Red-Faced Monkey

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.--Romans 12:2

When it comes to the topic of battling sin, one rule must never be broken,and that is that we are never to battle sin! It is a misplaced focus. No, we are never to fight sin if we desire to overcome it. Let me illustrate. There is a story of a fellow in India who was traveling from village to village selling a magic potion. The man would ask for a clean bucket, into which he would pour clear water and some of the magic potion. As he stirred the mixture, through sleight of hand he would drop in three or four nuggets of gold. When the water was drained off, there was the gold. In one community a moneychanger watching the demonstration asked if he could purchase the formula for 50,000 rupees. The fellow was more than happy to sell, and after receiving the payment, he turned to the moneychanger and said, "There is one thing you must never do while making the gold, or else the potion will not work. While stirring the water and adding the formula, you must never, never think of the red-faced monkey!" As you can well imagine, the moneychanger was never able to make gold! Wherever he went, from the Himalayas to the south of India, no matter how hard he worked to block it, the red-faced monkey would pop into his mind. So it is with sin; as long as it is made the focus, it will never be overcome. I have often commented that God has delivered me from many things, but not once was I freed from anything on which I was centered. 

           

Many have focused on their sin ten, twenty, thirty, and even forty years; their sin has become so much a part of their life that they are not even sure what they would do were they to be miraculously delivered. If 25% of thought life were concentrated on something consuming and immediate deliverance occurred, exactly what would replace that portion of mental energy? What would fill the vacuum? The solution to warring against sin is to set our minds on something other than the sin. This cannot not be done by consciously avoiding the sin, but rather by making the Lord the focus of daily thought life. If our focus is not kept on the things above but is allowed to traffic in the things of the world, we as believers will be led to Christian fatalism, the belief that this life in these bodies will constantly be given over to defeat and misery. Thus we will accept continual suffering as the norm and wait for the day we will be caught up into heaven. The truth is that all suffering has a purpose and, in the end, produces abundant living today.

It didn’t take me long to think of something from my life (albeit it was from way in the past) that applied explicitly to the principal Michael teaches us today…  Years ago I played golf.  IF I stepped up to a tee and there was “out of bounds” to the right, and IF I let that become my “focus”…guess where I hit the ball?  In fact, I used to say that I couldn't figure out why the golf courses that were built with homes snug up against the fairways didn't make it “out of bounds” if someone hit their ball into the backyard of someone’s home…just have them get the ball and place it two club-lengths from the boundary and play on.  IF it wasn't a hazard or penalty for hitting the ball there, a huge percentage of shots that went into those backyards (or, into someone’s windows!) would never happen.  WHY?  Because the golfer wouldn't “focus” on the penalty and the place…they would never enter their mind.  They could focus on hitting the ball down the fairway.

Duh!  Am I going to set my mind (focus) on warring against sin in my life (in hopes of getting rid of it), OR “if ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”  Amen.