toddjohnston.org

It has been quite some time since I’ve posted anything. The time I’ve spent away from blogging has been very good for me. In general, the past several months have been very good for me. It has been a sort of wandering in the wilderness.

Wandering isn’t easy. When the Israelites left Egypt, they were leaving their enslavement behind, so they thought. I think they thought if they could just get out from under the “yolk” of the Egyptians, they would finally be free to live as a Godly people. The problem was that when they left enslavement, they retained their slave mentality. While God made it easy for them to shrug off their oppressors, they were still enslaved to a cultural upbringing that pointed them everywhere else but to God. All of the signs and wonders performed by God and through Moses didn’t make a dent in their fallen understanding of spiritual reality. Only after all of the generation that worshiped the calf at Sinai had wandered in the desert for 40 years and died were the Israelites free to pursue the land promised to Abraham. Even Moses only got to see the promised land from afar because he struck the rock instead speaking to it as God commanded.

I’ve spent the past several months wrestling in the wilderness. I moved to Rome, GA about 7 months ago now. And it might as well be the wilderness. I’ve spent most of my time here in the confines of my house and home office, rarely speaking to a soul other than my lovely wife. Don’t get me wrong, I have gotten out a good bit, hanging with some life-long friends of mine, and with my business partner. But, mostly it has been been a solitary existence. It has been a wandering time with little direction and much struggling.

We are all fallen, no doubt, but even when we’re freed from the oppression of our sinfulness through Christ, we still live with a sinful slave mentality that points us everywhere but to Christ as our daily, moment-to-moment salvation. I have had plenty of struggles over the past several months, but a slave mentality has been my foe.

But as Paul put it, we are no longer slaves to sin, we are slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:17-18 ESV). Although as Christians, we’ll always have the foe of our flesh with us as long as we live, we can cling to the daily truth and hope that we “have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” (Rom. 6:22 ESV)

I also recently found a great devotional book that has been and continues to be a great help to me. It’s called Whiter Than Snow, by Paul David Tripp. I’m usually not a huge fan of devotionals, because they’re usually a bit too contrived and simplistic. But this book is amazing because it takes you through Psalm 51 (ESV) and David’s struggles for 52 days. Every day is a call to examine your life, see David’s story of sin, repentance, and grace as your own story, allowing you to let go of whatever righteousness you bring with you before God and instead cling to Christ’s righteousness. If you ever have trouble getting into the Word as I have, definitely check this book out. If you’re a super Christian and spend time in the word every day, check it out anyways. It’s meant to go through one devotional a week for a year (but you can probably just go through it how ever you want to like I have been doing).