Reclaimers

So I'm sitting on the floor of my bathroom eating cheese&crackers and stalking the world on facebook. Obviously, because what else would I be doing at 1:15am on a Friday morning. Oh wait, MAYBE SLEEPING BEFORE MY 8AM CLASS! Okay, that's all I'll allow myself to rant. Dorms suck sometimes, people are so poopin loud! Oh well, at least tomorrow(today) is Friday and I can nap for a longggg time after class. Or just go to bed early hahah.

I've been thinking a lot lately about Romans 7, where Paul talks about how he does what he doesn't want to do and doesn't do what he does want to do... super confusing! But it makes total sense when you think about it. Everyone can identify with knowing what's right and then doing the opposite. In fact, I would guess that for most people this sort of feeling happens on a daily basis. I know it does for me!

St. Augustine talked a lot about this in something of his I read recently. I'm not really sure what it's called (since I'm sitting in my bathroom and all), but it's in my Intro to Theology book. It's actually quite strange, because he's writing this long essay/book which clearly states that he believes in God and Jesus Christ, except he says that he's not a Christian yet. Interesting! Isn't that what most people mean when they say they're Christians? They mean that they believe in the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Augustine believed, but yet he was unwilling to call himself a Christian.

You see, Augustine had a big problem in his life, an area that he wasn't quite ready to turn over to God. For many years, he had been living with a concubine, a woman he wasn't married to. He even had a child by her! Although he loved this woman very much, he knew it wasn't right to keep living with this woman while he waited to be officially married off. He just couldn't, however, give up the sex. He prayed "Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet."

Augustine struggled with exactly what Paul was talking about in Romans 7. He wrote a lot about it, referring to these two, conflicting wills inside of him:

"The enemy held fast my will, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me tight with it. For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. By these links, as it were, forged together -- which is why I called it "a chain" -- a hard bondage held me in slavery. But that new will which had begun to spring up in me freely to worship thee and to enjoy thee, O my God, the only certain Joy, was not able as yet to overcome my former willfulness, made strong by long indulgence. Thus my two wills -- the old and the new, the carnal and the spiritual -- were in conflict within me; and by their discord they tore my soul apart."

Augustine absolutely FEELS the power that sin has in his life. He feels it and is living it so much that he is not even willing to call himself a Christian. Could you imagine if the only people who called themselves Christians were those who felt that they had truly surrendered all of their struggles to Christ? After all, Christian does mean "little Christ". I feel that we would have a lot fewer Christians in this world today.

Thank goodness for Jesus Christ, who died on the cross and defeated sin and death. Hallelujah! Without Christ, Augustine would never have been able to overcome this bondage. He would have been  trapped. Can you imagine living in the times of the Israelites? Where sin seemed to run the show? When looking at it this way, maybe the stories of whole cities gathering to rape travelers in the Old Testament don't seem as crazy. Just today I read the story of the levite and his concubine in Judges 19, how the concubine was brutally raped and left to die, and how the levite proceeded to cut up her body into 12 pieces and send them to the 12 tribes of Israel. Then how the rest of the tribes were so angry that they destroyed the city of Gibeah and all its inhabitants. Revenge to the max. Life before Jesus Christ.

But you might say, hey wait a minute. Sure, all this was going on back then, but have you seen our world today? Have you seen the hate, the war, the poverty, the sickness? Do you know that 27 million people are enslaved in this world today? That little girls - 8 years old 9 years old 10 years old - are raped 20 times a day for years and years and eventually die from disease and malnourishment? What about those girls? TELL ME how that's different from the concubine. Sin has not been defeated because I see it rampant on this earth.

Oh no no no. Wait a second! When I say Jesus died on the cross and defeated sin and death, I mean it. I mean he started it all, he started the sweet process of God joining Heaven to Earth! He flipped the tables in the temple because God no longer resides there! He resides in all of His followers - we ARE the temples, the living breathing walking moving loving temples, able to use the life giving Holy Spirit inside of us to create new temples all around the world, until that sweet day when the entire Earth is made new and Heaven and Earth are one, when it will ALL be a temple. Yes, there is injustice and hardship and hate and poverty and loneliness, children are neglected and starving and the homeless cry out from the streets, but through the Holy Sprit in us we are reclaimers! We are reclaiming this world in the name of the Lord, He is using US to bring His kingdom to earth. I don't know why, but He is! Let's not complain about injustice, but instead work to solve it. We truly ARE the hand's and feet of God! Jesus HAS defeated sin and death and ushered in a new era of hope and love, peace and joy, an era where we are FREE from the bondage of sin and are called to free others from their mortal chains! The evil one has no idea what's coming - he may think he still has a chance, trying to reclaim territory on this earth, but he sure doesn't!!!!!! We are free we are free we are free we are free and God will WIN! Let's use the power of God to CHOOSE to do what we know is right and what we know He is calling us to do, let us lead lives that are worthy of the name Christian! I pray the Lord would help us all to escape from what is holding us back in order to realize our true freedom in Christ and FREE OTHERS! Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!

Amen.