Old bags and old bones

christkid777 · #1 06-23-2009, 01:36 PM

It is hard to swim across a river with a heavy load on your back. All that extra weight just seems to get you down. Actually anything we do in life is made more exhausting when we carry an added weight. But we insist on doing it all the time. Things we were supposed to have left behind we we set out on this journey. Stuff that was dead years ago and should have been buried. But we insist on strapping it onto our backs and trudging on. A lot of us are carrying this extra baggage. Old relationships now dead. Old grudges now meaningless. Old desires unfulfilled. We hang on to these thing, we nurture them and feed them, we tuck them into bed with us at night. All the while refusing to see that the flesh of their once relevant existence has long ago fallen away and we are kissing the lifeless skull of a corpse. Why don't you lay that old dead thing down. Put in in a hole and kick some dirt over it.

There are things in the spirit that are the same way. Our critical attitudes. Our willingness to judge one another. Our unwillingness to receive those the Lord has placed in the body with us. The things that stem from our arrogance and pride. You know, the things we lie about when we do them and claim we are motivated by love. Yea, those things. They were supposed to have died with the old man. But many of us are still lugging them around. We cherish our pride. Every day we breath new life into it. But these things are dead. God has rejected them and the works the breed. We are admonished to "put on the new man who is created after the likeness of Christ". So hey, borrow a shovel. Put that old stuff to rest once and for all. Let the new man go free.

#2 06-23-2009, 02:04 PM

What a nice way to tell it like it is James. And you are so right. I need to check and see if I have any bones in my bag that I've been lugging around. I do know someone who actually wrote a story based on this very thing but from a counseling perspective. Thank-you for your wisdom.

NotFinishedYet · #3 06-23-2009, 02:15 PM

"If anyone wishes to come after me", he said, "he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Daily we must leave those bones behind, James. Moment to moment, setting aside our egos and natural man. Rising anew with Christ. I'd rather carry the cross then my bag o' bones. TY for these words. Peggy(Lk 9:23).

Linsinbigler · #4 06-23-2009, 03:25 PM

You are all correct. We need daily renewal. This is why morning prayer is good. We need to daily commit ourselves, and one another, and our whole lives unto Christ our God. Amen.

Linsinbigler · #5 06-23-2009, 03:29 PM

Of course, we need midday and evening prayer and prayer throughout the day to renew ourselves. But our prayer needs to go deeper than this. Communication with God is not just in words, but in deed, in our walk, and in our very breath. We need to make our whole life one unceasing prayer and offering to God.

NotFinishedYet · #6 06-23-2009, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Linsinbigler

Of course, we need midday and evening prayer and prayer throughout the day to renew ourselves. But our prayer needs to go deeper than this. Communication with God is not just in words, but in deed, in our walk, and in our very breath. We need to make our whole life one unceasing prayer and offering to God.

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Every moment a prayer offered, a word heard. Amen and amen.

Soulheart3 · #7 06-23-2009, 04:41 PM

Good thoughts James. Our spiritual burdens (the bones) will weigh us down 100 times more than any physical one.

#8 06-23-2009, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Linsinbigler

Of course, we need midday and evening prayer and prayer throughout the day to renew ourselves. But our prayer needs to go deeper than this. Communication with God is not just in words, but in deed, in our walk, and in our very breath. We need to make our whole life one unceasing prayer and offering to God.

Amen, Father Harry.

Psalm 63: 1-2 O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.

Psalm 141: 2 Let my prayer be set before You as incense,
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

James 1:22-25
22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

Amadeus · #9 06-24-2009, 10:40 AM

Lay the old bones, huh? Pray each morning, huh? Pray morning, noon and evening, huh? Yeah, I can go along with that then some...

"Pray without ceasing" I Thess 5:17

"Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice." Philippians 4:4

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." Romans 12:1