Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Taking January Back

It's funny how when I take the terrifying step of being especially vulnerable in a post I get a lot of responses...

I've had a lot of responses to yesterday's post.  There's a common theme.  January is tough.  There is a myriad of reasons.  A lot of it is associated with the weather--lack of sunlight and outdoor exercise--post holiday blues, sugar low, financial struggles...  It's a long list and each individual is unique.

These factors are very real.  We live in human "mortal" bodies that are influenced in more ways than we know.

I absolutely believe that our Father recognizes this and that He cares...

We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality.
He's been through weakness and testing,
experienced it all--all but the sin...

I also believe that we have an enemy who recognizes our weakness and vulnerability, who won't hesitate to take advantage...

Keep a cool head.  Stay alert.  
The Devil is poised to pounce and would like nothing better than to catch you napping...

Catch me napping.  Lull me in to thinking that Vitamin D is my only problem...  What if that enemy can get me to buy into the idea that I'm a victim of all these very real natural forces?  I think he can get me so focused on those facts that I forget there's potential for a greater power to work in my "mortal body."  Before I know it, I've made an agreement with the spirit of heaviness and am effectively bound and chained.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life...
for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells
--even though you still experience all the limitations of sin--
you yourself experience life on God's terms.
It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God
who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life,
he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus,
bringing you alive to himself?
When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus),
you are delivered from that dead life.
With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

I want to take January back.  I don't want it to be a cursed and hopeless month.  It may not be the easy, breezy days of summer, but I refuse to be chained.  I'm going to take my Vitamin D and "stay alert."

If you need a song to help shake off the heaviness, if you want to raise a shout that, "My heart is free, no chains on me," click here.


Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 5:8; Romans 8:9-11  MSG

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