Uninstall First

Anyone who knows me knows that I am NOT a computer whiz. I do not know a megabyte from a mosquito bite. In my world, crashes, runtime errors, blackouts, and “blue screens of death” are the norm. Yet, in spite of my technological illiteracy, I am fully equipped with a laptop computer with a touch screen, an Ipad, an Iphone, and a desktop computer. All of these devices apparently reside in heaven because they relate to each other automatically on the cloud.

At least that is what I was told is how it is supposed to work…

I’m in my office at home one day wanting to listen to music on my computer. My musical tastes are pretty diverse, as I enjoy everything from Third Day, Rick Pino, and Bill Gaither to Celine Dion and Frank Sinatra. I click iTunes like I always do and, lo and behold, an error message pops up.

Well, fortunately for me, I have a program that automatically solves such issues. I run my “fit it” program (that I paid $29.95 for online) and voilà… problem solved, right? Right?

Wrong.

While the screen stares at me with a message that the problem is solved, everything else in my immediate reality is telling another story. The melodies that I SHOULD be hearing of Fly Me To The Moon are being replaced by the sounds of silence, and feelings of wanting to send this computer to the moon with one swift kick. However, calm and reason win out, and I decided to try to simply re-install iTunes.

More error messages.

I reboot the thing and it welcomes me back with the familiar Windows screen…

… and another error message.

After fighting the Battle of MegaByte Gulch for a solid day, I finally called Todd, our IT man at Abba’s House. I told him my problem and he said, “Try uninstalling iTunes and then reinstall.”

BINGO! iTunes fired up like an old friend, and the sound of music was once again filling the atmosphere of my office.

As I sat there working as the music played, the familiar sound of Ol’ Blue Eyes filled the air. As the song “My Way” played, the Holy Spirit showed up. He showed me that sometimes “my way” doesn’t work because it is locked in to an error laden program.

Paul understood the process of “rebooting” almost 2,000 years before computers, smartphones, and the Internet. In II Corinthians 5:17, he states…

 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away;
behold, all things have become new.

When we take on a new life in Jesus, we shed the old man — the “old program” — and we become a new creation. The old is not just dormant, silent, or locked away in some dark recess… it’s gone. Just like I couldn’t make iTunes work until I had uninstalled the old version, we can’t make a life in the Spirit work if we are hanging onto the very things that made our lives dysfunctional and error-laden to begin with.

This Sunday morning, I will be discussing this very topic — Uninstall First. How do we as Christians go about uninstalling the things that hold us back, or make our lives not work?

Join me at Abba’s House this Sunday at 10:30a.m. Let’s get all of our “programming” on the right track, and learn how to clean the error messages of the enemy out of our “registries” once and for all.

If you can’t be in the House, join us online by clicking here.