Traveling Light
As many of you know, I love motorcycles. For me riding motorcycles is a way of decompressing, of clearing the cobwebs out of my head. I first learned to ride on my brother’s BSA 250 back in the mid-1970s. The BSA was slow, unreliable, had bad brakes, but totally wonderful. I loved being able to take it out on the little back roads on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; by quiet streams where the air was cool and damp, or through fields of sunflowers, where the sun, the breeze, and the fragrance was all an incredible shade of yellow.
Travel light and keep the shiny side up.
The motorcycle was also very light. It took no energy to push it around the yard or to get it on its center-stand. Being light also meant that when I lost my balance and the bike started to fall, I was strong enough to correct my mistake. That was thirty-five years ago.
Now I ride a Honda Gold Wing 1800 that has a larger engine than some cars. It also weighs 900 or so pounds (not including me or any gear that I might have). It is a touring bike, which means that it is designed to go long distances for days at a time at considerably more than legal speeds in complete comfort. Sound system, large saddlebags and trunk, and heating ducts (to keep the footsies warm in the winter) are all standard. It even has a reverse gear so I can back it up if I get headed nose-first into a downward sloping parking spot. It is embarrassing to have to recruit passersby to help me push the bike backward out of the parking spot.
If the Gold Wing starts to fall over you don’t want to rescue it; you just want to get out of the way so it doesn’t land on you. While it is amazingly maneuverable for a bike its size, you don’t want to find yourself under it.
When I was younger I traveled light. Comfort did not have the attraction that it does today. I hadn’t had the opportunity to learn, in great detail, where my failings, weaknesses, and faults lay. School, marriage, career, children, and grandchildren were all over-the-horizon experiences yet to be embraced. As you get older you tend to pick up baggage. Your life gains weight. Problems from childhood seem to become exacerbated as they play out in the relationships and responsibilities of life. It becomes harder to maneuver; harder to get back on your feet when the challenges of life appear. The culmination of sin and failings can crush us. Sometimes the pain of living feels like it going to overwhelm us.
That’s one of the things about deliverance that constantly amazes me. At the end of the session, when I ask clients to go inside to look at the room where all these demonic spirits have been hanging out, often since childhood, they tell me that things look so different! Every time a demonic spirit leaves the “room” it’s like God hits the “refresh” button in the client’s life. What does your room look like now?
A while ago a young man wrote to me about a week after his deliverance:
“My thought life has totally changed. The impure and ungodly thoughts are gone and are now focused on the Word and things of the Lord. While this may not seem like that big of a deal, it was for me. Prior to last week, I would not sooner focus on things of the Lord and they would be overtaken by things of the world. I know it has not been that long and everything is still fresh so that makes it a little easier I guess. I know that as time goes on, the enemy will try again. I am filling myself up daily with the word and to put on the full armor of God daily. I was telling my wife that to go a day without an impure thought is such a relief, but to go on 5 days now is truly a miracle. Trust me – I never want that back. I seek to be passionately consumed by my Lord.”
God has hit his “refresh” button. I don’t think it is an accident that the Apostle Paul says in Eph 4:22-27:
22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold. Eph 4:22-27 (NIV)
Sometimes just being taught the right things doesn’t result in freedom. Sometimes we need to be delivered because we’ve given the devil a foothold and we desperately need to have the Lord hit our “refresh” button. It’s what he does because he loves us.
