Apprentice

I recently sent the following text to myself one night:

Hi Future-John, this is yourself contacting you from the past. Just letting you know the IPC costs €135. I hope the sermon went well.

The point was to remind me to collect a cheque to pay for the Irish Preacher’s Conference. I could have used the reminder function on my phone but this seemed like more fun. It worked. I think the sermon went well too.

There is this duality to life where we try to get ourselves to follow up on the good intentions or good ideas that we have, sometimes this does not go so smoothly. Following through on good ideas that don’t really cost us is easy  but what about the times when we have to remind ourselves to die to our old habits and sins? Following through on the intention to pick up a cheque was easy for me, following through on the intentions to die to my old self and live out my new identity is not so easy?

The thing is I’m selfish and the old me was very happy to just go along being selfish, the centre of his own universe, either pursuing self-pleasure or indulging in self-pity. But I like the new me much more, my eyes have been opened to what is good. I can see the changes Christ has already made in me, dramatic changes. I am far from the person I was five years ago, but there is always a challenge to die to old habits and sins and always the struggle within myself to do what I know is good and what I know I really want in my heart.

St. Paul put it like the struggle like this:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
(Romans 7:15-24 – ESV)

He answers his own question in the next sentence:

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25a – ESV)

With Christ I have not just been shown where I am going wrong, laden with guilt and told to pull my socks up, but have been given a Rescuer. God doesn’t just call me to be a better man, he makes me into a new creation. He does the work, my job is to stick by Him, and even that I wouldn’t do if he didn’t open my eyes.

So here are some good intentions I have at the moment, springing from convictions I believe God has given me; you can pray for me if you like and I will lean on God to do the hard work:

I want blog here more. It’s a good discipline to have, it gets me to think and I know people are praying for me and often go for far too long without receiving any updates so I kind of owe it to them. The problem with this, and a reason my blogging is so infrequent, is I often feel like I don’t have anything to say and to simply post up what I’m doing feels a little vain. However I’ve been told a few times (one time told in a “shouty” manner, accompanied by a punch) that people actually do care about me and have an interest in me and by always keeping myself to myself and being such a loner I rob them of the opportunity to get to know me better. The blogging is really part of a bigger plan for me to stop being so distant and mechanical in my interactions with other people. I look at Jesus and I know that he really loved people and the hard truth is that I don’t see that love in myself so that’s going to change.

Are you reading this Adam? [I've recruited Adam to hold me accountable with the blogging discipline] Kick my arse if I go for a month without blogging and don’t have a good excuse

I have more but I’ll save it for another post, I have to pace myself – I’m not used to this.