By: Sister Tarpley, NDG Religion Editor
“But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.
You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” Romans 6:17-18.
Becoming a new person in Christ is part of a life-long journey that begins at conversion. Before coming to Christ, we were living (in a metaphorical sense) in Egypt, in the land of bondage. Just as the people of
Israel toiled as slaves in Egypt, we were slaves to sin and worldly ambition.
Before we came to Christ, we sweated and toiled to build our career and acquire material possessions. Work was our idol. Greed was our taskmaster. We may have had all the trappings of power in the business world – a corner office, a staff of our own, a key to the executive washroom – but we were living as a slave in the land of Egypt. We didn’t run our career; our career ran us.
Jesus once said, “No servant can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money.” Luke 16:13. In the original language, the word translated “money” was an Aramaic word, Mammon. This does not refer merely to money as a medium of exchange but also to a demonic spirit designed to promote a mindset of ambition for riches, power and worldly gain. The word is capitalized in the original text because the people of Jesus’ day thought of Mammon as a false god. Jesus was saying that those who spend their lives seeking worldly gain are idolaters. No one can serve two masters. No one can worship both the true God and a false God.
We cannot experience the grace that God gives to His children because we are too busy striving for riches and enslaved to Mammon. The only way we can be free is to turn away from Mammon and allow the one true God to transform us into a different person.
Ask yourself today if your life is best represented as Egypt or the Promised Land. Sometimes you just don’t know what to say. You may be distraught, distracted, or frustrated, or even doubtful. Maybe you are good at asking, thanking, and seeking forgiveness . . . but there’s so much more to prayer, which is simply talking to God.
There are other ways to approach God and He will give you a journey of discovery that will surprise you. If you are in a prayer rut or drought. Get excited about meeting with God! You can pray in times of doubt; there are prayers for healing and warfare prayer. What you may have learned through perhaps a written prayer, in memorization, and more.
