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Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom
… no matter how hard I tried, I still found myself missing the mark in my emotions. With sex, my “dead to sin” experience was like zombies from a horror movie – back from the dead with an insatiable appetite. In other areas, I continued to fall into thoughts and actions that I knew weren’t pleasing to God.
When I stopped falling to temptation, I expected I would go through withdrawal for a few weeks or months, and then the temptations would go away. Instead, I found myself in a day to day struggle that lasted for years.
It was quite bearable at first. I loved Jesus, and He was working in my life, and I also got married. All of that was incredibly fulfilling. Yet there was a steady nagging temptation within me, as if something inside of me had its hooks in me and was determined to pull me back. It felt as if it would eventually wear me down and win. Some times were worse than others; I remember at least one time when it got so bad that I felt as if my heart was being torn out. I didn’t know it at the time, but sexual addiction is stronger than dependence on cocaine and is harder to break than any other addiction.[21] On top of that, a significant part of my withdrawal dragged on for close to fifteen years. I couldn’t avoid my “pornography” until the mid-1990s, when the laws were changed to prohibit smoking in public buildings.
It was also over twenty years before I learned enough about sexual addiction to describe my problems to others. Since I didn’t know how to reach out for help, and I knew that few people would have understood anyway, I relied on my relationship with the Lord together with perseverance.
After the initial struggle, I settled into a fearful state where though I wasn’t in as much pain, my mind continued to be invaded by temptations. I had to guard myself to keep from acting on them.
I got married a few months after I left college, which was a great help, because my wife and I were able to build a godly sexual relationship to replace my confused one. By God’s grace, our marriage was great from the beginning, but it was almost as if I was divided into two people. Part of me was satisfied with my wife, but another part was clawing at my soul to drag me back into my old ways. As the Bible said, I had a new self and an old self fighting for control.
…that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self…and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
(Ephesians 4:22; 24, NAS)
I knew that now, more than ever, I couldn’t go back. I was married, so the stakes were much higher. If I gave in to temptation, I would hurt my wife and destroy her trust. Only God knew what damage that would have done down the road.
I had taken a job where I worked with young women who smoked, and in the 1980s it seemed that people smoked just about everywhere, except for church. I faced many situations that incited my hormones, and I was left with only one way to avoid acting out – to grit my teeth and decide that no matter how much turbulence my heart felt, I would do what was right.
The feelings were so strong and they occurred so often that I had no idea when I had crossed the line from temptation into sinful thoughts. Looking back, I think I did better than I gave myself credit for, but I had to fight the desires so often that it was hard to believe I wasn’t inviting them. In order to keep myself from getting discouraged and losing ground, I played it safe and confessed anything suspicious as if it were a sin. I trusted Jesus to constantly forgive me through His blood. Then, I focused on the one thing I knew I could control, my actions.
I felt like a second-class Christian. The Bible told me I should be more than a conqueror; instead, in this one area I felt like barely a survivor. I believed Jesus was supposed to change His children from the inside out. It seemed I was obeying by forcing myself to follow rules rather than by expressing God’s heart through the Holy Spirit. But if second-class Christianity was all I could experience, it was better than open disobedience.
God had done a work in me so that I could in some ways live a new life. I loved and feared Him, and my wife, too much to neglect that gift. I needed to embrace the suffering along with the joy. How could I disappoint Him or my wife by deciding that until I got more from Him, I wouldn’t stay true to what He had given me?
I came up with a metaphor to help me stay alert. I pictured myself walking a tightrope over hell. I had to repeatedly humble myself and focus on the narrow rope before me or I might fall. I didn’t believe I would literally be lost right away if I did, but as I mentioned before, I would be heading in the wrong direction and setting myself up for consequences I didn’t want to face.
The image of hell was strong enough to keep me from drifting. Fear helped me to embrace the suffering and kept me moving forward.
Early in my Christian life, I had heard good teaching on Romans 6, which told me that I wasn’t a slave to sin.[22]
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
These verses taught me that I had something in me called ‘sin’ that made me want to disobey. When I believed in Jesus and was baptized, I was crucified, buried, and raised with Him. Because of this, I had the ability to stop listening to sin’s inner deception.
It was a mystery to me how this “death and resurrection with Jesus” teaching could be true, but I accepted it by faith. The theological ideas were strange to my twentieth century mind, but the practical effect was easy enough to understand. I should have the ability to think, feel, and act in the way God wanted me to. Sin would still tempt me, but I wasn’t its slave any more. Instead, I was alive to God in the same way that Jesus is.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
Because I had been changed, I should present myself to God to obey Him. I could see several steps in this process.
Know that I am dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:6-10)
Reckon myself to be dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11)
Do not let sin reign in my body (Romans 6:12)
Do not present myself to sin (Romans 6:13)
Present myself to God (Romans 6:13)
When I read this in my teens and twenties, it all seemed so simple and easy to believe, but no matter how hard I tried, I still found myself missing the mark in my emotions. With sex my “dead to sin” experience felt like zombies from a horror movie – back from the dead with an insatiable appetite. In other areas, I continued to fall into thoughts and actions that I knew weren’t pleasing to God. As I did, I would try knowing, reckoning, not letting, not presenting, or presenting harder, but I continued to fall.
Sometimes, I would reverse my psychology, relax, and trust the Holy Spirit to control me – “let go and let God.” Unfortunately, the result seemed more like “let go and let sin.”
How could this be? I was dead and resurrected with Jesus. Why couldn’t I just put on the new self in the same way I would put on a piece of clothing?
I had heard that putting on the new self involved faith, prayer, Bible reading, fasting, and my best attempts at obedience. I found that for me, these sometimes set the stage for the old self rather than the new.
For example, one day I spent time reading the Bible and praying before going to work. I arrived at my job on a kind of “spiritual high.” I felt at peace with Jesus and was ready to show His grace to my coworkers.
On this day, we had a review – where my peers made comments on a project I had worked on. We sat around a large table and examined my work as my coworkers told me how to improve it.
My team leader was known for his caustic personality and ability to offend. He made one nit-picky comment after another, but I kept turning to Jesus and asking for His patience. I had come in with the grace of God in my heart, and I didn’t want to lose it. I kept reminding myself to let the love of Jesus show through. Still, something was building in me.
Finally, I snapped. In an instant, I went from peace to an outburst of anger. I didn’t say anything, but I stabbed the papers in front of me with my pen. The pen broke, making me even madder, so I threw it against the wall and stormed out of the meeting, still without saying a word.
I couldn’t figure out why I acted like that. It seemed like the more time I spent seeking Jesus the more vulnerable I became to uncontrolled behavior. In some ways, I was better off staying away from Him, because that left me in a bad mood to start with, so my guard was up. Spending time with Him put me into a euphoric state where I could be more easily upset. It didn’t make any sense. Reading the Bible and praying were supposed to help, not hinder.
Fortunately, with the exception of my sexual struggles, for most of my twenties, my life wasn’t that difficult. As long as I stayed humble before God, I was able to do fairly well. My temper was usually under control, and I was able to do most of what I needed. Life was a tightrope over hell, but by God’s grace, I was able to walk it.
While all this was happening, I was having a great time at church. The Holy Spirit was moving, and I had fun joining in the outpouring of His life. I began to teach regularly and found that people liked listening to me.[23] After a while, I was recognized as someone who had the call from God to be a teacher of His word.
It was an exciting time for me. Young people often wonder what they are supposed to do with their lives, and in my mid-twenties, I had the joy and satisfaction of finding out. Understanding my calling brought a sense of stability to my confusion. I devoted myself to God’s word and had powerful experiences as He opened my eyes to see His unchanging truth.
When I was twenty-seven, I developed asthma[24] and decided to seriously seek God to heal me. During the next two years, I spent many hours in prayer, Bible study, and listening to tapes by Christians involved in healing ministry. I set up a schedule of fasting each week and also went on some longer fasts. For a while, I even stayed up late seeking God at least one night a week. I never saw much in the way of miraculous healing, but God met me with many wonderful times in His presence.
In spite of all this, however, I continued to stumble in my day to day walk. I didn’t commit what most people would consider to be bad sins, with the exception of the occasional scary outburst of anger, but I doubted my spirituality. I wondered if I really knew what I was talking about when I taught in church and everyone told me how anointed I was.
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