Giving Up
The Christian does not have to give things up when he becomes a believer - things give him up. Unhappy is the man who spends time trying to give up things. He is seeking to perform a self-crucifixion which can never be complete. The only way to have an ordered life is to move to Christ, and He will make the changes as we move.
I had a remarkable illustration of this principle while driving through Texas. For about five days most of north and east Texas had been in the grip of its worst storm in years. Six to eight inches of snow blanketed much of the state, and all of the traffic in Fort Worth was slipping around on ice. Every automobile was undercoated with dirty ice, and icicles hung down from the fenders. As I started west from Fort Worth, I heard a grinding noise and thought that something was wrong with my car. In momentary anxiety, I put on the brake and the noise grew worse; then suddenly the noise disappeared entirely and the car seemed to jump forward a little. I wondered what had happened. Sometime later the same thing took place again. I stopped and saw that a large chunk of ice had fallen on the road. I soon realized that the warm weather was defrosting my car; moreover, I passed other large chunks of ice that had dropped from the cars of other drivers. The road was heavy with traffic, and we were following a path that was marked by chunks of dirty ice. The reason was that we were headed straight into much warmer weather.
If I had taken a chisel and started meticulously to deice my car in Fort Worth, I would have had a long, cold, thankless job. Moreover, the minute I started out on the road again, my wheels would have picked up new moisture and deposited it up on the car, and I would have had the job to do over.
Thus it is with giving up things. The best method is to drive as fast as we can toward Christ. The warmth of His presence and the glow of the new life will cause the old things to drop off. We will also be conscious of the fact that we are laying aside a weight and running more smoothly toward our goal.
1. What part do we play in the process of sanctification?
2. Much like the ice on the car, we don’t realize our spiritual surrounding based on our own observation. What does the Christian use to gauge their spiritual condition?
