One of the greatest struggles we have as the bride of Christ is in dealing with sin in our life. Sometimes we get so bogged down with those recurring sins that we never seem to put behind us that become so weary that we just give up… we take up the attitude that “well that’s just who I am.” I got to thinking about that recently when I was studying Psalm 51. That Psalm carries a message for me that I turn to often when I’m struggling with what seem to be life long sins. You know, the ones the enemy keeps bringing back up and rubbing you in the face with them.
Well, as usual, the Lord talked to me about that as He usually does by taking me back to some place in time where something impacted my life. He has a incredible way of making His point with me. This time He started by reminding me that I had forgotten that I was Stone Cold Dead! As as I wandered down memory lane in the late 70s He brought someone to mind… Robert Allen Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan.
Little did I know back then the real Bob Dylan. Despite all of his success, having won two Oscars for the theme songs from The Poseidon Adventure (The Morning After) and The Towering Inferno (We May Never Love Like This Again), he had a secret that was destroying his life; he was suffering from agoraphobia (the fear of being someplace where there is no way to escape). It was destroying his life, but then one night, in the bedroom which he wouldn’t leave, he tuned into a late Christian TV show and realized that Jesus was indeed his Messiah. He prayed in his room and gave his life over to Christ and was healed of his agoraphobia. He subsequently wrote a song that celebrated his new life… Saved. And one of the lines in that song summed up where we all started out… I was blinded by the devil, born already ruined, Stone-cold Dead as I stepped out of the womb.
And that reminded me that the same thought belonged to David: Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. And that is a fact that at one time or another we have all faced. But, like Bob Dylan, we came to the realization that Jesus was the only answer to our Stone-cold Dead life.
I’ve been saved
By the blood of the lamb
Saved By the blood of the lamb
Saved
Saved
And I’m so glad, Yes, I’m so glad
I’m so glad, So glad
I want to thank You, Lord
I just want to thank You, Lord
Thank You, Lord
The problem, however, is that throughout our Walk With God the enemy keeps coming back and telling us and reminding us of all the sin in our life… You are nothing more than a sinner and you will never be anything else. Look, you just did it again and you are going to keep doing it because the truth is that you are still Stone-cold Dead! And because we sometimes grow so weary of the struggle we find ourselves letting the enemy pound those acquisitions into our head until they become another of his strongholds in our mind.
David knew that battle well and it was his cry to God that I have made a part of my daily life… It is an integral part of my morning prayer and quiet time with the Lord.
Ps 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Yes, 1 John 1:9 is the pathway to reestablishing our relationship with Jesus when we fail, but Psalm 51 is the secret to repentance. The moment we accepted Jesus as our Savior we left that Stone-cold Life behind and stepped into our Life in Christ, a life that the enemy can never take from us. And while we all know that we only need to stand on His promise of our eternal salvation, in the midst of the attack we forget that we only need to stand on His promises and make the only sacrifice that He asks of us… in the face of the enemy’s accusations:
Ps 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart – These, O God, You will not despise.
Then we need to stand up in the face of the enemy and remind him that we are no longer Stone-cold Dead, we are alive in Christ and have the victory in Jesus. And because of that his condemnation is false and we are going to press on with Jesus, knowing that His Spirit will be faithful to clean the sin from our heart and renew and make our spirit steadfast in His love. Then we can walk on up the road singing the words of the poet of the 60’s and 70’s:
By His truth I can be upright
By His strength I do endure
By His power I’ve been lifted
In His love I am secure
He bought me with a price
Freed me from the pit
Full of emptiness and wrath
And the fire that burns in it.
No… I’m not Stone-cold Dead, I’m Alive in Christ!
If you want to drop back in time, here’s your chance. It sure brought back a lot of memories for me. Perhaps this is what he had in mind when he wrote… The Times, They Are A Changin. Little did he know that some 16 years later they really would change for him.