Syndrome or 'Sin-drome, What Keeps Us from Looking Forward?

[HKHaugan]

“For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil (1Jn.3:8 KJV).”

When you're fishing there's nothing worse than a backlash on your reel. It looks like a pile of spaghetti. While others in the boat are casting away you are stuck trying to work through the tangled mess. You pull on one loop and another tightens. This is exactly what happens when we try to solve our own spiritual lostness. Attempting to tackle one problem without being able to see the whole tangle only complicates the others that need the same attention.

We've already established the fact that life is complicated and triply so when we are not in sync with God. Strongholds, the attitudes we have built in us, make up the backlash that crowds the mind and rides piggyback on the heart. Because of the reality that we are as images of God, strongholds build up a backwash that slows our ability to act faithfully. Our heart is entangled in the many strongholds it carries. They are unseen, unmanageable and unyielding without God.

Another aspect of the stronghold/attitude issue is the fear that fuels it. We only have to think back, or even today or right now, when something comes up where we have to make a decision in the midst of others. As soon as we think 'What if I say the wrong thing?' or 'What if I do the wrong thing?' What will actually happen? Notice the 'what-if' that precedes the speculation ('What-ifs' are the playground of the devil.) Those are the questions that paralyze. What appears is a sea of negatives. Result? No action. And the secular world wins because the conclusion is the stronghold fueled by fear that says, “Just be quiet. Don't do anything” When the world wins it is really fear that wins. When fear wins the devil wins. What follows in the aftermath are thoughts of regret and maybe even guilt. “If only I had said something,” “I wish I had stepped in” and the succeeding excuses we use to rationalize why we didn't stand up. It's the 'woulda-coulda-shoulda's' that point to our jumblized spiritual retreats.

Ever been in a store where a small group of tough guys were intimidating a smaller defenseless man and find yourself walking away down another aisle? Strongholds can do that to you. How about something more active in our lives like the simple reluctance to speak in a group when you feel strongly about the subject being discussed? Let me expand on that. We had a new bishop come into a local convention meeting soon after he arrived. He wanted to gauge how strongly people felt about rallying against their national church on a very divisive issue. Before he came the majority, a good three fourths of the attending people, were solidly against the national church's stance. When he called for a stand-up vote less than half stood up. They knew he was a 'company man' and didn't want to appear to rock the 'new' boat. Now that our culture's leaders are caving in too, where will we stand when called upon?

What we have is a heart matter. It is the hearts of individuals who have strongholds that influence their behavior. This is why Jesus promised the Holy Spirit after His ascension. Only the Holy Spirit can untangle and remove the subtly interconnected ‘backlash’ of emotions, self-justification and rationalization that the spirit of fear keeps tightening. Sin is at the root of our ‘I’d-rather-do-it-myself” syndrome (really a fancy word for stronghold) or should we say ‘sin-drome?’

The psychological word syndrome comes from the Greek sundromos, meaning concurrence; sun-together—dromos, passage. But looking at it more deeply, the word is derived from the picture Greeks had of subterranean passages coming together, connecting in one place. If we think of the subterranean center being our heart, it is the connecting place for the attitudes that influence our behavior. So perhaps it easy to see why the spiritual connecting place in human behavior is what consumes a heart not given to God. It's called sin, the spiritual disease that separates us from God. Sin is the 'backing off' self-protective source of strongholds that holds our individual aloneness in captivity. Sin is fueled by the spirit of fear.

What the Holy Spirit does is to draw us into a relationship with Jesus who then directs the process of undoing the tangles, the backlashes, that make up the ‘sin-dromes,’ the collective attitudes, the subterranean passages, in our hearts. The biblical term for this process of untangling our ‘sin-dromes’ is that part of salvation called sanctification. This is the important process for every believer because the night before His crucifixion Jesus prays it for His disciples, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified (John 17:16-17).”

The process of sanctification starts when we begin to think spiritually. It's when we hear, really hear, Jesus' words to take up our cross and follow Him. What sanctification does is to expose our ‘sin-dromes’ one by one. It exposes how self-centering they are, how they get us to protect our hearts in the presence of others, how their core is fear. When they are exposed the Holy Spirit sanctifies, heals the place they took up in our heart and fills us with His Spirit so that we no longer operate in fear-filled aloneness but sense His peace and freedom. Then follows the urge to offer Jesus’ healing relationship to others.
The Holy Spirit opens the Word to rehabilitate our minds and moves our hearts outwardly. In the Word we find the spiritual building blocks to grow within and spread the truth without. This is what sanctification is all about. It is about getting us to look like the image of God He intended. “It is God's will that you should be sanctified….(1Thess.4:3).”
Sanctification leads our hearts to being freed from the captivity of sin by entering the inner chambers of the One Stronghold that replaces all other strongholds, the Lord Himself. He is our Stronghold. He becomes our attitudinal base, the attitude for our mind, our heart and our spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who begins to identify the courts of the Lord for us. He gets us to remove the tangle of the world's strongholds and moves us to the inner chambers of His Kingdom as we open our minds and hearts to His work. As the Spirit fills us with His fruit we discover there is a never-ending expanse in those courts. One place to identify them is in Galatians 5:22-25, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

I like how the Message Bible puts it, “But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.”

This brings us to spiritual gifts, the gifts the Holy Spirit brings that carry us into His courts, gifts given to minister to the hearts of others. Spiritual gifts are the courts of the Lord where the reconstruction and reshaping of the human heart takes place. More on that to come.