Learning to say “No!”

by TerryLema

Titus 2:11-12:  “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions ….”

What is so hard about that little word “no?” I remember doing a lesson decades ago from a program called “Stephen’s Ministries” that we were incorporating in the church. It was a lesson on simply saying “no.” Not adding excuses or rationalizations or anything else, just using that little word “no.”

Part of the lesson incorporated role-playing. One person was to be a bad driver asking another to use their car. The second person was simply to decline the request. We picked a tiny woman to ask, and a big guy to say “no.” Before the role playing was done, he not only didn’t say “no” to loaning his car, he was practically begging her to take it!

Simply saying “no” is not so simple. Especially when we are saying “no” to ungodliness and worldly passions. We talked about our flesh on Sunday at church, that awful sin nature with which each of us was born. We have become new creations in Christ; Scripture reminds us that the old man of sin that dwells in each of us is dead. The problem is that the old man of sin doesn’t realize he’s dead. He keeps making noise and urging us toward ungodliness and inflaming our worldly passions.

We must learn to say “no” to our sin nature. We must learn to listen instead to the Spirit of God within us. Maybe we should practice saying “no,” do a little role-playing on our own and get used to hearing that simple word.  We certainly don’t want to give away the strides we have made in being conformed to the image of God’s Dear Son, Jesus.

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