anymore – and
- Get into your Bible, continually renew the way you think and act so that you think and act more and more like Jesus!
Ding dong the old man’s dead – which old man? Our bad old man! Ding dog the old man is quite dead! (I loved The Wizard of Oz!)
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*Mark, or goal, of acting and talking the way God wants you to
**The day you got saved (made Jesus your savior)
Romans 6:6-7, Colossians 3:9-10, Ephesians 4:22-24, Romans 12:2