Whose Slave Are You

Well, don't look now, but the chances are good that the person next to you is a slave. In fact, I want to say this morning that everyone in this room is a slave. It could be pictured like the man on the screen. Every one of us in this room is a slave. You are a slave to one thing or another. Every one of us falls into some category of slavery. Now, unless you think I've gone a little crazy, open your Bible to Romans chapter 6, where we find Paul describing what it means to be a slave. The question really is this morning, not are you a slave, but the question really is, who's slave are you? To whom or to what are you in slavery? That's the real question. And we'll hope to answer that question this morning from Romans chapter 6. You see, in Romans chapter 6, Paul is dealing with how to get victory over sin, how to break the domination of sin, how to come out from under the slavery to sin. And we saw in the first part of the chapter, the first 13 verses, we saw that Paul is talking about the fact that this move out from under slavery to sin begins with a recognition of our union with Christ. God sees us as having died with Christ, buried with Him, and raised to live a new life. And that union with Christ gives us the power to live a new life. And then He says, we have to reckon that to be so. We have to count on that. We have to take that by faith, put it in the bank, and draw from that to live on. And then we have to resolve every day of our lives to live that way, to yield ourselves to the new slavery that we have in Christ. Now, He ends those, that first part of the chapter with verse 14 by saying this, if you look at verse 14 in Romans 6, He says, what the verse 14, for sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace. So He ends by saying sin is not going to be your master. You're no longer under the domination, the slavery to sin. And that happens not by keeping the law. It happens by grace. It's a gift of God in salvation. Now in the passage we're going to look at this morning, verses 15 through 23, we find that Paul further develops this concept of the slavery that we were under in our old life in Adam before we came to know Christ and how that's been shattered by the new life that we have in Jesus and how that dominion, that mastery of the slavery to sin has been broken and how we can now live a new life in Christ. He further develops that. And He begins with our attitude again, just like He did back in verse 1, He begins in verse 15 by addressing our attitude towards sin. Now that He has said, the power of sin is broken. We no longer have to live as a slave to sin. And that happens not by law, but by grace. He poses this question in verse 15. What then? Shall we sin? Because we are not under law, but under grace. And His answer is the same as it was in verse 1, by no means. May it never be. Perish the thought. We shouldn't even think that. Shall we sin because we're not under the law anymore, but we're under grace? No. And victory over sin, deliverance from the power of sin begins with our attitude. The believer in Christ cannot have the same attitude towards sin that we once had. So Paul makes a very strong call in these verses through the end of the chapter for righteous living, for a different kind of lifestyle. We cannot, in Christ, cannot have the same attitude towards sin we once had. And He makes a powerful appeal for righteous living. And developing that, He gives us three principles that help us to understand how to live a righteous lifestyle. The first principle that He gives us is the power of righteous living. In verses 16 through 18, Paul talks about the power of righteous living. Look what He says in verse 16, where He develops in states a universal principle. He lays down to start with a universal principle about this matter of the power for righteous living. Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey Him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey. Whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. Now in introducing this universal principle of obedience to a master, He uses the term slavery. And He introduces this word picture, this cultural phenomenon in the Roman Empire of slavery. Something that everyone in the church of Rome would be familiar with. It is estimated by historians that one third of the population of the city of Rome were slaves. Even suggestions that slaves would be clothed in different clothing so as to identify them as slaves was abandoned by this time in the first century in the Roman Empire because the Roman authorities felt like it would be dangerous for so many people to be recognized as slaves. It would show their strength and numbers so they abandoned that idea. Some would estimate that half of the people in the church at Rome were either slaves or freed slaves, had once been slaves. So Paul uses a word picture that they were very familiar with to describe this universal principle and that is that slavery involves obedience. That's the principle of slavery. There are lots of different kinds of slavery but the common thread that ties them all together is obedience. And Paul introduces that in verse 16 when he says, don't you know when you offer yourself to someone to obey him as slaves, you're slaves to the one whom you obey, that's the principle. Slavery involves obedience. All slavery does. You can be a slave to your work and that means that you obey everything your work tells you to do. No matter what it calls for, no matter what hours it calls for, no matter what sacrifices it may cause you to call for you to make for your family or whatever, give up whatever if you're slave, if you are enslaved to your work, you will do whatever your job tells you to do you obey the dictates of your work. You can be a slave to the opinion of others and what others think of you and if you're a slave to that then whatever people think of you or whatever you think they expect you'll obey. That will be your motivating driving force in life. You can be a slave to habits or sinful things in your life. You can be a slave to anger or slave to lust or slave to laziness and whatever those particular motivations tell you to do you obey them because the common thread in slavery is obedience. Now notice that Paul goes from that common principle that universal principle to describe there are two ultimately two kinds of slavery that this principle operates in. The end of verse 16 there's the slavery to sin which leads to death or the slavery to obedience, implication obedience to Christ, obedience to God which leads to righteousness. Two kinds of slavery ultimately and everyone in this room is a slave to one of these masters. Every one of us is. Either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ, slave to righteousness. Slavery to sin Paul says leads to death. Slavery to sin leads down a pathway that involves bondage, increasing slavery, increasing bondage to sin ultimately results in death. George Sweating tells the story of visiting Niagara Falls one time with his family and he said it was in the spring of the year and there were large blocks of ice that were floating down the river toward the falls and as they watched this he said in those blocks of ice where many of them were carcasses of dead fish and there were gals by the score he said that were landing on these blocks of ice and feeding on the carcasses of these dead fish. They would dig their claws in to gain a foothold and they would eat on these dead fish and he said he would watch them it was fascinating he said and the closer they would get to the falls when they got right to the edge of the falls they would lift their wings and fly away and avoid disaster. He said he was watching this happen and he watched as one particular ice block came toward the edge of the precipice of where it would fall over and there was a gall feeding on a fish and as he came to the edge he lifted his wings and tried to pull himself up but his claws had gotten frozen in that block of ice he had stayed a little too long and he said he even pulled the ice up a little bit but it was to no avail he was stuck and he watched as that gall went over the precipice to its death. That's what slavery to sin does. The longer you have your claws in the sin the more it gets a hold of you and the more it traps you and the more you're in bondage to your own sinful lusts and the more you get into that bondage to sin ultimately it will lead you down the pathway to death. That's exactly what sin does so if you're slayed to sin that's where you end up that's where you're headed over the falls but there's a second kind of slavery that Paul describes the slavery to obedience which leads to righteousness. Obedience to whom? To what? Obedience obviously to God that's in the context there that in the first 13 verses we've been made new in Christ and we've been identified with him we are united with him so this is obedience to Christ and this kind of obedience this kind of slavery leads to righteousness. This kind of slave leads to being free ultimately to being all that God designed for you to be. Elizabeth Elliott describes in one of her books being in Scotland and watching a Scottish collie tending sheep and seeing how that dog was doing what it was bred for what it was trained for and she describes it this way. He was doing what it was bred for and trained to do. He was beautiful to watch as he circled right and left barking, crouching, racing along, hurting a stray sheep here nipping at a stubborn one there. His eyes always glued to the sheep, his ears always listening for a tiny metal whistle from his master. She says I saw two creatures who were in the fullest sense in their glory, a man who had given his life to sheep who loved them and loved his dog and a dog whose trust in that man was absolute whose obedience was instant and unconditional and whose very meat and drink was to do the will of his master. She said that sheep dog was doing exactly what it was trained to do, what it was bred to do, what was in its very nature to do and it was in its glory it was ultimately free as it was obedient to his master. Obedience to Christ is the most freeing form of slavery you can ever experience. You are either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ. You are either in bondage leading to death or blessedly free to be all that God has designed you to be in Christ to live a righteous life. The principle, universal principle of slavery, obedience, but he develops this principle further in verses 17 and 18 when he describes that the power for living a righteous life for living under this new master, the power for this comes from recognizing we have changed masters. We have we have a change in masters and that's where the power for righteous living comes. Please don't miss what Paul is saying in verses 17 and 18. I think many, many Christians miss this. Verse 17, but thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, that's our past. We used to be slaves to sin before we came to Christ. We had that master sin. So that's the past. Then notice what he says next. You wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. I want to come back to that in a moment, but let me just say at this point that that describes the moment of salvation. You've got your past, slavery to sin. The moment of salvation when you obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted and then notice our present, our new master verse 18, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. Here's the liberating truth that gives us the power to live a righteous life and that is we have changed masters. In salvation we've transferred from one form of slavery to another form of slavery from one master to another master. Please don't miss that. There are lots of people who think that salvation is no more than just some kind of half-hearted commitment, some vague commitment, some half-hearted response that gets me out of hell. Salvation is much more than Bob Barker standing up on the stage saying, behind door number one, you got Jesus. Behind door number two, you got hell. Now choose your door. Although salvation does deliver us from condemnation and from eternity and hell, that's wonderful. Paul describes salvation in much deeper terms here as a change in masters. And he describes the moment of salvation as being much more than just saying, I want a fire escape from hell. I don't care how I live from here on out, I just want to make sure I'm not going to hell. No, no. Paul describes salvation as obeying the form of teaching. Most believe that speaking of the kind of teaching that Jesus introduced about the way of righteousness, the way of life, which is not just a moment decision, it begins there, but it inevitably puts us under a new master to live a new life as a slave to righteousness. We obey that form of teaching from the heart and notice, he says, we obey the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. If you have a King James version, this has been improperly translated in the King James version. Not saying King James version is bad, every version sometimes misses a little here and there, but the King James version has translated this, the form of teaching which was delivered to you. Paul was not saying the teaching was delivered to you. The verb is a passive voice verb, it's the teaching to which you were delivered. It's not like something was delivered to me. I've been delivered over to that teaching. That's exactly what Paul is saying. The only thing I've got it right when it translated it that way. It's the same verb and the same voice of the verb that's used when Jesus was handed over to the Roman soldiers when he was arrested. He allows that to happen. He is passive in that he does not resist that. He is handed over. What is being said here is that when you got saved, God delivered you over. God handed you over to a new master. That's part and parcel of your salvation. Salvation is not just an escape from hell. It's not some kind of half-hearted agreement to sign on the bottom line and I'm going to live life anyway I want to. There are lots of people that think I can just take my old life and I can still live that and I'll just kind of transfer it over put a little bit of Jesus in with it maybe go to church every now and then but I can still live my old life. That is not biblical salvation. Biblical salvation is that God has given us a form of teaching. It is the gospel which is the righteousness of God given to us at salvation but when it's given to us it begins working in us to develop more righteousness in our lifestyle and we have been handed over by God to that form of teaching which results in a new master, a new lifestyle, slavery to righteousness. That is biblical salvation. You know I'm not much into camping. I don't do camping but I know a lot of you enjoy camping. You're going to be camping. God bless you for enjoyment of camping. You want to suffer that way. It's fine with me. You go right ahead but we have changed the face of camping today you know. It used to be that camping meant you put up your own tent, you sleep in a sleeping bag on the ground, you cook over an open fire, you go down to the stream to get water, you find your own firewood, you wash at the next morning in that stream, that was roughing it. That's what we call camping. We changed the face of camping from what I observed in this day. You see them going up down the highways all the time. Don't you motor homes? Now you can camp without ever even going outside. You can camp without ever encountering a speck of dirt. You can take all the comforts of home with you and park it on a concrete slab. Yeah a few pine trees around but that's all there is to the camping experience. You can hook up to sewer and water and electricity and what you've done with your little satellite dish you know that gets you all your favorite channels on your camp or your motor home. What you've done basically is you've taken your comfortable life and just plopped it down in another location. You're not camping. You're living the same way you did at home. And there are a lot of people who think that's what salvation is. I just take my old life. I'm going to hang on to all my old sins and things I enjoy and I'm comfortable with. I'm just going to plop them down in a new location. I'll be in church every now and then and I'll put Jesus in my life but I'm still going to live my own life my own way my old life. That is not salvation. Any more than a motor home is camping. It's not salvation. Paul says the power for righteous living is understanding that you have a new master. You are a slave now to righteousness when you used to be a slave to sin. That's the power for righteous living, a change in masters. The Paul goes on to say this is not just automatic. You do have a choice every day that you live to live this out. So he begins now to develop in verse 19 the choice of righteousness. Notice if you will what he says about the choice of righteousness in verse 19. He says I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. In other words I'm using this human illustration of slavery to turn the light on to help you understand. All of us have trouble grasping spiritual truths sometimes and that's what he means by being weak in your natural selves. Sometimes you have to have a little bit of help to understand something. That's what Paul is saying here. I'm giving you this very human illustration of slavery to help you grasp the spiritual principle. But here it is the principle of the choice in righteousness. Verse 19, middle of the verse, just as you used to offer the parts of your body to in slavery, to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness. So now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. Now notice the description of the choice in those words. He's using this illustration of slavery to help us understand and the description of this choice is this. Every day you have a choice to make with your body, with your bodily members. You see the only way we can live life and counter life move through this world is in our bodies. So you have a choice to make every day as to whom you will offer the parts of your body to serve. Now by virtue of salvation you're no longer under the domination of sin. You have a new master, Christ. You're now in slavery to righteousness. But you have to make a choice every day that you live to give your bodily members over to Jesus Christ. So you say, Lord, I want my mind to dwell on thoughts that are pleasing to you today. I don't want my ears to hear anything that will corrupt, that will cause me to think of simple things. I want my ears to be given to godly things today. I want my tongue to be used to build up and edifying courage and bless people, not to tear down and destroy people. I want my hands and my feet, my feet to take me in godly paths. I want my hands to do work for God to be used for you to be an instrument of your grace and mercy to other people. It's a very simple illustration that Paul's using here to help us grasp what it means to make that choice every day to yield ourselves to our new master. Yeah, we do have a new master, but we have to yield ourselves to him over and over again every day that we live. It's a call to commitment, but it is our choice as to whether or not we'll do it. That's the description of the choice. But Paul also hints and even states at the end of the verse something about the difficulty of this choice. If what I have said thus far clearly represents what Paul's teaching and I hope it does, if Paul is really saying that in salvation we have a new master where no longer slaves descend but where slaves now to righteousness and Christ is our new master. And if then I have a choice every day to place myself under his mastery and choose to give my body to him yielded to him every day then why is that so hard? Why is it so hard every day to live out the reality of the Christian life? There are two reasons. One of them Paul hints at the other when he clearly states one is and this is in the context we still have a sin nature. We still have a sin nature even though the power and dominion of sin over us has been broken so that we no longer have to serve sin. Nowhere does the Bible teach that your sinful nature, your tendencies towards sin is ever taken away. Irradiated, removed from you so that you'll never be tempted again. Nowhere does the Bible teach that. In fact first John chapter one says if we say we have no sin or only deceiving ourselves and he's talking there about a sin nature, a tendency of bent towards sin. You've still got that and so you've still got something in you that cries out to you. Come on come this way I don't want you to serve that new master I want you to go back to the old master. You still got that bent that tendency that pull in you that sin nature and you can choose if you will to obey the temptations to follow sin. That's one reason it's so difficult you've still got a sin nature. Second reason why this kind of obedience to Christ and yielded this to Christ is so difficult is because we have learned patterns of sin. Over our lifetime up to the moment we get saved we've learned patterns of sin. I want you to see how Paul says this in verse 19. He says just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery, now notice the next words to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness. There is a growth here there is a progression, a development if you will of sin, sinful habits, sinful patterns that we've learned and build up over the years and to become our default response, our natural response to life. So over a period of time before you come to Christ throughout your life you've been building up this ever-increasing wickedness, these habits, these patterns of sin in your life. It's kind of like two guys in Bridgeport, Connecticut, who were fine $900,000 for running an illegal dump, two brothers, Gino and Russell Kappa ZLO. These guys were building contractors that were in the process or in the business of demolition and rebuilding and when they would demolish the structure or fix up a structure they would take the old stuff and just put it out back of their business. That eventually grew into two acres, 35 feet high of junk. And finally the city said you're running an illegal dump here and they find them $900,000 and the guy said it never was intended to get this big. We just started putting stuff out back and we kept adding to it and the year before they were fine they had spent $330,000 to try to clean it up and hardly made a dent in it. And they said what are we going to do now? There's no place to dump all this stuff in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It never intended to get that big they said but it just kept growing and growing and that's what happens with slavery to sin. It just keeps growing and growing and digging its claws deeper into you and getting more control of more parts of your life until finally you look and you've got a two acre 35 foot high pile of junk in your life. You never intended to get there. You never planned on being there but you're there. But notice Paul also says it is possible to learn new patterns of righteousness. You see the very end of the verse? Where are you? You're on the page. Okay, there we are. Page 17. Verse 19, that's where we are. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body and slavery to impure you and ever increasing wickedness. Now notice this. So now offer them in slavery to righteousness. Now notice this development, this progression leading to holiness. You see it's possible to unlearn old patterns of sin and replace that with new patterns of righteousness which will begin to build a holy lifestyle in your life. It is possible to do that and that's the way the Bible describes spiritual transformation. You know a lot of people have misunderstood 2 Corinthians 517 where it says if any man be in Christ he's a new creation and new creature old things are passed away behold all things are become new. That's talking about the transition that you have in Christ and a lot of people think okay I get saved. I'll never be tempted to sin again. All my desire to sin is gone. All my problems are gone. All my sin is behind me. Now I just have a life full of joy and peace and righteousness to look forward to. And it's those very people are disillusioned quite often in Christian life because the way the Bible describes spiritual transformation it's a process of replacement. You got a two acre 35 foot high pile of junk in your life and that's got to be replaced with patterns of thinking and living that are pure and righteous building up if you will a new pile of righteousness holiness in your life. Bible always talks about spiritual transformation that way putting off the old putting on the new being transformed from the inside out by the renewing of our mind learning new thought patterns learning how to think and act and and read life differently from a biblical perspective and replace that old way of thinking that's how the Bible describes spiritual transformation it is possible to develop new patterns that will lead to a holy lifestyle that doesn't happen overnight and that's why it is so hard that's why we fight this battle every day in learning to obey our new master Jesus. Okay the choice of righteousness but Paul's not done in developing these these principles of a righteous lifestyle now that we're in Christ he has one other principle he wants to tell us about sin verses 20 through 23 the motivation for righteous living okay if I have a new master if that's the power for living a righteous life and I need to make a choice every day to submit myself to yield myself to that new master what's going to motivate me every day to get out of bed and want to do that what's going to motivate me every day to say notice sin and the simple nature and the pull of that and yes to my new master is there sufficient motivation for life change there is and Paul says in verses 20 23 this is this is what will motivate you every day of your life to make those righteous choices that will begin to lead toward a holy lifestyle the motivation is this the comparison of the old and new now what Paul is going to do is beautiful here what he's going to do is he's going to sit down just want you to back off and sit down and I want you to evaluate I want you to think through what your old life was like or if you got saved at a very young age you seen enough of what life can do to people that you know where yours might have gone what what was the old life like and compare that to the new life now notice the comparison how he describes it verse 20 when you were slaves to sin you were free from the control of righteousness now that sounds like at first that that's a benefit to being in sin and by the way that's what a lot of unbelievers think a lot of people who've never met Christ think oh man those Christians be under all those rules and all that you know right man I can live any way I want to man I can sin do whatever I don't care I don't have any restraints I can just do with Paul says oh wait a second verse 21 wait a second what benefit did you reap at that time from the things you're now shamed up those things result in death if you need any motivation not to choose a sinful pattern of life anymore just look back to where it was leading you look back at what it was doing look back at the fruit of your life look back at what it was doing to you it was enslaving you it was causing you shame and it was ultimately going to lead toward death that's the benefit you get out of the old life now compare that to the new life verse 22 but now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves to God the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life okay the old life just leads to slavery shame and eternal death the new life leads to holiness righteousness what you were intended to be which means you'll live a life of fullness of purpose you'll get up every day and you'll be satisfied with the life you now have in Christ knowing that it far surpasses the old life and the end result eternal life wow what am I saying on the cake to be with the Lord forever in heaven okay just compare the two what benefit did you have in that old life nothing what benefit do you have in Christ everything you can't be a grandparent these days or a parent of a young child without being introduced to Thomas the train my my two grandkids in Chicago they're a little younger than the grandkids here and so ages four and two they love Thomas the train they have these little videos of Thomas the train and they watch them over over over again they've memorized every word every song every two to the whistle you know they've memorized it all and when we're there with them we watched them over over over ad nauseam but I learned something from one of those Thomas the train videos it showed Thomas being jealous of one of the other trains and so he decided he was going to do some things to kind of make himself known and he's running off away from the track and hitting things that he wasn't supposed to hit on the track and all kinds of mayhem breaks loose because Thomas is not doing what he's supposed to be doing and finally he realizes that he's supposed to be on the track that's what he was designed to do and what might look like slavery and confinement to the track really is when he's most free to be what he was intended to be being a slave to Christ a slave to righteousness is exactly what God made us for it is exactly what you were designed the way you were designed to live and so there really is ultimate freedom in staying on those tracks that God intended you to stay on go bounce it off across the field on your own doing your own thing going your own way you just create all kinds of mayhem that's the life that leads to shame the life that leads to slavery the life that eventually leads to death but God designed us to live in obedience to our new master Christ and he finishes with this great contrast between the two the contrast between the old and the new verse 23 for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord wages something you earn something you deserve you work for it you deserve it what do you deserve from sin death eternal separation from God but God offers you a new life to replace that old life and this new life is a gift it's not something you earn or deserve it's a gift it came to you it's made possible because Jesus died for your sins and paid the penalty for your sins and now God offers you a free gift and that gift is not death it's eternal life and it doesn't come because of sin it comes because of Christ what a contrast there is what a contrast in the old and the new it is possible to live an entirely new life to have a new beginning today in Christ James Cameron's blockbuster hit Avatar created an unusual response on the part of people the the best selling film of all time now and I haven't seen the film I'm not recommending it for anyone at this point I'm just observing something that I've I've read as a result of this film leadership journal talks about an interesting response to the film Avatar within a week after its release websites started popping up about this film and in this beautiful computer generated world of Pandora people were walking out of the movie feeling depressed that they could not be a part of that perfect world and and websites were started describing this and people responding thousands of people talking about this on the internet want to read to you some of the comments made by people who had watched the movie when I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday the world seemed gray it was like my whole life everything I've done and worked for lost its meaning another person wrote on this website the day after I saw Avatar I was completely depressed seeing it again and again makes me feel good I legitimately love all of Pandora and waking up afterwards is extremely hard to do that interesting thousands of people wrote in comments about this expressing longing to visit Pandora expressing a sense of depression because they could not be in that perfect world and one of the forum moderators on one of these websites wrote this even if you wanted to strive to be more like the Navi the 10 foot tall blue people in Avatar even if you wanted to be more like them you would be eating alive in this world it really would take a complete new fresh start somewhere uncorrupted someone wrote in response to that I know but there's no chance of moving somewhere else to a fresh place shall we just live with the fact that we can't begin again do we have to really deal with that isn't that fascinating overwhelming response to a generated a computer generated perfect world is a longing to be there and I know you can look and say well those people are just crazy don't they live a real life but you know what I thought when I when I read that that Solomon was right in Ecclesiastes when he said God has put eternity in our hearts God has put in the heart of humans a longing for perfect place a longing for a fresh beginning a new start where life can be different and it doesn't have to be like it used to be God's put that in our hearts and what James Cameron did in that film is just drawing out that natural response from people but I'm here to tell you it is possible to start again it is possible to have a new life a new beginning it is possible to ultimately live in a perfect place but it's not Pandora it's heaven and that new life comes from trusting Jesus as your Savior and moving away from the mastery of sin the slavery to sin to a whole new life a new master slavery to righteousness and the Christ and the end result of that Paul says is eternal life in heaven that's the perfect place that's the new beginning that's the new life that is offered to every one of us would you pray with me please Father thank you for Jesus and the life he gives us thank you for a new beginning a new start and a perfect world we will live in someday because of the grace of God in salvation we can look forward to heaven we do have a new master new beginning a new start thank you for that Lord I pray if there's anyone here today who's never trusted Jesus as Savior that today they would recognize their need for that new start that new beginning to break the mastery of sin and the old life and to be under a new master Jesus which is true for you I pray that they would make that commitment to Christ today and Lord I pray for those of us who've made that commitment but they'll still struggle with that decision daily to yield to that new master I pray Father that we would wake up tomorrow and live the rest of today with that motivation to live a new life and to yield to you we ask all this in Jesus name amen