Infested

So you say it.
And it feels good.  It feels really good.

Double-edged words.
They’ve been upset from their condensing in your dark hallways
and now they stream into your mind, dive-bombing its walls, feeling out for
a release, a weakness.
Your tongue budges, once, and their ears prick to it on the instant.
Their attention is locked. 
They are pouring in.

So you say it.
And you probably mean it.
But right then, an inch more of you goes dead inside;
right there, an inch more of you slinks back to the dank, familiar hallways echoing,
‘slave.’

The thoughts exist, they grew up with you,
but now all they are are dull prophecies from an ancient rule.
They can be denied.
 Because under your new Mastership, there is strength to do all things.
There is power greater than yourself.

It’s when you start retracing your steps,
running your hands through the pages of your old haunts,
dwelling on the old master’s voice,
dwelling on your voice,
that you are left tempted.
Vulnerable.

But always with a choice. 

It’s when you are on your own, though,
doing things your way,
when it’s your life you’re living
that you back into the shade of your familiar safeholds,
your old home, your ruinous kingdom.
And it becomes impossible for you to deny these.  It always has been.
So many things start to go cold inside you.
The rebelling outcry within is so natural,
you don’t even notice the numbing.

Every time you fulfill those thoughts, by obeying their urge,
the old, familiar mastership is allowed to loom that much more over you,
and slide his claws that much further around your throat.

But it’s all a choice.
Every time you deny fulfilling those thoughts, boom,
self-control gets a foothold in you, gets history with you,
and the deadness encroaching the mind that thought those thoughts-
softens.
Withers.
Turns to sand.

There are new prophecies over you,
of freedom, and re-creation. 
It’s these, that, when they are denied, thwart life.
It’s not like your new Mastership is weak, or even precarious.
The new life is stronger, so much stronger.
But sin makes me immune to it.
So be careful who you choose.
Think about how much you choose Him by.

There are structures that stand like chains inside. 
They are abandoned, but they are ever-present.
The closer we walk to them, the more they tower.
Evil things crawl and swarm from their chasms.
God can collapse these.
When?

When I finally choose that I value obeying Him
more than fulfilling my sin.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect,
but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus . . . our citizenship is in heaven. 
And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who,
by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control,
will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body."
Philippians 3