NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

June 3

Scripture focus: So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to "marry" a resurrection life and bear "offspring" of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we're no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we're free to live a new life in the freedom of God. Romans 7:4-6 The Message

Continued from yesterday’s devotional...

Suppose you indeed made a really bad deal and bought a house in a slum rather than a palatial mansion by the sea next to celebrities. First, you wouldn’t want to believe you could make such a silly decision. Slowly, the evidence begins to mount. Jennifer Aniston and Denzel Washington are never seen entering the neighborhood, but the cops regularly haul people off in patty wagons from the crack house next door. Women of “ill repute” stand around on the corners, trying to sell their wares, and your friends keep trying to convince you that these are not celebrities but working girls. There are drive-by shootings, and needles left in the alley beside your garage. But you keep telling yourself that this is not an at-risk neighborhood, but is a celebrity haven by the sea. This is called repression. Somewhere down deep in your gut, you know you’re living in a dangerous neighborhood, but you expend tons of energy to repress the facts. This requires you to become increasingly uncomfortable. You either have to dull your mind or distract yourself so that you can’t acquire any conscious realizations. This is exhausting.

Are you deliberately keeping yourself super busy?

Do you find yourself uncomfortable with meditation, prayer, quiet times of reflection?

Do you feel alienated from yourself?

Is it possible that you are moving from the land of denial to la la land – otherwise known as repression?

If so, it’s possible that you are not going around doing whatever the heck you want, but instead, sin is calling all the shots in your life, hemming you in.

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