“The old man is dead, long live the new creature.”
Nancy Henigbaum (Honeytree)
It’s easy to confuse fleeting thoughts and the emotional pull of temptation as sin. God rejoices when we turn and walk the other way from temptation, and He hopes we join Him in that celebration. After all, we just experienced a major victory. Does that mean we should go looking for things to tempt us? Of course not.
But by not panicking when we face temptation, we are proving to God, ourselves, and the enemy that we no longer fear the sins we confessed to the Lord long ago. When an old temptation comes your way, rest assured, knowing that God broke the power of that sin long ago. A confessed sin from a repentant heart is a forgiven sin and a forgotten sin in God’s eyes. Don’t allow the enemy to lie to you, stand firm on God’s word.
When we dig up old sins by obsessive belly gazing, we are in danger of falling into the grave and bringing back to life what was dead and buried. There are no zombies in God’s kingdom. Abandon the graveyard of your past failures, unhealthy thought patterns, and sins. Make sure your testimony does not glorify your failures and sinful past. Your testimony should always point to His redemption and His grace that empowered you to overcome, learn, and move on.
In her book ‘Tramp for the Lord’, Corrie Ten Boom recounts a time she came across a young woman who struggled with an unhealthy fear of falling back into sin. Corrie wrote:
One day a young Flemish girl, who had repented and received deliverance from lust and impurity, came to me. “Even though I have been delivered, “she said, “at night, I still keep dreaming of my old way of life. I am afraid I will slip back into Satan’s grasp.”
“Up in that church tower,” I said, nodding toward the belfry, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong, and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of deliverance. When the demons are cast out in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or when sin is confessed and renounced, then Satan’s hand is removed from the rope. But if we worry about our past bondage, Satan will use this opportunity to keep the echoes ringing in our minds.”
A sweet light spread across the girl’s face. “You mean even though I sometimes have temptations, that I am still free and Satan is no longer pulling the rope which controls my life?”
“The purity of your life is evidence of your deliverance, “I said. “You should not worry about the dings and the dongs; they are nothing but echoes.”
Demons seldom leave without leaving behind their vibrations – dings and dongs. It is as if they give the clapper one big swing on the way out, scaring us into thinking they are still there. They know that, even though they have to flee at the Name of Jesus, if we grow fearful over the remaining echoes, other demons can come in and take their place.
The bible promises that after we confess and renounce our sins, God cleanses us from them by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 8:12). However, we can do something God cannot do. We can remember our old sins. These are the dings and the dongs of our past life. When we hear them, we need to remember that through Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary, satan can no longer pull the rope in our life. We may be tempted, we may even fall back occasionally, but we have been delivered from the bondage of sin. And even though the vibrations may still sound in our lives, they will grow less and less and eventually stop completely.
Once Satan has been cast out of the house of your life, he cannot return as long as you walk in obedience. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. However, that does not prevent him (or his demons) from standing outside the house and shouting through the windows, saying, “We’re still here!”
But, hallelujah, we know Satan for who he is – the prince of liars. He is not still here – he has been cast out. So whenever you hear one of those old echoes in your life – one of those dings or dongs – you need to stop right then and say, “Thank you, Jesus. You have bought me with your blood, and sin has no right to sound off like in my life.”
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1 Corinthians 5:14-20 (MSG) – “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!”
The next time the enemy tries to tempt you to dig up what was long buried, remind him. You live in a zombie-free zone. You are a new creation.
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Until Next Week,
©2021 Katherine Walden