Since my retirement I have been blessed with time to read. Reading did not come naturally to me so this struggle has given me a greater appreciation for it. The thing about reading is that I can sit at the feet of anyone I choose, living or dead, and listen and learn. Lately, I have been learning at the feet of John Ortberg, Dallas Willard, Brother Lawrence and James Bryan Smith. What a host of greatness! I am so privileged to be able to access this knowledge. 

One of the things all these people have in common is their grasp of sanctification. Sanctification is just a churchy word for becoming like Christ on this side of heaven. Why would I want to become like Christ now? Wouldn’t that cramp my fun? Actually, according to these authors, it magnifies my joy, peace and contentment by a thousand fold. Jesus came to Earth, lived, died and rose again not just to give us a free ticket to heaven, he came that we might have abundant life here and now. 

John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

There is so much that I have to learn. But what I have gleaned from these authors as a whole is that to break my chains of anger, depression, entitlement, worry or any other sin, I cannot just work harder. In this case, hard work will never pay off. Counterintuitively, only giving up pays off. I have to be willing to admit my hopelessness in my own ability to overcome my issues. Then the tricky part is to replace those chains with something God-given. And for this I must look for that replacement like I was looking for my missing car keys, remote control or phone. And I must look in the right places. And I must keep on looking. Once I have honed in on my replacement, I must continue to seek that replacement. You see, while I seek the replacement, God is removing those old chains and replacing them link by link. 

Ok. That is all rather abstract. Let’s look at an example. Let’s say I am hung up on not getting what I think I deserve in life. I am tired of working so hard and not being appreciated or rewarded. And no matter how hard I work, I keep getting overlooked or ignored. So step one: I must give up, admitting to God that this is out of my power and I must quit striving to be recognized. Now here is the tricky part. I must quit thinking about and talking about the elephant in the room. By constantly noticing all the ways I am overlooked I become my own worst enemy. I must stop this thought pattern and the only way to do that is to replace it with the things of God. I must look for Him like I look for a lost puppy, praying for His answers, looking in the Bible, reading commentaries, books, and listening to podcasts or sermons from trusted God-given sources. Then I must pray again. In my search for Him I will begin to see all the amazing gracious gifts He gives me. I will begin to see how he blessed me. And the more I look at his blessings, the more those chains of entitlement become the sweet contentment of gratitude. And as far as I can tell, there is no end to this process. The more I seek the ways God has blessed me, the more he shows me. Meanwhile, the chains of entitlement are melting away leaving me full of gratitude, contentment and joy. 

So the bottom line is that only Christ can “break bad”. I must seek Him.