Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22, ESV)
There are certain things about golf that are painful. Now I’m not talking about real, physical pain (I guess this could happen, but it’s not what I’m suggesting here). I am talking about changing things in your golf swing to become a better golfer. It is quite painful to make swing changes. It is hard to break old habits in order to improve your game. If you are a competitive golfer, whether a professional or an amateur), you have probably experienced this.
Why is it so hard to change things in your swing? Because we are creatures of habit and do not like change. We love (mostly indirectly) to revert back to our old ways and go to what’s comfortable. So, when we take a lesson and change or alter our swing, then it hurts. It usually feels and even looks ugly (I remember not even making contact sometimes in a swing change!). We think, “There is no way this is going to work. I mean, how am I ever going to get comfortable with this really strange feeling swing?”
In life, we are either an old self-creature or a new self-creature. Before Christ (our old self), we lived in a selfish frame of mind and lived for ourselves. However, when God saved us and pulled us over into our new self, we began to live for our Savior.
What’s troubling is that just like with our old golf swing, we love reverting to our old self, to the life that we lived before God saved us. In today’s passage, Paul was writing not to non-believers, but to the saints (Christians) at the church of Ephesus. Like us, they held onto bad habits and practices that didn’t just disappear when they became new in Christ.
We must continue to remind ourselves of who we are in Christ daily, moment by moment as we walk with our Lord. To the Romans Paul wrote: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6). This is freedom in Christ. This is the new self.
Christ was crucified on the cross for our sins in order that we may have a new self. May we always keep this in mind when we want to run back to our old self. When we want to go back to our old habits, even though wrong and quite comfortable to us (we are still sinners, which means we are good at sinning), we must keep Christ in mind. We must strive for that new self, putting Christ above all else.
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Rosson Anderson
February 26, 2014
Copyright 2014 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.