Unshackled Moments ~ August 3. 2018 ~ Growing Gills

It's been  about eight months since the fire Leah and I had before Christmas last year. The heat in my study made me think of how hot it was when I ran into the house with 5-gallon buckets of water to put out the blaze. The fire was much hotter and worse than the August heat. The air was too hot to breathe, and even if it wasn't, the thick black smoke didn't have a lot of oxygen in it.

I knew the heat and smoke would mess up my lungs and cause me to cough. I remember taking a deep breath outside and determining that I would hold my breath before each trip inside. The plan I came up with was to take a deep breath of air, run in empty the bucket on the flames and exit before taking another breath. Unfortunately running makes it harder to hold my breath. So inevitably I would end up involuntarily trying to breathe the hot air and smoke. Each time it hurt and caused problems. Each time I became more determined not to make the same mistake. It never worked.

I simply don't have that kind of control over my natural instinct to breathe. None of us do. No matter how determined we are to hold our breath, there will come a time when that determination is outweighed by instinct and need, even if we are under water or surrounded by toxic fumes. The need outweighs even the understanding that there's nothing safe to breathe.

This is also true of the bondage of sin and addiction. It doesn't matter that the consequences have become toxic. It doesn't matter how well we know that if we give in to the desire to do wrong, to go for the quick fix and escape. etc., there will come a point in time when all that isn't enough. We can be submerged in destruction and know with every part of our being that to give in is to die, and we will still take that breath. We can't stop it. We have no more control over our selfish nature than we do over our lungs.

Changing our environment, our people, places and things will only help for so long. Avoiding triggers will only work until the stress of life causes us to create new ones. We can know this truth, but without something within us actually changing. The need that we are so desperate to fill has to be met. Being underwater can be fine, if we have scuba gear so that we can breathe without taking water into our lungs. Firefighters use air tanks to counteract the heat and smoke of fires. And when we it comes to breaking selfishness, habitual sin and addiction, we need an infusion of power and another, new nature. The only way to stop a moth from going to a flame is to put out the flame or change the nature of the moth.

We can't put out the flame of life, but we can have a new nature. Not by doing something ourselves or becoming more determined than ever to change or do better. That won't work any more than making up our mind to hold our breath will keep us from breathing. But by surrendering our lives and will to Daddy's care, He can and will do for us what we can not do for ourselves. He makes us His and gives us His very Spirit to strengthen us and change our very nature into His likeness. What does that mean? That means that we can be like Jesus and do what He did. What is that? Well, it is the ability, because of the Spirit within us, to walk through the mess and stress of life without breathing in the sin and being poisoned by it.

We will stumble and fall. We will take that breath that we don't want to take from time to time. This is because we are not capable of perfect and constant surrender, because we have not yet been made perfect. But we can surrender enough to stay close to Daddy and walk free from our addictions, to break the bondage of our destructive habitual sin and to rely on His power to love Him and love others more and more. We don't have to flee the world and all that is in it. God can give us spiritual gills and set us free.


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