Is It Circumlocution?
I humbly sit before You,
I give myself to Thee
Please infiltrate my mind and heart
Show clearly what I must see.
Romans 7:14-25 (<<click here to read the passage)
Have you ever heard the term circumlocution? It’s a more technical word for speaking in circles. When looking at this particular passage I’ve thought that that is what the Apostle Paul is doing here. With all the doing and not wanting to do, and the not doing and wanting to, it’s felt that way. But when I looked it up and understood its meaning, that’s for sure not what Paul is doing!
Circumlocution is going round and round in a wordy way without ever getting to the heart of the matter. It’s an evasive style of argument, best employed when we really don’t want to say what’s on our minds.
Paul seems to speak that way, but he never hesitates to say what is on his mind! He is not evasive in the least! If it does seem to come across as if his words keep folding back on themselves, it is only because that’s how it works in our minds and hearts.
We’ve all felt it haven’t we? We want to live lives that are holy and righteous, but sin is around every corner to trip us up. We love when we are living in the center of God’s will! We love it when we can readily stop temptation in its tracks! We love it when we feel the Holy Spirit walking side by side with us all along the way.
But then, we get sloppy. A little thought here, another there, and then they start to gang up on us, and almost before we know what is happening (but we pretty much always know) we’ve fallen smack dab in the middle of the sin we had been trying so hard to not fall into.
We don’t want to, and we do. We do want to, and we don’t. And like Paul we exclaim,
Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? v24
And this is where the circling words stop. This is where the answer is given, where any hint of hesitancy is eliminated, where any whiff of evasiveness is eradicated!
Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. v25a
He is most assuredly the answer but we all still struggle even knowing that the answer is right in front of us! It’s obvious, isn’t it? For even Paul follows up that last proclamation with,
So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. v25b NLT
The answer is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. And when we glance away and fall, we must call out for Him, and in an instant, He is right there to set us aright, and off we go once more with Him forgiven and free to continue our journey forward!
All power to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
Jan 17th, 2023, Tues, 12:32 pm
Sharks!
(Shark notice sign — Image by © 68/Stefano Oppo/Ocean/Corbis)
Father, thank You for the blessings of this day. A slated day off but it’s been a relatively relaxed day and I have gotten so much done – a home project and a good head start on things for Sunday. Bless our time together for Your glory. Amen.
Romans 7:7-13 (<<click here to read the passage)
Have you seen the Toddler Temptation Challenge videos? A tasty treat is set before a young child and mom says she’ll be back in just a couple of minutes. The thing is the child isn’t allowed to touch or eat it until she gets back. Sometimes children do as they’re told and other times they dive right in!
Many times, even as adults, it’s a greater temptation to not yield when someone tells us not to snoop or not to go into a certain room or whatever. If they’d never said anything about it, then it probably wouldn’t have even entered our minds to check it out. But tell us NOT to and that’s all we seem to be able to think about!
God’s Law is like that. Even pre-Ten Commandments, Adam and Eve failed their temptation challenge. This is how it went.
…the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:16-17 NLT
Of course, the serpent twisted God’s words, then Eve added to God’s words and before it was all over, Eve sinned, Adam sinned…and now we’re all sinners…
All they had to do was say “no” and turn their attention to all that they could enjoy – which was everything else! – but nope they did what we all do and did the thing they weren’t supposed to do!
My Life Application Study Bible goes a little further. If we don’t know we’re not to do something (the Law) then we don’t sin, because we don’t think about it and we don’t do it. Our “flesh” – our sin nature – is drawn to all we should avoid…and there’s lots more than just one thing to avoid now!
When Adam and Eve yielded, they didn’t die immediately but they did eventually. In God’s original plan, they may never have died. But they sinned and the penalty was death. It is the same for us.
The Law is not wrong or evil, but it does what it’s supposed to do, it points out the wrong. It points out the sin. But the thing is, that’s all it does, it offers no way out of our condemnation. Or course, that’s where Jesus gloriously factors in.
But before we leave this post, we need to address our response to the Law.
My study Bible states,
Sin is real, and it is dangerous. Imagine a sunny day at the beach. You plunge into the surf, then you notice a sign on the pier: “No swimming. Sharks.” Your day is ruined. Is it the sign’s fault? Are you angry with the people who put it up? The law is like the sign. It is essential and we are grateful for it – but it doesn’t get rid of the sharks.
Be on guard. Jesus is the only one qualified to serve as our Lifeguard. If you’ve not done so, give your life over to Him. If you’re not sure how to do that, reach out to me. I’ll gladly show you how to find him!
Jan 16th, 2023, Mon, 4:24 pm
What Are You Harvesting?
After a full day Father, I come before You. I am humbled as I sit in Your presence, to be used of You. I would ask that You would use to their fullest the gifts I have been given, they were given to me by You, and they are best used according to Your will.
Romans 7:1-6 (<<click here to read the passage)
I recently saw a clip of a cooking show on TikTok (♫♬ oh, be careful little eyes what you see ♬♫ – always be wary) and there was a 19-year-old contestant, who though fairly talented, was eliminated early on. His circumstances were tragic in that he was his family’s source of income – his parents, if I remember correctly, had some very serious physical problems. He wept when he lost but, one of the judges, a hard-nosed but well-respected chef in his own right, spoke to him.
In essence, he told the young man not to worry. Though he was being eliminated, he saw the gift he had, and rather than seeing him return to a potentially dead-end career in the fast-food industry, he offered instead to send him to culinary school and to support his family in the meantime! Wow!
The young man was overwhelmed. The chef made it very clear, that the talent was there but without help, he may never see his dreams and talent bloom into very possible greatness! And he wanted to give him every opportunity to see it become a reality!
Before Jesus became known to us verse 5 tells us that we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds…
That’s just the way it was. We were born with that old nature – we had no choice in the matter. But as time went on, we did make decisions – we willingly, knowingly yielded to those sinful desires…we allowed them to work within us. And whether we embraced those evil desires or felt that we had no other option but to yield, that is what we were compelled to do.
But then a light shined on our world of darkness, maybe we knew we had potential and maybe not…but Jesus surely knew whom we were created to be! He saw – and continues to see! – what we can become. But in our own strength, in our enslaved state of lostness – separated from God by our sin and rebellion, we cannot overcome our lostness.
But then came Jesus! When we died to the power of the law – all the rules and regulations that pointed out our sins and wrongdoings – we died to its hold upon our lives when [we] died with Christ. vs 4
The remainder of verse 4 goes on to say,
And now [we] are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. NLT
Our circumstances were surely tragic, and we were doomed to eternal elimination but a higher power – indeed our very Creator! – reached out and gave us what only He could give – our salvation! With the blessings of His grace and mercy, Jesus has set us on the path to see our dreams and talent bloom into a promise of greatness – no guessing here! And only because of His sacrifice does that opportunity become a reality! Amen and amen!
Jan 15th, 2023, Sun, 7:38 pm
No Neutral
It is time for me to focus, Father. May I set aside all that would distract me and may my eyes be fixed on You. Amen.
Romans 6:15-23 (<<click here to read the passage)
Every single time I stop to pick up or drop off a student I set the emergency (parking) brake on my school bus and put it in neutral. There is no chance of it going forward or backward of its own accord. For the sake of safety, that is what is required. With the emergency brake engaged, even if I put my bus in gear it would be unable to move.
I’m sure that you have noticed that in life there is no emergency brake. No matter how strong our desire to slow things down to prolong joy or avoid a head-on collision with sorrow, life does what life does. Only when life ceases are the brakes set.
The other thing about life, besides it not having any brakes, is the fact that there is no neutral. And from a spiritual perspective (and whether we like to admit it or not – that is really the only viable perspective), since there is no neutral the only two other options are God…or sin. And the thing is, we chose which one will be our master. No one makes us. God does not make us choose nor does the world force us to choose. That decision is ours alone to make.
Paul states that we were once slaves to sin but because of Jesus’ sacrificial gift we are now free from slavery to sin and have become slaves to righteous living.
The slavery of which Paul speaks is one of choice…our choice. We were born into sin and continued to live in it. All of us gave ourselves over to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. But the thing is, the result of that choice was eternal doom.
Now Paul exclaims that we must give ourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that we will become holy. Doing so means we are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now we do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life.
…the wages of sin is death but Paul concludes with the profound statement, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. NLT
We may stumble. We may fail. We may utterly fall flat on our faces but when we do we fall, now we do so by falling into the waiting arms of our Lord and Savior for we are no longer slaves to sin. We, my friends, belong to God! And there is no better place to be!
Jan 12th, 2023, Thurs, 7:03 pm
What Kind of “Root System” Do You Have?
Father, I can think of no reason to not be thankful for a “routine” day. There’s been a couple of different elements but all in all, it has been good. Thank You for blessings in whatever shape or size they may come.
********
In the spring of 2021, after a combination of heavy rain and high winds one of our neighbor’s spruce trees fell over. It didn’t snap mind you; it just fell over, root base and all. I have seen other types of trees do the same thing (I can think of two that I’ve seen on my bus route) but evergreens are prone to this problem.
The trouble specifically is that their root system does not go down, it tends to go out instead. Some trees have deep tap root systems – nut trees, oaks, and pines. The longest tap root ever dug up was from a wild fig tree in South Africa. It went almost 400 feet deep!
According to the U.S. Forest Service, blue spruce trees develop shallow roots after seeds germinate, perhaps only 2 to 3 inches deep. This reveals that this tree species grows with a spreading, shallow root system.
So, what kind of “root system” do you have? When the storms of life come howling about you, are you quickly down for the count? Do the winds of adversity take you out? Or like a mighty oak, are you grounded with a tap root deep into the soil, and then the rest of your root system radiates out from the trunk 3–7 times wider than the spread of the branches?
The Apostle Paul stresses in his writings to the church in Ephesus,
May (God) grant you out of the riches of His glory, to be strengthened and spiritually energized with power through His Spirit in your inner self, [indwelling your innermost being and personality], so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through your faith. And may you, having been [deeply] rooted and [securely] grounded in love, be fully capable of comprehending with all the saints (God’s people) the width and length and height and depth of His love [fully experiencing that amazing, endless love]; Ephesians 3:16-18 AMP
We all know that life can easily become overwhelming. No one is exempt. No one gets a free ride. We all get more than our fair share of struggles and heartaches and loss. And the only way to not succumb to it all is to be [deeply] rooted and [securely] grounded in love…not the love of this world but God’s love. And with all of God’s people may we come to understand the width and length and height and depth of His love.
And in case you still have your doubts, read these words of Paul to the Church in Rome.
For I am convinced [and continue to be convinced—beyond any doubt] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present and threatening, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the [unlimited] love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39 AMP
Amen!
Jan 11th, 2023, Wed, 12:17 pm