DAY 20

Having no Christian friends in the city, I often feel the world overwhelming me. Although I logically know that I am certainly not the only one here trying to make their life count for God, it often feels like it. Even for someone who has always been on the non conformist side of things, it starts to be tempting to stifle ones convictions just enough to find a place to fit in.


My roommate is completely flabbergasted I don’t stay in bed Sunday morning. The girls at work don’t understand why I come home after we close up shop instead of joining them at the club. The guys who work in the neighboring shops cannot fathom why I continually turn down dates and invitations for drinks after work. Sometimes, I even question it myself. With no law telling me that I absolutely cannot do these things, it is very tempting to step a bit sideways. After all, going home alone at the end of each night can get to be pretty lonely (thank GOD I have three Christian friends who are all night owls and only a phone call away). This morning though, my pep talk came from the book of Romans:

For if we have been joined with Him in the likeness of His death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of His resurrection. Foe we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion of the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, since a person who has died is freed from sin’s claims…So you to consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. {Romans 6:5-7, 11}

Next to these verses in Romans is one of my personal cross references, speaking about our freedom from the law.

Christ has liberated us into freedom. Therefore stand firm and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you are called to freedom, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. {Galatians 5: 1 and 13}

…interesting combination. I have to admit, it took me a minute to muddle through what I was thinking two years ago when I set the two scriptures side by side. Although we often think of grace as replacing the law, it is only though the law that we realize how great of grace we have received (Romans 7:7-8). If I am dead to sin and free from the law where does that leave me? At the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a tool in the hands of GOD.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. {Romans 6: 12-13}

I am weak and human. I cannot follow the whole law and therefore fail when I attempt to please GOD with my own righteousness, which often results in my discouragement and submission to sin. When I submit to HIM and allow HIM to use me a weapon for righteousness, I can do nothing but succeed. Being dead to sin does mean that there are places I don’t go and things I don’t do, even though everybody else does and encourages me to participate as well. Yet, being alive is Christ is far more of a reward than anything else in this life.