THE DISCONNECT

Ever been in a one-sided Dance-Off with your dentist?

No?  Just me?

I wish I could say that was a dream.  But no...Thanks to the beauty of nitrous oxide, that's how I spent my Thursday morning. 

I had a root canal this week.  As I've mentioned before, I am petrified of pain, and was promptly hooked up to the laughing gas to take the edge off.

The strange thing about the laughing gas is that your body is doing weird stuff while you still have your right mind.  At first I was lying there and saw something waving around.  Then I realized it was my hands.  They were gracefully "conducting" the classical music that was playing in the background. "Knock it off!" I thought to myself, and willed my hands to rest. But before I knew it, they were conducting another symphony.

I also laughed.  A LOT.  Like when you're in the front row at church and you get the giggles and you're trying really hard not to laugh but you can't pull it together.  And believe me, it's not easy to laugh with someone shoving a drill into your mouth. I kept thinking to myself, "What is so funny?" but I could not stop laughing. 

And then came the "dancing."  Seriously, I began doing "The Snake" as I lay there -- we're talking Janet Jackson, circa 1992.  Yes, I was reclined in the dentist's chair.  But that didn't seem to stop my body from getting down with its bad self.  Again, I kept thinking, "STOP IT!  You're acting crazy!" but there seemed to be a disconnect between what I was thinking and what I was doing. 

"You got served!!" I said to the dentist through my nitrous-oxide fog, and then just laughed and laughed as my mortified mind pleaded for my body to PULL. IT. TOGETHER.

I can only imagine the notes the doctor wrote in my chart. 

But the disconnect is present for me in my walk with God, too.  I so get the heart of Paul when he writes, "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing" (Romans 7).

The disconnect rears its ugly head when our spirit and our flesh duke it out.  "Knock it off!  What are you doing?  You're being a fool!" our hearts cry out.  But the flesh overrides the longing of our hearts to glorify God.  

Can you relate?

Father God, we need the power of Your Holy Spirit--the incomparably great power for us who believe--to prevail when the disconnect exists.  We want to honor You, but the pull of our flesh is strong.  Unrelenting, even.  But right now we claim the promise that the same power used to raise Jesus from the dead is the very power that indwells us.  The very same power!  And when our flesh pulls toward foolishness, be faithful to provide a way out that we may stand up under the pull of our flesh.

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

Matthew 26:41