The Big Melt Down

     Sooner or later it was bound to happen, and a string of events seemed to make matters more complicated.  On Thursday of last week, our IT Tech left our office with serious chest pain.  She was heading for the ER.  Our computers were working fine at the time but had been rather slow.  By Friday morning, though, the computers would not open our special medical software.  With a day full of patients, we did not know what to do as we could not access schedules or other information pertinent to our operation.  We did the best we could and finally called our software support system.

     After working on our system via remote, our software support only made the computers worse.  In fact, they destroyed our shaky hard drive.  Now, there was nothing to do but write ourselves a thousand sticky notes of people to call when things functioned again.
     On Monday, our IT Tech was released from the hospital and immediately went to our office to work on things.  It wasn't until Tuesday afternoon that things were running again.  However, we lost a week's worth of information that we have to put into our system again.  It could have been worse.  We were prepared with many back-ups for such an occasion as this, but still, there are some things we cannot control.
     This is also true in every day life.  Like computers, we can have a complete melt down.  Coming to the end of ourselves, our attempts at happiness and our selfish ambitions opens the door to invite our Savior to come in and do a complete revamping of our lives.  Just like our IT Tech who removed the old hard drive and replaced it with a new one, Jesus comes into our lives and gives us a new heart.  The old stony heart that brought us emptiness and chained us to a life of sin is gone.  The Bible tells us:
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old  has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).   Since we are new creations, we can live in the joy of the Lord,  Gone are the corrupted files that once filled our heart.
     Of course, this new life requires us to do some reformatting of our thinking.  Even if we have been Christians a long time, we need to remove the stray bits of information that our culture has dumped in our heads.  Once again, we have an answer for this problem.  Romans 12:2 reads:  "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."  Bringing our thoughts into conformity is not that difficult.  We can meditate on God's Word, memorize it, pray it or sing it.  When we do these things, we will become more like our Savior.
     In addition, we know that we have the power to live a victorious life.  The Apostle Peter writes:  "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire" (2 Peter 1:3-4).  As long as we remain plugged into our source of power...the Lord Jesus Christ...we will over come the pitfalls, temptations and difficulties of this world.  He has made us and given to us all we need for life and godliness.  What a precious promise to cling to every day.
     Whether you are a babe in Christ or a seasoned believer, we all have our melt down days.  This is when we need to revisit these wonderful promises of God.  The enemy of our soul will tell us that we are still under bondage to that old heart, but we need to remind Him that the Lord has given to us a new heart.  Again, the enemy will tell us our thinking is not right.  This is when we tell him that we have the mind of Christ living in us.  Finally, the enemy wants us to think we have poverty of spirit, and we, then, remind him that we have everything we need for life and godliness.  We are lacking nothing.
     Thankfully, our computers are running once again as a result of our IT Tech's skill and knowledge.  She was prepared for such an event.  As believers, we need only turn to our Lord when life seems to bring on a melt down.  Remember, "...we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10) and "no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.  This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me declares the Lord" (Isaiah 54:17).  Our warranty lasts for eternity unlike the computers we use every day.  So take heart and plug into His power source for daily living.  Selah!