Get Up, Walk Out, Live!

I am still a captive to sin. I must fully acknowledge this, confess, and move beyond the chains that I keep fettered to my soul. I confess, I love this prison and I apathetically refuse to leave. The gates are wide open, the locks broken, the guards have been put to sleep. I can simply walk out, but I don’t. My legs don’t work. I am my own worse enemy.

This summer I’ve been teaching Sunday School as a substitute teacher for almost every grade level at my church. First weekend was the 10-12th graders, last Sunday was 8th and 9th, this upcoming will be the 6th and 7th graders. Funny how even after I’ve peacefully waved farewell to the CBC youth group, I end up serving somehow. In any case, since I am only teaching each level once, I’ve been teaching the same lesson every time, a lesson on reconciliation as missions and God’s calling to live that out. I connect the 2nd Corinthians passage from chapter 5 with the great commision in Acts 1:3-8. It’s a lesson I taught for the first time back as a Senior in High School at a youth group ministry night and have reworked it since, teaching it at EFC and now at CBC again. The ministry or reconciliation as a foundation for missions resonates deeply in my heart. Its something I want to take to China with me. Such is just one of the many principles I’ve taken on during my time at Wheaton College.

But.. . what good are these principles and world views if I cannot reconcile myself to God? What good are my visions and dreams of changing the world if I cannot allow Christ to change me? How am I to do any form of mission if I cannot successfully conquer my own heart? Do I have any right to teach young ones the way when I can barely follow it myself?

I’ve got poison in my system thats been running through my life for a good portion of the summer now. I’ve taken God’s grace for granted and have been steadily slipping away from the Spirit’s path and the darkness is starting to become quite noticeable. I busy myself with China preparation that I assume is vital, but end up doing a half-ass job at it in my heaviness. I tell myself that my time with close friends is short so I must spend as much quality time as I can, which is true, but my broken relationship with God casts a shadow over my ability to really connect. They’ve been but excuses keeping me from focusing on the One thing that ought to be most important in my life. On the other side, my addiction to internet pornography continues to hold me, I grow more and more disgusted with myself and yet my apathy grows with each offense. I can feel destruction at my heels, late evenings are surrounded with temptation and pathetic attempts to fight. During the day my heart is heavy with the weight of my family. Such is the reality of my codependency at its fullest, constantly being tested and inflamed by the filial circumstances around me. All these elements further scatter my brain like a grenade went off in my head, the shrapnel severing my willpower causing me to give up more and more with each day.

Call it for what it is. This is spiritual warfare. I have only a few weeks here in the States and Satan would like nothing more than to break me before I even arrive on the shores of my motherland. This is but a taste of things to come in China I’m sure, a battle against myself alongside my battle to do right. If I wanna do right I'm gonna have to wake up every morning and face myself down by the power of Christ.

It's ironic that we have to be taught the same lessons over and over again. It's sad we can never really embrace with our full hearts those things we've been intellectually trained to understand. As I teach my lesson of reconciliation again every sunday, it's fast transforming into a personal word for myself. Come now, Easten Law, learn to reconcile yourself with God and begin again. Get up, walk out of that prison, and live the life He calls you to. Only then will you be able to live out the Great Commision that you've so called dedicated yourself to, to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Ends of the Earth by the Power of the Spirit.

So what do I do now? First I must reconcile with my Jerusalem, my Lord and Savior in the Temple of my Heart. First things must come first again! Honesty and Genuineness must rise above the masks of the suburbs (I am beginning to realize the masks of ‘i’ve got it all together’ rising in my life again). Devotion to Christ before the daily odds and ends must be reestablished. Brothers and sisters need to become the body of Christ, a collection of broken sinners that love one another, fight with one another, live with one another.