Say What?

Sometimes you hear something that causes you to question what you heard, causing a “say what?” moment!  I recently had a doctor’s visit and was told that due to celiac disease that I need to switch to a gluten free diet. Now for some of you this might be a simple step, but for me, well, not so much. I didn’t realize just how much gluten I eat in a day. Now, every time I eat I have to think about what I am ingesting.

The good news is I know this will help my body in the long run; the bad news, I haven’t been completely successful with my food choices.

My response to going gluten free and doing what I know I should reminds me of the scripture in Romans chapter 7, where Paul describes his battle of knowing what he should do and the pull of the flesh pulling him the opposite way.

John Stange has a devotional on this verse that I found helpful.  In it he says, “The law of God is holy, but sin is a deceitful liar.  So one of the reasons we do what we don’t want to do is because we’re deceived by the false promises of sin.  Sin paints a pretty picture of what things will look like if we give in to it, but conveniently leaves out the long-term consequences we’ll experience when we compromise our convictions for short-term pleasures that appeal to our flesh.” (https://desirejesus.com/blog/2019/1/15/why-do-i-do-what-i-dont-want-to-do).

This is it…I fight the battle of the truth against the false promises.  Somehow in our minds we think we have control or know more than our creator; the truth is we don’t! The sooner we put our trust in God’s plans for our lives and really live with the mindset of making our decisions through HIS lenses, the more joy and completeness we will experience.

So when we are battling what we should do against what our flesh is pulling us to, we can take the advice of Gavin Ortlund in his article “Four Steps to Kill Nagging Sins”.  He says,

“Hate it, Starve it, Corner it, and Overwhelm it. Don’t minimize your sin – hate it. Don’t feed it – starve it. Don’t give it the opportunity to integrate itself throughout your life – corner it. Don’t falsely believe it’s more powerful than Christ – overwhelm it and overcome it by the power of Christ.” (https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/four-steps-to-kill-nagging-sins)

My response of “say what?” to news I don’t like or want to rebel against, needs to be measured closely against the TRUTH.  We need to shut down wrong thoughts or actions by taking the steps to remember Jesus Christ is the overcomer and has the power to help us overcome our weaknesses.