October 26

“Sin is, after all, resistance to God.  And as we continue to resist, we continue to hinder the creative power of this new and glorious life within us.  The Creator God Himself has come to indwell our mortal bodies.”  Eugenia Price, S.P.S., 10/7

“Stop resisting” is an even better way to look at our new life in Christ than the use of the term “surrendering”.  Too often people have given me a hard time for insisting on the usage of the right word.  They’ll say, “It’s just semantics.”  But I believe the right word can make a difference when you’re trying to communicate a truth.  “To surrender” and “to not resist” could sound like the same thing to some people, but to others--like me--they are a world apart.  To me surrendering means to give up the fight for something I obviously believed in--or why would I have bothered to fight for it. It’s very difficult to change people’s minds outright.  They have to be shown why before they will believe something different. To stop resisting, on the other hand, emphasizes that I already am under the power of what it is I’ve been fighting.  Since I’ve already taken the step to give myself back to God, to surrender would be redundant.  Instead, as a new creature in Christ, I must stop resisting that new life in me.  This makes so much more sense to me.  I don’t have to “reinvent” myself because God has already done that.  I just need to follow the path already laid out for me, making sure I don’t take any detours where I might get lost. 

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”  Galatians 5:25