STUFFED

STUFFED

Friday, January 3, 2014

Romans [MKJV] 7:18-25 [The Apostle Paul] For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing. For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I do not find. 19 For I do not do the good that I desire; but the evil which I do not will, that I do. 20 But if I do what I do not desire, it is no more I working it out, but sin dwelling in me. 21 I find then a law: when I will to do the right, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the Law of God according to the inward man; 23 but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin being in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

  Pastor Donald McKnight said mendacity is a skin of a reason stuffed with a lie. He liked to additionally point out the problem isn’t lying, it’s us.

  How early do we begin this practice of serving our flesh? How soon does it spring forth from our inherent sinful nature?

  Yesterday my 5 year old grandson was invited to a sleepover. He responded “I can’t do that until I’m 9 years old because my Mommy and Daddy will miss me now.”

  Was Michael being truthful? Yes and no.

  In a stuffed sentence he was honestly explaining that he is not yet emotionally ready for being away from his parents, but doing so with clever equivocation. Something we grow to practice with increased sophistication.

  Mendacious behavior doesn’t always entail flat out stated denial. It often is equivocal as revealed in early historical examples, declaration “You’re the one that gave me that woman!” (Gen.3:12), or evasive question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen.4:8-9)

  “In Psalm 51:5, David says, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." David saw himself as a man whose sinful parents had brought forth a sinful child. David recognized that he possessed a nature that would sin and fall short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). David's son Solomon would later write, "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins" (Ecclesiastes 7:20).” Read more: http://www.compellingtruth.org/sin-nature.html#ixzz2pKzXm5ub

  As I look in the same mirror as Paul, God’s Word, I see the same base personality. I don’t see someone naturally wholesome that on occasion finagles, fibs, prevaricates, outright lies.  I am another wretched man naturally sinful in nature that requires submission to God’s deliverance in following the only sinless human that ever walked outside of Eden.  EBB4