Roman's 13

Roman's 13:14

Right at the end of this chapter in Paul's letter to the Roman's, he finishes it off with this command, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (ESV)

What Paul says here is the key to living through life. When troubles come, this is what we need to do to get through them. When anything gets hard or we don't feel capable of completing something, this will help us. Anything that's stresses us out will be tossed away if we live by the strategy this verse gives us! Paul says "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ," that has some deep meaning to it. Think about the way we wear clothing. We wake up, shower, then immediately we put on a fresh pair of clothes, and we don't take them off until the end of the day before we sleep, and then we repeat it. Imagine if that's how we lived with Jesus. The first thing we did was wake up in the morning, pray, read and equip ourselves with the Word and with Christ, and then throughout our day we always have Him with us and we are always prepared! That is obviously harder than it sounds, but it very much is accomplishable! Then Paul states, "and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." When we have Christ on and we are equipped with Him, we will have no desire to please our flesh or our sinful desires. When we have Christ with us, we also need to block out the need or want to live by the flesh. We can't serve two things, either one or the other. If we are living with Jesus on us all day, then we can't live with the desires of the flesh among us as well. Make no room for our earthly desires to peer into our lives, because sometimes that's all they need to take hold of us.

So the wrap up? We need to prepare ourselves daily by starting out the morning with Christ. I know myself, and if I don't read in the morning or give myself the motivation to get up, I'm not going to the rest of the day, and then I feel guilty for not writing a blog. That's what this is mainly for. But, I do my best everyday to make sure that sometime early in the day before anything happens, I make sure that I fit in my reading time, everything else can wait. And I've noticed that if I have a busy day and I stop and read, nothing happens. I don't miss plans, I'm not flooded with texts or calls, I'm not stressed out, it's like my daily life goes on pause while my Jesus time continues. It's a great feeling. It also is a necessary preparation we all need to do. If we don't equip ourselves with Christ daily, chances are the devil can take hold because we're not guarded. Protecting ourselves with Christ is a daily routine that will allow us to throw away the sinful desires of the flesh we ever had, and live in peace with Christ on a daily basis.