Deep Within...

When I was growing up, I loved scary movies. The scarier (and obviously more ridiculous) the more I liked the movie. I liked the suspense of being led up to the jumpy thriller. My heart racing, covering my eyes - sometimes- and doing whatever I could to keep watching to the gorry end. Makes me shiver just thinking about some of the crazy movies I watched. As I got older, I started veering away from those movies because of the constantly stupid woman. You know who I'm talking about....the single woman who is in 9 inch heals trying to run away from the killer...her!! And the more I didn't watch these movies, the more I realized that the places that the characters were going (like the dark basement with no lights or that one swinging light, the outside shed that is set back in the woods just far enough away from the safety of the house) the more I didn't like those thrillers.
I stopped watching scary movies about 14 years ago and then I wasn't sure why except that I could equiate the stupidity of the one about to be murdered to non-logical thinking. (Come one to some degree you agree with me, I'd have taken off those 9 inch heals and used them as a weapon.) Logically speaking that is a good reason to stop watching the movies but this morning, in dealing with something in my life, I realized that was not the only reason that I stoppped watching those movies. They scared me because the character, however courageous or stupid, took the steps to go into the dark places deep within the basement or woods. They would go 'hunting', for lack of another word, for the bad, scary guy. It was the hunt that truly turned me off of the movies, the actor walking into places that harbored the enemy in the dark, that's what truly turned my eyes. Why? I started wondering this just this week (I know it's only Tuesday) when Paul said in Romans 7:17 "so now no longer am I doing it but the sin that dwells in me". Now at 1st read, and 2nd and 3rd, this just meant to me that I was not able to always control the sin in my life. But this morning, I was reading this verse and some others in our Ryrie study bible and in the notes the authors detail this verse in saying that "Paul details the sin he is talkign about (previously) but here he speaks of sin as a disposition deep in a mans life that produces those sins." Interesting...don't you think.... sin..deep in. I don't know exactly why this struck me in relation to scary movies except that I think each of us, somewhere in our lives, are dealing with deep seeded sin, deep within our souls. And when we learn, know, and accept Christ, all is forgiven and washed away, but the "deep" is still there. Not because we aren't truly in Christ but because we have chosen not to go on the 'hunt'.
In every scary movie, the hero (or heroine) went hunting for the scary guy, to draw him out and expose him to either daylight, or an axe, or some sort of restitution for the death of many. In our lives, we have that same scary guy, lurking in the dark basement, outside shed, or just out of eye sight in the edge of the woods, and he waits for anything to bring us into the deep within darkness. So how do we get him out of the dark place, with light. I am not one to speak or relive my past or my skeletons, but I do know that deep within me is a dark place where sin has been sitting for a long time and I know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Christ is urging me to go on the hunt for the scary guy to cause a sort of restitution, to get that scary guy out of my soul. Deep within us is a place just like on those scary movies, where the scary guy waits for us to be off alert, will you go on the hunt? I am reluctant, scared, worried, but I am slowly making my way downs those dark stairs, and I'm not alone this time Jesus is hunting with me.