Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of
his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Romans 8:29)
There is neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians
3:28)
Continuing yesterday’s discussion of
courage, a logical question that should be answered is For what do we need
the courage to do? Long before we go to war, we must become soldiers, and
that requires courage in many ways. The first is that it requires that we leave
home, family, friends, and in some ways, all that we hold familiar and dear to
go to boot camp. The instructors make it very clear immediately that all those
things you loved are not in the boot camp. In other words, in order to be a
soldier, all of our idols, big and little, must be given up. The only things
that matter are the honor and safety of what we are training to fight for.
Similarly, if we hope to be an
effective Christian, we must renounce what is not God and cling to the One who
is. In The Christian in Complete Armor, this is referred to as
renouncing our bosom sins, and described using the story of Abraham sacrificing
Isaac. Isaac was not a bosom sin, but he had the potential to take God’s place
in Abraham’s heart and therefore be the key by which the door to Abraham’s sin
could be opened.
A second directive for Christians is
to conform our lives to Christ. In a boot camp, once again, recruits are not
permitted to behave however they would like. They are told when to get up, when
to go to bed, when and what to eat. They are effectively treated like pieces of
machinery with no identity, and in the process, they are supposed to shift the
source of their identity from themselves and the things in their past to the
military. They are to become soldiers, a band of brothers whose sole purpose is
to serve their country.
Likewise, as Christians, we are called
to give up the image with which we grew up, to give up our identities as members
of our family, of our communities, of our ethnic or historical background.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, etc. We are to be Christians as our sole
identity.
A third requirement is that we sidestep stumbling blocks. This was addressed in an earlier post: Running The Race
The fourth requirement is that we trust
God in every circumstance. Once again, in a boot camp situation, recruits are required
to look to their commanders and to the military to meet their needs. Turning
elsewhere is a betrayal – a treason. In a similar way, if we look to ourselves
or to anything other than God we commit treason against Him.
Lastly,
we are advised to keep on keeping on. Being a soldier isn’t something one can
do when one feels like it. You keep doing it when the going gets tough. You keep
doing it when you think failure is inevitable. And when you fail, you get up
and keep going again. It’s like the story of the man who was told to push a
boulder. After years, he took his failure to God. In all those years, he had
not moved the boulder an inch. But he had developed strong muscles. This is
what Christ calls us to.
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