A New Season #2 – Your Present

Hundreds of millions of people around the world do crossword puzzles, play word or number games, or participate in puzzles on their computers, phones, or tablets. Why?

Could it be that we’re faced with so many unresolved problems every day that we find satisfaction in solving something? Our lives often seem controlled by people and situations beyond our control.

Yet in completing some puzzle, we are in control from the beginning to the end.

As Christ followers, we learn to control what goes on inside us.

We learn to control our sinful desires. Many desires in life are legitimate and worthwhile. But sinful desires are deceptive and destructive.

Following sinful desires may even bring us what we want – success, wealth, pleasure, position, popularity. But it will leave us poor in the end – wanting the things that matter most.

We choose to “abstain from sinful desires” (1 Peter 2:11).

We learn that others may try to control us. Doing things for others and being sensitive to their feelings is healthy. But being driven by people pleasing and performing for others is unhealthy. We can be controlled by what others think.

Other people are not meant to determine who we are and what we do. We choose to “win the approval” of God, not people (Galatians 1:10).

Above all, we learn to be controlled by the Holy Spirit and do what he wants. “You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you” (Romans 8:9, NLT2).

An illiterate couple came to faith in Christ. When the Christian men of their newfound church were engaged in a community service project together, they all wore red shirts. The husband didn’t get one yet, so his wife made him one.

After serving alongside the men in the next service project, the husband come home disappointed. The other men had a message printed on their shirts, but his did not.

His wife, undaunted by her inability to read, sewed three words on his shirt that she copied from a sign in a store window across the street. He wore it to the next meeting and came home happy.

He said all the men really liked the inscription, because it so well described the change they had seen in his life.

It turned out that his wife had written, “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.”

We can’t control everything in our world. But living under God’s management, we can control our inner world.

~ Pastor Dave