Fresh Manna 2009© by Pastor Tim Burt
Okay, yesterday we said the beginning of getting out of a rut was by establishing your special consistent time of communing with God. It’s where you draw the strength to make the changes and receive the direction to get out of your rut. When you do this you will come to realize there is nothing more precious to you! How did David feel about his communing time with God? He put it like this:
“The one thing I ask of the Lord—the thing I seek most—is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord's perfections and meditating in His Temple…” (Psalm 27:4)
There is healthy repetition or routine in our life that isn’t part of the “rut.” I said yesterday that repetition isn’t bad to me unless there are things I am repeating that aren’t priority instead of things I am not doing that should be a priority. When I have that kind of repetition going on, then I feel like I’m in a rut. So how do I swap things I am doing that aren’t good for things that I’m not doing that I should do?
What most people do is identify what they know is evil, bad, or just not the best and try to pluck it out of their life. “I’m eating too much sugar. I’m going to stop eating sugar.” Or the one who says, “I keep being seduced into looking at sexual magazines or sexual shows. I’m never going to look at another magazine again or I’m quitting watching television.” I understand that mentality. You’re saying,” I don’t have the self-control to do what’s right so I am ridding myself of it all together.” That’s not bad thinking, but few people follow through in it.
Jesus gave us some insight in how to get victory. First of all, when you feel powerless or defeated in stopping something you know isn’t good and is contrary to God’s will for you, it’s called a stronghold. Jesus gave us power and authority over strongholds. We are to rebuke and resist them in Jesus name from our life. We can chase them out in His name if we stick with it. But then we need to learn something about how evil strongholds work.
Matthew 12:43-45 reveals,
"When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, 'I will return to the person I came from.' So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and clean. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation."
You don’t have evil spirits in you but they are real and do work to come against you and present temptation to you. When you’ve continually yielded to them, they’ve won the stronghold in your life. When we try to eliminate strongholds or bad things from our life but we haven’t replaced them with something good, they arrive back on the scene. So, the best way to chase out these strongholds that get us in a rut is two-fold. First begin to squeeze something good into your life that is going to replace that stronghold. Are you watching television too late and it steals three good things from your life like Bible reading, sleep, and prayer? Instead of saying, “I am done watching television.” limit it to an hour. Then execute a plan to get ready for bed and plan to read your Bible for a certain amount of time. Squeeze the good in and cast the bad out. When temptation comes against it, take your authority in the name of Jesus out loud and rebuke it.
Whatever it is you need to change in your rut, squeeze in good before you try to get rid of the bad. Here is the mentality to have: if it’s the little foxes that spoil the vine, then it can be the little good changes squeezed in that begin to bring new life to the vine. Consistently squeeze in the good as you reject the bad and you will have cleaned house and left no room for the bad to come back and abide. More tomorrow…
Song of Solomon 2:15 “…the little foxes, that spoil the vines…”
In His love,
Pastor Tim
Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2009 Tim Burt, All rights reserved.
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