Dead Men Walking

Yesterday at church, during the children's time, Butch (Pastor at LHBC) taught the kids about CPR.  He had Howard (our Children's Pastor who is a fireman) come up and discussed what CPR was, how and why they did it, and when to stop.  See CPR can be done but once a person is pronounced dead there's no reason to do it anymore.  There's no point to revive a dead person. The same is true with us, there are areas of our life that should be dead, but we spend all of our time trying to revive them. And so all of our energy and strength gets devoted to dead things.
What do I mean?  Look at Galatians 2:20.  Paul said I have been crucified with Christ and it's not I that lives but Christ that lives within me.  So when we are Believers this is what happens to us, Christ should be living in us.  So our lives should be dictated by (no matter how cheesy or corny this is) What would Jesus Do?  Because it's not our life, it's His.  Ephesians 2:1-5 also echoes this truth.  It says we were dead in our sin and trespasses, but God being RICH IN MERCY, made us alive with Christ - by grace we have been saved.
So here's what we have to get as Christians.  If we are saved, then we are made alive with Christ.  When that happens we need to have a funeral and realize the person we were is dead.  Some people like to make excuses "I'm like this way because...I wish I could change but...It's just who I am..." and most of these excuses are actually us saying, Jesus saved me, but I still like to live as my old self.  We must realize the old self is dead.  Some fear that the things they did, habits they developed, before Christ will rear their head and cause them to be tempted and sin.  Once again we have to call it what it is.  It is a dead man's habits, it is sin.  If we don't realize that Christ saved us from who we were (habits included) then we won't ever have victory.
Does that mean we never mess up or are perfect?  Of course not.  It does mean that we don't view our sin as just part of our personality or who we are, we view it as sin and as a dead man's habits.  And we pray and ask the Lord to continue to help us to put to death our flesh.  Then we walk in it.  We live the Scripture that says I have been crucified with Christ.  God will be faithful to us as we are faithful to His Word.