Dominated? Me?

   Domination: What am I dominated by? Chambers says today that we are dominated by what we have yielded to in the past.

   "If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him."

   So what have I yielded to? What are the prominent sins in my life?

   This is very appropriate today as I think back on my prison experience the past few days. Ware State Prison is a maximum security facility. There is only one classification higher in the state and that houses death row inmates. A lot of the men at Ware are serving long sentences for capital crimes. A lot of these men have yielded to something back in their lives that have led them to this point. In a lot of cases it is drugs. That first yielding to these addictive substances has put them where they are today.

   How about me? Can I relate my life to those in prison? Sure, they are held captive by real bars (and wire) and sometimes still by the habit that they yielded to in the first place.

   What am I a slave to? What have I yielded to, somewhere back there, that still holds me today? The ones that stalk my life most every day are selfishness and pride. I want what I want and I want people to think I am good.

   I even had a thought while in prison that I can be proud to be in there serving. People will come up and say something like "you are doing something great in giving of your time to do that kind of ministry", and I want to believe what they say is true. If I am humble and say that it is nothing, that anyone could do what I do, I can even be proud to be humble. It is a deceptive sin, and I fall for it hook, line and sinker.

   Chambers says that the only way out of these traps is a yielding of myself to the domination of Christ. I know that is true, but those sins are so nice to the ego that, most of the time, my yielding is temporary.

   Recognizing the problem is easy, confessing it is a little bit harder, but a true yielding to Christ is the only thing that will overcome it.

   God, give me the "want to" and the power to be that overcomer.