Poem
Free I sit before you, Lord, and make my soul be still, I silence wayward thoughts and wait to know Your will. I’ve been to many places and known both joy and pain. I need Your strength and wisdom to propogate this change. I was born as fallible; in my flesh, I fall and sin. I’ll wait upon Your power to help me start again. You're both kind and merciful with love and mighty grace. You forgive and give me strength to run this life-long race. I am just dust in body, but in spirit, I’m Your child. I was chained and bound while distracted and beguiled. You are a God of freedom. In Your death, You make me free. Yet I’m mastered by this thing as it manipulates my needs. Oh Lord, please go before me and protect me from behind. I’ve tried to free myself, but it pulls me back each time. I pray and plead, “Deliver me; I find no strength on my own.” But my failures shout their logic as I approach Your throne. Oh God, You’re rich in mercy; I can trust You with all things You see and know my lone dispair as a puppet on tight strings. I know that in Your kindness, You will rescue me from shame. You can heal me of the wounds of all my unhealed pain. I know the truth will set me free as I ponder on Your word. I'll have new clarity of sight where it formerly was blurred. It shows my mind Your will and helps me see just who I am. I'm freed from my destructions while guided towards Your plan. Lord, I trust Your power, goodness, and Your Grace. I'll ignore the torment shouting of past mistakes. In You, I'll dare believe that I can be a brand new me. My past will lose its painful grip, and in You, I'll be free. 2024©SandyPopp
The Root
Our bondages, our issues, torments, weaknesses, and sins have a root. When God reveals this root, we need to give it to Him, and we get to tap into His strength to overcome it.
19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[a] Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:19-23
But each one is tempted when he is dragged away, enticed and baited [to commit sin] by his own [worldly] desire (lust, passion).
James 1:14
In Christ
We can become a new person by the transforming work of God’s word at work in our lives.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.[a] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17
The Key
When we struggle with that thing that holds us captive, we can remember the key that the Apostle Paul gives us in Romans 12:2. We change by renewing our minds each day by reading His word. If we struggle with temper, we should read scriptures on anger and bitterness to help transform our mindset to God’s will. Reading about finances in the Bible doesn’t help us with an anger problem. It’s not comfortable, but it is transformative. That’s what it’s all about.
And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be [a]transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].
Romans 12:2
