Untangled

Friday, October 26, 2012, 2:46 a.m. – the Lord woke me with the song “Victory in Jesus” playing in my mind. Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read Hebrews 12:1-3, 12-13 (NIV 1984):

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart…

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

Therefore… since…

“Therefore” means “consequently” or “because of” a particular situation, in this case what was stated previously in chapter eleven, our response should be such and such. In other words, because of the testimony and life witness and inspirational examples of those heroes of the faith listed in chapter eleven of Hebrews, which serve to strengthen our faith, we should be encouraged to follow the Lord Jesus in throwing off everything that hinders our faith, and the sin, in general, or any specific sins that tend to trip us up, so that we can run with perseverance the race of the Christian life marked out for us.

When we read about these people from the Old and New Testaments, we learn that they were ordinary people just like us with weaknesses and strengths, and subject to temptations of the flesh, just as we are. They did not have anything we don’t have. For those of us in Christ Jesus, we actually have something greater than what many of them had. We have the presence of our holy God living within us, empowering and strengthening us moment by moment and day by day.

In America, we also have the written word of God in our language in multiple translations and readily available for anyone who wants a Bible. We have the gospel preached in church buildings, in tents, on the radio, on TV, on the internet, and we can Google all kinds of Bible studies on particular scriptures or topics of interest. We have oodles of support groups and Christian discussion sites and social networks. We have Christian radio and TV stations that play gospel music and we have gospel music readily available on CDs or on the internet to where we can be blessed by inspiring, hopeful and encouraging songs, as much as we want. We are very blessed here in America with such easy access to scriptural teachings which can help inspire and encourage us in our walk of faith with Jesus Christ. So, we should be encouraged all the more to live holy lives of inspiring faith, such as what we see in these examples for us from Hebrews 11.

What Hinders

So, because of these inspiring examples for us and all the other things listed here that we have readily available for us in America at our fingertips; we should throw off everything that hinders our walk of faith. To me, one of the biggest hindrances to faith is fear, as fear and faith are polar opposites. Faith believes in what we cannot see with our physical eyes or touch with our hands. Fear casts doubts on our faith and fills our minds with all kinds of “what ifs.”

The Lord has given me a recent experience which has greatly tested and strengthened my faith. He called me to go to another city to record a song professionally and then he allowed me to get a bad cough which hindered my ability to sing. So, I had two choices before me: 1) Believe that God is who he says he is and that he will do what he said he would do, or 2) Go by my feelings and flesh and allow all the “what ifs” to crowd my mind and to keep me from stepping out in faith. I chose to walk by faith and not by sight, and the Lord took over and gave me a stronger voice than I have had in many years.

Other hindrances to walking by faith are laziness, apathy, busyness, preoccupation with self, with selfish desires, with entertainment, and with the patterns and ways of this world. Basically, self and faith are also polar opposites. Faith requires death to self – to selfish and sinful desires, to our reputations, to having it our way, and even to being liked by everyone. When we walk by faith, we may be hated by many. We have to be prepared to be hated, rejected, despised, mocked, ridiculed and severely persecuted or even killed for our faith.

Besetting Sin

When you think of being entangled by something, what comes to your mind? This morning I had a couple of tea bags in a pitcher of hot water and when I tried to stir the tea, the strings from the tea bags became entangled around the spoon to where I could not remove the spoon at all until I untangled the strings around it. I have a problem with hangers, with necklaces and with the vacuum cleaner cord getting entangled and I admit I have trouble figuring out how to untangle them and it tests my patience. I am not mechanically gifted and untangling things does not come easy to me, so I “get” this image of being entangled by something. It is frustrating, it is complicated, it is difficult to get the entanglement loose, and it does hinder our ability to do our tasks (work) until the mess is finally untangled. The entanglement weighs you down and holds you down until you are able to liberate it.

That is what sin does to us. That is why, outside of faith in Christ Jesus, we are considered as slaves (in bondage; entanglement) to sin. It is also possible to have come to faith in Jesus Christ and after having been set free, to have gotten entangled in sin all over again – been there, done that! And, that is the most miserable place to be ever! I never want to go back! Jesus Christ set me free, and in the power and strength of the Spirit of God within me, I plan to remain actively free. I don’t want to ever get entangled by sin again.

We cannot run the race (the walk of faith) of the Christian life if we are weighed down by fear, apathy, spiritual laziness, or if we are entangled by sin, because fear, self and sin are polar opposites of faith and the sin, self and fear cancel out faith. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, we can’t live in faith and still walk in darkness (in a sinful lifestyle). Sin, self and fear strangle the life right out of our faith so that they render our faith nonexistent. So, if we want to live the life God has marked out (assigned) for us to live as followers of Jesus Christ, then we need to throw off everything in our life that stands opposed to faith. This includes our entertainment choices, friendships, business partnerships, career choices, and the things we take into our eyes and minds and ears every day by choice, etc. And, we need to measure these things against God’s word and against we know is God’s will for our lives, and we need to rid our lives of everything that will hinder our walk of faith.

Fix our Eyes on Jesus

If we desire to obey Jesus Christ with our lives and to have this walk of faith that he so desires from each and every one of us, we must submit to our heavenly Father in all things, and we must recognize our total dependence upon God to supply us with all that we need. We cannot live a life of faith in our own strength and willpower or with our own resources. Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit and is a working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives and is not something we can just muster up on our own. We can only operate in faith when we operate in the power of the Holy Spirit within us, and the Holy Spirit will not do his work through us if we are not first of all yielded to his control, which we cannot be if we are still being controlled by the flesh. This does not mean we have to be perfect, but we do have to be in tune with God and with his will and purposes for our lives, we have to be listening to his voice speaking to us, and obedience to Christ should be a daily practice in our lives.

First we must get rid of anything in our lives that hinders our walk of faith, and then we must be focused on Jesus Christ. We cannot be focused on Jesus Christ if we spend little time listening to and obeying him and if we spend the majority of our time just doing what pleases ourselves. We have to be daily in the word, listening, and obeying what it says. And, we have to not be filling our lives and minds with a bunch of garbage from this sinful world, which only serves to negate what good we are taking into our minds. To fix our eyes on Jesus means to concentrate our attention, minds and hearts on what Jesus Christ has for us, and to rid our minds and hearts of all that stands in the way of that.

Jesus Christ set the perfect example for us to follow. He stayed focused on what was the ultimate purpose and goal of his life on this earth – to die for our sins so we could be free from the entanglement of (slavery to) sin. Because he was focused on the joy of our salvation, he was able to endure all the mistreatment and the crucifixion, knowing that the end result would be worth all he had to suffer for you and for me.

When we choose to walk by faith and not by sight, and we choose to walk a life of faithful obedience to Jesus Christ, we will be hated by many, including by many within our churches who are following the ways of men more than they are the ways of God. We will be strongly opposed, in some cases, and may suffer much unjust treatment, even sometimes at the hands of our church leadership. Yet, when we are going through such treatment due to our walk of faith, we are to keep in mind that Jesus Christ endured much opposition from sinful men, so he knows what we are going through, and he will help us through this, so we should not grow weary or lose heart when things don’t go the way we had hoped.

Strengthen what is Weak

So, we need to strengthen our weak knees (by going against what we fear), and make level paths for our feet (by removing those hindrances and sins of entanglement), not only so we can walk the walk of faith, but so we can be used of God in the lives of others, too, so that they can experience spiritual healing, as well. Our walk of faith is not just for the benefit of our own relationship between us and Jesus Christ alone, but we are to be lights for the gospel and shine his light of truth and love to the world around us. When we follow the truth of the gospel, and we forsake our lives of sin, and we choose to accept God’s gift of grace and of faith in our lives, and we appropriate his grace and gift of faith in our lives that he has so graciously given to us, then we can know the victory that is ours in Christ Jesus to overcome any and all hindrances, obstacles and opposing forces against our faith, and we can know and experience, too, what it truly means to be untangled from the entanglement of sin, and that is the best place to be ever! Jesus set me free! I am free indeed!!

Victory in Jesus / Eugene M. Bartlett

I heard an old, old story,

How a Savior came from glory,

How He gave His life on Calvary

To save a wretch like me;

I heard about His groaning,

Of His precious blood's atoning,

Then I repented of my sins

And won the victory.

I heard about His healing,

Of His cleansing pow'r revealing.

How He made the lame to walk again

And caused the blind to see;

And then I cried, "Dear Jesus,

Come and heal my broken spirit,"

And somehow Jesus came and bro't

To me the victory.

I heard about a mansion

He has built for me in glory.

And I heard about the streets of gold

Beyond the crystal sea;

About the angels singing,

And the old redemption story,

And some sweet day I'll sing up there

The song of victory.

O victory in Jesus,

My Savior, forever.

He sought me and bought me

With His redeeming blood;

He loved me ere I knew Him

And all my love is due Him,

He plunged me to victory,

Beneath the cleansing flood.