In HOPE

  In HOPE 8.18 

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David Timms  

A Prayer for Today

Holy God -- One Who sees every action, hears every word, and knows every motive -- may Your light shine in my darkness. May You sweep out every unkempt closet within my heart. Grant me the grace and courage to confront and crucify the sin within, dying to it that I may live to You. Enable me by Your Spirit to see my own corruption and have the resolve to "take out the trash." I denounce my tendency to minimize my sin of _________. I acknowledge its poison and choose to name it, expose it, and spit on it -- rather than excuse it. And in its death, may I know Christ more fully. Amen.

My New Web-Site

This past weekend I launched www.growingdeeper.com . This site will give quicker and easier access to resources that I have written, and I plan to expand it over time. Take a look ... and I welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Hope International University
Fullerton  CA  92831

 

"It is the great moment in my life, when I decide that just as Jesus Christ died for the sin of the world, so sin must die out in me, not to be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified."
~
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest


Curbed or Crucified

Dallas Willard calls it "sin management." We want just enough Jesus to be saved but not enough to overturn our lives. We'd like to curb some unholy desires and suppress (or hide) some destructive habits, but for as little cost as possible.

Addictions belong to other people -- real strugglers. We have tendencies, slips, mistakes, or small excesses. Our gambling, drinking, drug-taking, raging, lusting, envying, or hating reflect a momentary loss of control. We don't like it but we're not willing to aggressively strike at it.

"Let me curb it, but don't ask me to crucify it!"

We find a hundred excuses for our ungodly thoughts and actions -- loneliness, weariness, hormones, and humanness. We compare ourselves with worse offenders and draw false comfort. We blame our parents, our partners, our children, or our circumstances. Few generations have taken as little personal responsibility as ours. We adamantly deny any suggestion that we are fatally flawed. Even when people say, "You've grown so much in character" we receive it with a measure of coolness because it implies that we had small stature previously. We feel slighted.

Oswald Chambers puts it perfectly. It is indeed "a great moment in my life" when I abandon my efforts to manage sin and, instead, crucify it.

How?

The dramatic, public, humiliating, and deadly act of crucifixion contrasts with our preference for private, face-saving efforts to gently flog it. We only truly crucify sin when we name it, expose it, and spit on it. Anything less lets it breathe for another day.

Do you desire that "great moment in your life"?

Then get serious and march sin to its death. No excuses. No minimizing. No soft measures. And out of the death of death shall emerge life -- the great paradox of the Kingdom of God.

In HOPE --

David

 

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You can find back issues of "In HOPE" (2005-2008) at http://www.hiu.edu/inhope/.

David Timms serves in the Graduate Ministry Department at Hope International University in Fullerton, California. "In HOPE", however, is not an official publication of the University and the views expressed are not necessarily those of the Administrators or Board. "In HOPE" has been a regular e-publication since January, 2001.