Turning Back

So, finally you got on track.  You emptied your house of junk food, started exercising regularly and began to eat according to a plan instead of always planning to eat.  You turned your back on a life of compulsive eating and set your face toward a life more controlled and thoughtful of what you ate and how much.  You found your stride, setting aside regular periods of exercise and adequate time for sleep.  Your out of control life is back under control and you are feeling better than you have for years.

And then, you're invited to a birthday party and you reason, "I can cut loose just for this one time."  And perhaps you could but it wasn't the last time.  There was a graduation party, a retirement party, a date-night, that day someone brought in your favorite donuts to work nd the beast is released.  And then, despite how good you were feeling about yourself and how well your body was feeling, you turn your back on the disciplined lifestyle as your taste buds overturn your will power.

Ex-smokers, ex-alcoholics, ex-drug users, ex-criminals, ex-adulterers, ex-whatever's find themselves recovering from their recovery and turning their backs on life, choosing instead to re-enter the path that had been stealing their health, their families, their jobs, their opportunity to be their best selves.  Crazy isn't it?  Actually, the words of Forrest Gump come to mind, "Stupid is as stupid does."  And one has to admit, choosing to turn from life to death is stupid.

This phenomenon is not something new.  Paul had this to say to Christians in the first century, "But now that you know God—or rather are known by God —how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces?" (Gal 4:9).  Stupid was as stupid did!

It is a common weakness of mankind that we all struggle with, even the apostle Paul himself, "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Rom 7:18b-19).  Paul, like us, was caught in a struggle between his desire for good and the desires of the flesh: "but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me" (v. 23).

What is the answer to our problem?  The same as was true for the apostle Paul: "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (vv. 24-25).  Jus' Say'n.