When you engaged with God in last week’s prayer project, did any questions pop up? As I thought about you and the work you were doing, two questions come front and center in my mind. I think it would be good to address them right up front today.
First, you may have seen many abandoned rooms in your heart and felt overwhelmed. What are you supposed to do with this tsunami of buried “content?” I want to assure you; we will talk more about discernment of priorities later on. After all, God knows which places of our hearts need healing for maximal growth. Fortunately—good news!—we don’t need to address them all. So, no worries…. Whatever area you focused on in last week’s prayer project is fine for now.
Second, you may have felt genuine concern over the direction we seem to be heading in. Are we supposed to pay this much attention to the “old” parts of ourselves? Aren’t we told to “forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead?” (Philippians 3:13). If you found yourself asking this key question and feel the need to resolve it before pressing forward in the series, I encourage you to read the appendix of my book. I address this question and seven other common reservations about self-examination. It is important to be theologically settled before continuing our journey together. Why not take a time-out, then pick up with me later? Bless you and your time away if you feel that an intermission might be best for you.
As you remember from your prayer time last week, I asked you to describe—in general terms—how you have tried to put off the “unsightly” parts of yourself. How did you answer this question? And what did you think about the approach you documented? Turns out, a lot of us have a hard time knowing what to do with the “old self,” especially in conservative evangelical circles. Here are the most common ways that many of us try to put off a troublesome area of our hearts:
- Ignore it—we pretend that it’s not even there.
- Minimize it—we reduce it and the impact it has on our lives. “It’s really not a big problem.” Or, maybe, “It isn’t a problem at all.”
- Manage it—we try to contain it, restrain it, keep it at bay.
- Overcome it—we focus on opposite behavior. We work hard to put on the new man, hoping that the old man will either be left behind or go away altogether.
- Release it—we repeatedly ask God to take away our problem. My seminary professor, Dr. John Coe called this strategy, “Quick Prayers.” We take a few seconds once in a while to pray, “God, please take this from me!”
We will talk more about this list next week. We want to understand the theology of growth that fuels these strategies. But, for now, an obvious question emerges: How effective are these methods? If you have employed some or all of them to rid yourself of “old” character, did they work?