by MW Cook

Okay, so there’s two people that live in my house. One’s named Ruth and one’s named Matt. Check it out.

When Ruth is feeling well, she’s brown.

When she’s sick, she’s brown.

When she’s cold, she’s brown.

When she’s hot, she’s brown.

More or less, she’s always brown.

Matt’s a different story.

When Matt’s feeling well, he’s white.

When he’s sick, he’s greenish.

When he’s cold, he’s blue.

When he’s hot, he’s red.

More or less, he changes a lot.

So why, oh why do people say my wife is coloured?

Just an observation, that’s all.

So, the dilemma of many Christian people is the problem of the will and emotion. When it’s the middle of the afternoon or almost time for bed, I often feel good and ready to tackle the Word of God and soak up some good things. However, first thing in the morning, I’ve somehow managed to change my mind completely. Why is it that I find the Word of God so appealing at some times, yet I act indifferent to it at others?? I think that there are two answers to this. The first should be obvious – I’m sinful and anything that is holy is repulsive to my flesh. That’s always going to be a struggle (get the flesh, trap the flesh, kill the flesh. Bourne Identity ref.)

But I think that there’s another reason that I seem to screw up most mornings. A lack of steadfastness. Obviously I’m not going to desire the Word in the morning if I haven’t taken it into consideration the previous day. It would be illogical to even think that I could jump into the Word at any time without having some effort in preparing myself.

So, what to do? In addition to trying to get defrosted in the Book every morning, I think it would be wise to sit at the feet of Jesus ever night before bed. How great it would be to fall asleep with high thoughts of Christ in my head and to wake up with them again the next morning. The Christian walk shouldn’t be a sporadic, should it? No. In fact, not ‘no’, but ‘absolutely not!’ Discipline – it’s the price of freedom, right? On we go!

What did the writer to the Hebrews say? “You have not yet resisted to the point of blood in your struggle against sin.” Brothers, it’s time to let the blood flow.

Cook out.

PS – I feel like I’ve gotta confess something. For the first (and last) time ever, I succumbed to the pressure and used the WYSIWYG editor for Blogger. Forgive me! (You try getting all those colours together right before bed!)