The Natural and the Supernatural

Being Christ like does not come naturally to me.  I am bent.  I have a predisposition to sin.  Not only that, but I have spent years doing what comes naturally.  I have programmed by body and my soul to respond to certain situations or stimuli in strictly natural ways.  Like one of Pavlov's dogs I hear the "bell" of stress and turn to escape.  I hear the bell of difficulty and turn to procrastination.  I have a natural tendency to turn away from God, and to seek my own way, and I have further strengthened these natural tendencies by developing sinful habits of heart, mind, and body.

Everyone of us has turned away from God.  We turn away from the Fountain of Living Water and dig cisterns for ourselves, broken cisterns that can't even hold water.  I have returned to my cisterns so often that there are now deep ruts leading to them.  It is hard to pull in another direction when my nature and my habitual way of living lead me down the well worn path.  My culture in another accomplice to my crimes.  Our cultures normalize and enshrine our cisterns.  We are surrounded by others not only doing the same things but also giving approval to our choices.  They actively recruit people to drink from the cisterns, and profit off of the enslavement to the natural.

God offers us freedom.  He offers us His very Spirit to live inside of us and lead us to new ways of living.  If we say that we don't need Him we lie.  If we say we don't sin, we lie.  But, if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  From that place of humble surrender and gracious forgiveness He leads us, as often as we need it, back to the Fountain of Living Water. 

As we try to forget what is behind and press on for the prize, He is at work within us to will and to work His good pleasure for us.  The ruts are still there, but He calls us to abandon them, He empowers us to choose the supernatural life over the natural. We are not alone.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  It may always be more natural for me to sin than to live like Jesus, but it is getting a little easier than it used to be.  The road is long, the temptations are great, but greater is He who is in us than He who is in the World.