Death of Me

“And it finds me: the war within me pulls me under!
And without You, the fight inside is breaking me again!” - RED

My youth pastor’s words of wisdom really resound in my mind this evening; he says that you cannot only run from sin, but you also must run to something else. The example he uses is this: imagine that the building you’re in is burning down. Now, if we started running from the flames, in a wide circle, screaming, would we save ourselves? Of course not! We wouldn’t have left the building! Not only must we run from the flames, but we also have to run to the exit. Sounds simple enough.

What I wasn’t prepared for today was how inviting flames could look. Video games have always been an issue for me; ever since middle school. With the bullying and the depression that I faced, video games were a great way to escape from the doubt and the shame that ravaged my mind. I built the architecture of my mind around them, as if they were my salvation.

“We had a plan to build a wall;

a great divide that would never fall!

To separate us from all the pain,

and keep our skeletons locked away.

And brick by brick, we built it so thick,

that it blacked out the sky, and all the sunlight.

And one by one, we all became numb;

we were making the bullets to a broken gun.” - Thousand Foot Krutch

Years later, after coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, I’m still working on the deconstruction. Not only must I tear down the old walls brick by brick, but I have to remove the rubble from my mind, so that I’m not tempted to rebuild with the same material. Today I spent four, maybe five, hours playing a mindless game that I had let recapture my attention.

“Your love is a lie

I will fight to forget!

Your love is a knife

I will die to forget!” - RED

Be careful what your heart does. Seemingly harmless activities can become a false salvation - one that leads to death - and even when you find true salvation (in Christ alone!), the longing in your heart doesn’t immediately go away. As the band RED says, we have to fight to forget, even die, to the things we love the most.

This is what Jesus meant when He told us to take up our crosses daily. We’d have to die to what is pleasantly poisonous; things that will eat at our hearts and numb our minds. Instead of allowing myself to believe again that video games could deliver what they really cannot - hope - I should have spent my time doing more constructive things, like reading one of the books I’ve been meaning to read for months. Or even practice on the expensive hand drum I have sitting in my closet, that I want to get better at.

Obviously, we cannot live solely by our fleshly desires and expect to be obedient. But you cannot even have a little bit of flesh, and a little bit of Spirit. Listen to what Paul has to say:

“For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. “ - Galatians 5:17 (HCSB)

When there is internal struggle (what psychologists might call cognitive dissonance), there is compromise. We must ONLY live by the Holy Spirit to avoid temptation; otherwise, we’ll fail every time. That’s what Jesus did, and being Spirit-led, He never sinned. Although we’ll never be perfect, we can be better. That’s what sanctification is all about. That’s what #LiveItLikeJesus means. A daily reconciliation and sanctification that brings us just one step closer to emulating His perfect character.