Put Off, Put On

Hello, and welcome to this latest edition of Become a Competent Biblical Counselor. I'm Dr. Dave Jones, and today's episode is entitled Put Off, Put On. And I'd like to make reference to Ephesians chapter 4, verses 22 through 24. And here Paul is writing, You were taught regarding your previous habit patterns to put off the old person that you were, who was corrupted by deceitful desires, being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new person that you are who is created in God's likeness with true righteousness and holiness. Many times in your counseling experience and opportunities, you're going to have many, many times people are going to be calling you saying that they have this in their life or they have something else in their life and they're just confused or struggling and they can't seem to figure out how to get things different. They want change, but they don't know how to affect the change, where the change comes from. It goes on and on and on. And what you have to convey to the counsel is that the Bible demands change. You want to change your life? Find out what the Bible has to say about the way you're living your life now and what you must do to change it to the way that God wants you to change it. That is what Paul is referring to here. Put off the old, put on the new. Sounds like a very simple concept, but let's stop there. This is very, very difficult to do. But take heart, it can be done. Through the grace and the strength that the Holy Spirit gives you, you can put off the old and you can put on the new. You just need to know how to do that. And this is where Paul comes in to his letter to the church at Ephesus. Understand this as well. Paul is not giving a suggestion here. He is not giving a conditional statement. Well, if you feel like it, if it's convenient, or on Tuesdays, do this, or sometime when you're in the right frame of mind and you feel like doing something different. You might want to try this. No, read it differently. This is something that's helped me tremendously and has helped many people that I've had an opportunity to speak with. Look at Paul's wording as commands. He is not saying, as I mentioned, when it's convenient for you to do this. You have to look at them as this is what I have to do. I have to stop doing this and I have to start doing that, whether I feel like it or not. Now the problem is centered around the fact that those things that you're trying to put off are habits. They started out as daily exercises and daily fears and daily thoughts that became weekly and monthly, and whole lives have changed to adopt the inconsistencies of your thought life based upon how you feel, and now you're in a situation where you want to change, but you just don't know how to change. And I think what's interesting about Paul's writings is that consistently, all through every letter that he's written to the churches in the New Testament, he is saying, don't do this, don't do that, speak like this, don't be around these kind of people, think on these things. You want to learn how to live your life biblically? Listen to what Paul is saying. He's telling you exactly what you must do. Stop doing this, start doing that. Sounds simple until you have to do it. You have to break those old habits and develop new habits. Let me give you an idea. This concept of putting off and putting on is something that I refer to as the replacement dynamic. What it is not is let's say that you have somebody who's calling you and they're having a problem with well smoking. They want to stop smoking, but they just have a difficult time trying to stop smoking. One of the things that you can't do, and it's going to be very unsuccessful, is for you to say, Well, if you want to stop smoking, stop smoking. Well, some people can do that, but that's not the replacement dynamic. The replacement dynamic is stop smoking and start doing something else. Something that's totally replacing, total opposite, something that you enjoy more than smoking. That means there has to be considerable thought about what is it that you would much rather think about in the replacement of stopping to smoke or continuing to smoke. What is it that you would really like to do instead? Because every time that the thought and the temptation comes up, the triggering mechanism comes up to where I need to have a cigarette, there's got to be something right then that triggers you to do opposite, to replace it with something else. It has nothing to do with smoking, that has to do with maybe a reward mechanism. For example, well, I have this feeling that I've got to, I want to, I want to smoke. I just have to smoke. You know what? If I smoke, I'm going to be right back to this cycle again. But if I don't smoke, I think, am I going to fight this thing all day long because I want an ice cream cone tonight, or I want a milkshake tonight, or I want a piece of pie tonight, whatever. There's got to be something that has more of an impact that you much rather have in your life than that smoking. So you see, the replacement dynamic to put on has to be something totally different than what you're trying to put off. I had a man call me once and he says, I'm a Christian, but I don't like the person that I am. I want to be a better man, I want to be a better husband, I want to be a better father, but I just don't know what to do. So what would you do if somebody called you like that? Well, let me tell you what I did. Spoke to him to find out, well, exactly what is it that you're doing that you don't want to do anymore? He says, Well, I'm spending a lot of time on my work. I said, What kind of work do you do? He says, I'm a physician, I'm a medical physician, and he says, I spent a lot of time at work, and I spent a lot of time with my patients and my job, and I'm really not paying that much attention to my wife and my family. I said, give me an example of things that you're doing that you'd like to change. So he gives me a list of maybe four or five things that are top to his mind, and I'd say, Okay, here's an example. How long have you been married to your wife? How long have you been together? Well, we've been married twenty two years. I said, okay. Tell me about what your life was like, the two of you, twenty-three years ago. So he stopped and he thought, Well, we had a wonderful life. I said, tell me about what your life was. So he says, Well, we did this together, we did that together, we spent a lot of time together. He gave me a litany of all kinds of things that they did twenty-three years ago that made their life so encompassing and in love with each other. I said, back then, 23 years ago, how did you show your wife that you loved her? What did you do? Now I say that word do very succinctly because in a previous episode I spoke about thoughts equals actions equals feelings, and I was more concerned about our actions than our feelings. But anyway, that's what I asked him. What did you do back then? He says, Well, what do you mean? I said, Well, when you spoke to your wife 23 years ago, before she was your wife, when you spoke to her, did you look at her when you spoke to her? She said, Well, yeah. I said, Why? He says, Because I just like looking at her. Okay. And you communicated that to her nonverbally because of your actions. When you spoke to her, you looked at her. She had the feeling of knowing that she was the most important person in your life back then because you were looking at her, taking her into your consideration and into your heart about what you were saying. So 23 years ago, did you touch your wife when you were talking to her? Did you touch your wife when you were passing in the hallway? Did you touch her on the arm very innocently and say, I want you to know just how much I love you? Little victories like that. How many little victories were you giving your wife 23 years ago that you're not doing today? And the light bulb went off in this doctor's head. He says, I get where you're going. I said, Yeah. I said, So what are you going to do about it? He says, There's a lot of things that I did back then that I am not doing now. I need to start doing those things all over again. So there's a very simplistic example of what the put-off put-on is. He had to identify what those things were that he needs to put off. He needs to put off the fact that he's spending so much time at work, he's spending so much time involved with his patients and not his family. He needs to put that attitude off and those priorities off and replace them with the attitude and the priorities he had 23 years ago. Now, sometimes for some people that's relatively easy to do, but some it isn't. But the replacement dynamic is very important to so many people that have habitual issues that they're having to overcome. And Paul has told us right here put off the old and put on the new. And furthermore, what Paul is referring to here is the former manner of life equals the former habitual living patterns. You gotta put these old thoughts off and put new actions and thoughts in place. And a very important point that I needed to uh introduce him to the fact was that I'm not telling him what he should do. This is what Scripture says. Scripture says you want to change your life, you want a happier life, put off the old, put on the new. Identify what the old ways are that you want to change, and replace them with the attitudes that God says that he wants you to build into your life. You had success once before, why not duplicate and replace the old habits right now with the few with the past successes that you had that were so successful? Some other habits that you're going to hear people talk about. You might have somebody has a problem with anger. Well, direct them to Matthew 5.22. There's the putting off and putting on, as far as self-control, Ecclesiastics 7.9. Or how about bitterness? Put off according to Acts 8.28 and put on, taking heed of myself in Hebrews 12 15. Bodily harm. Acts 23.12 and put on love your enemies in Matthew 5.44. Understand this. These are the scriptures, some examples of what I use, but it's important that you have your own. Some scriptures, as I mentioned in other episodes, are really more important and sensitive in understanding to you rather than using mine or anybody else's. Let the Holy Spirit guide you in the utilization of Scripture that He wants you to use as far as helping someone to build scripture into their life to take off and put off old habits and for Scripture to put on to help them justify putting on the new habits. I mentioned to you uh just a couple minutes ago the commands of Paul. If you were to look, as I mentioned before, Paul's writings and pick out the commands. For example, I'm going to go through just this one chapter, chapter four, that we're in already, and I want to point out the commands that Paul has given us just in this one chapter. In verse 1, talks about walk in a way that is appropriate. Well, that's not a suggestion, that's not a conditional statement. Paul is saying that we need to walk in a way that is appropriate. In verse 15, speaking the truth in love. Verse 17. You must no longer walk like the Gentiles do in their meaningless ways of thinking. And then verse 22, put off the old person. 24, put on the new person. Verse 25, putting off lying, you must speak the truth. See how these are commands. Here's another verse 26. I'm still in chapter 4. Be ain't be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun set on your angry mood. Again, commands. You want to learn how to change your life? Here you go. Don't give the devil a toehold. Stop stealing. You must labor working with your own hands and honest words. Don't let a single wrong word come from your mouth. All the bitterness and anger and wrath and clamor and blasphemy must be removed from you, along with every sort of evil. And verse thirty-two, be kind to one another. And this continues to be a sample of the writings of Paul and all of his letters to all the churches. Don't take them as just suggestions, take them as commands, and help your counsel to build these commands into their lives, putting off the old, putting on the new. I hope that helps. It's an interesting concept, isn't it? To look at Paul's writings as commands and something that we can do to really change our lives the way that God wants us to live. So I hope this helps, and um, I hope you got something out of that. If not, um just let me know at Bible help for you at gmail.com. And I'll talk to you in our next episode. Have a great day.