The Day It Started Changing for Me

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CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.

Jesus, we belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

THE WORD OF THE LORD

Romans 6:5–10 NIV

My life and faith changed quite dramatically in my early twenties. Romans 6 played a big role. My daily practice up to that time had been to read a devotion or two in the morning. By “devotion,” I mean a short written entry from some periodical or book that began with a nice and encouraging Scripture text followed by a few paragraphs that usually had little to do with the Bible verse at the top. Then came a prayer and some sort of benign thought for the day. I considered that I had done my “quiet time” duty for the day and then got on with it. I’m sure these devotionals helped me in some way, but I was really just going through the devotion motions.

Somewhere in those years, I actually started reading the Bible. I remember this verse from Romans 6 stopping me dead in my tracks:

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

What did he just say?! Did he say I was free from sin? While I presented well to the public, underneath I was plagued by all sorts of sinful thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, and complex patterns of self-justification, shame, pride, and hiding, all while fiercely judging others for the same things. After reading Romans 6, I knew one of two things had to be true. Either: (1) The Bible was wrong on this point about being free from sin, or (2) I was not “getting” it—these words did not seem to describe the truth of my actual life.

This became the Matrix-red-pill moment of my life. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen in God’s Word. The Holy Spirit had planted this word in my mind as truth, and there began the long reckoning with the gospel. Jesus could no longer be an eternal life insurance policy. He would become the source and substance of a transformational life.

Romans 6 continues to teach and train my mind. Looking back over the years, I have tended to focus mostly on myself, my behavior, and my willpower even to believe the truth that I am dead to sin. Here’s what’s changing now. I’m starting to get this at a new level:

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

The focus is not on me and my sin. The focus is on Jesus and his life. My old sin life is dead and buried in the tomb in Jerusalem. My new life is raised up and caught up in his life.

Yep, everything changed that day and is still changing . . .

PRAYER