Teague Bible Church

I like these funny home video shows they have now. I recently saw one of a robbery gone bad. A store was almost robbed. I say “almost,” because the young thief was so nervous, that he did not get away. The security video shows the young man unable to even enter through an open door!
He was so focused on how to rob the place, and so focused on getting away once the “job” was done, that he forgot how to do the simplest thing; get the door open!
Imagine the scene; pulling with all his might on the exterior door during a time the store was open. He falls to the ground in defeat as a lady enters the door easily, because she knew it opened “in” and not “out” as he supposed! Of course the delay resulted in his being expedited to the nearest police station.
That is a long way around to talk about Romans 6. Bear with me. “Or ‘do you not know’ that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, have been baptized into His death?” (Romans 6:3).
What you don’t know can hurt you, can hurt your life, and will certainly spread out to hurt many others. You need to know which way the door swings!
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, ‘ knowing this,’ that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that we would no longer be slaves to sin;,,,” (Romans 6:4-6a).
Something drastic has happened to you if you really know Christ. You have a new nature that is able to please God. If you just have the old nature you cannot please God even if you try. Just like that young man was never going to get that door open because of a lack of information, which, under a less stressful situation, he would have figured out. Under the emotion of the moment he assumed that the door was locked.
Believers forget they have a new nature at times and go back to their old default position of the attitudes of the old nature. They have power, via the new nature to not do so, but they get stressed, and emotional, and quite frankly, worldly, then the silly scenes take place.
A royal child of the King of Kings will find herself forgetting who she is! A horrid thing to not know who you are in this confusing world. A pathetic thing to watch a royal down in the mud of the world. Trying to open a door that God has shut. Trying to have the world and the closeness to their Lord at the same time.
” Even so ‘consider’ ( think on it often, avail yourself to the power to do so, know how it works) yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11.)
It would be a cruel thing for God to demand of us something we could not do. We are cruel to ourselves if we refuse to learn how this all works. Learn which way the door swings!
The new nature makes it possible for us to progressively learn how to please God and thus live in the deepest fulfillment possible, right here, right now! Pull on that old door all you want; it will not open into a happy life!
Got it all planned out on how to make yourself happy? How is that going for you? If you really know Christ, when you try to do the old life and enjoy it, you find frustration, and you graciously get caught, you ask forgiveness, find a very fast restoration,and graciously get another chance to enter through the door into the life He designed for you. Did you not know these things? JWP