Slaves to Sin or to Righteousness?

[from the archives]

In continuing my story from my previous blogs, it was only a few days later when the Lord spoke through my conscience again about the way I was habitually relating with my husband.

I had an event that day that took me away from home before dinner and before my husband got home from work. I prepared dinner before I left, and instructed one of my older children in how to finish it up because I wouldn’t be there for dinner. It was the kind of dinner that can sit on the stove until folks were ready to eat it. I think it was chili.

When I came home from my event, my husband followed me into our room complaining that he didn’t know what the dinner plans were. He was indicating that the children were ill informed and he had to figure out how to serve up the chili and direct the children toward final dinner preparations like setting the table and getting out the cheese. As he accounted to me what happened, I realized that he had been angry with the kids over dinner and harshly treated them as if they were stupid. He was sharing with me how disgusted he was about dinner time. (My kids were quite capable to do all the tasks necessary to put dinner on the table and probably did so automatically as soon as they realized he was home and ready for dinner. His anger stemmed from his greatly bothered pride because the children knew more about dinner than he did.)

My thoughts immediately turned toward what I should have done to protect the kids from his treatment of them. I thought I should have directed them more specifically that they needed to be in charge of getting dinner on the table and had them bring themselves to make it all happen when Tim came home.  I thought of all the individual instructions I could have given them and how I could have really made sure they understood and rehearsed it all with them and how I should have known he would be angry about that and I should have done this….and should have done that….. and should have…..etc….

Again the Lord interrupted me through my conscience, “This is wrong thinking.” Oh yeah, I’d heard that before. This time the Holy Spirit through my conscience instructed me further. “You must not DO ANYTHING to prevent or fix his anger.”  I began to think more about what the Lord was speaking to me. I knew that if I didn’t do anything to prevent or fix his anger, then he would be angry. But then I realized that he was angry anyway, no matter what I did to try to stop it. My great expense of effort and thought life was useless and wasteful.

The Lord was preparing me for His ways in my life. I had to come to the place of understanding that my desire for my husband’s approval motivated me to attempt to do many things. I needed to make many changes in my life. I wasn’t disciplined enough to clean up after myself, and I’d taught the kids the same. I was constantly plagued by an unrealistic idea of time. I fooled myself that I could accomplish this or that in just a few minutes when it really took a long time. Consequently I was always unaware of what time it was which made me random and unpredictable. These character issues in me were a source of frustration for my husband and my children. I often tried to change these things about myself because I believed that they made my husband mad. My motivation for changing was so that I could have his approval for myself, and avoid the distress of his anger.

The Lord was beginning to show me that as long as I was motivated by my desire for my husbands good opinion of me, I could not be motivated by the Holy Spirit. I could not serve two masters. I was addicted to my husband’s good opinion of me and a slave to it. This addiction and slavery existed within me. It wasn’t coming from Tim. The source of my slavery was my own selfish desires to use him and from what I was trying to get from Him.

Rom 6:16-22 “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?…… so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.”

The Lord was leading me to the place where I could become a slave of righteousness—of right relating in love. Love is the opposite of selfishness. I was never successful at changing my undisciplined character because I was not being motivated by the Holy Spirit to love, but being motivated by own selfish desires which held no power for me to overcome. Rom 6:20 “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.”

If you are allowing someone to control you, what are you trying to get from them? How are you using them? No one can control you unless you are trying to get something from them. You may be hiding the answer to this question from yourself. You may be wrapping it in some lovely sounding excuse. I was. I told myself I was being a submitted wife. I didn’t think of it as using him, I thought of it as helping him to not be angry, and helping my children by showing them how to attempt to avoid his anger. I wasn’t truthful with myself about it. I didn’t see it like the Lord did.

Some of you have been asking, “What do we do instead?  How do I get my children or my spouse to stop being controlling?” The Lord has answers for you, and direction for you. He has a plan for you to cooperate with Him in bringing His ways of love into your family, but you can’t hear Him or even begin to cooperate with Him as long as you are a slave to your own addiction to what you are trying to get from them. He wants to set you free from your slavery and set you at liberty to love from a pure heart. You must stop doing what you do and stop thinking the way you think in response to another’s controlling behaviors.

Rom 6:17 “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance (the ways of love directed by the Holy Spirit through your conscience). 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”  ~ Parentheses are my addition.

The Lord was leading me toward freedom from my slavery to my flesh. He was rescuing me from my own selfish ways. Thank You Lord!!

Rom 6:22 “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.”

My story continues here.

[originally posted November 2010]