A strait jacket is a very strong garment with long sleeves used to keep a violent person from hurting someone, but mostly from hurting himself. Would you like to be confined by a strait jacket? No, of course you wouldn’t. However, the Lord sometimes uses a divine strait jacket to keep us in the way of righteousness. It is called His Lordship. Any Christian left to himself will self-destruct without the limitations of the Lord upon his flesh nature. Human nature is an antichrist nature. The desires and will of man always oppose the will of God. In his natural state he is a fallen creature, and his only hope is to be born of God. The natural man, regardless of how good he looks, is carnally minded. To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:6-7. Man in his natural state is not subject to the Lord, and it is also impossible for him to be so without a new birth in God. No one, after becoming a Christian, immediately knows how to be led by the Lord. They still have a carnal mind and it still opposes the will of God. It is then that we need a sort of spiritual strait jacket to keep us in the right way. I remember when as a child I watched my dad plow the garden with a mule pulling the plow. The mule always had blinders on. He could only look straight ahead, so he only walked straight ahead. We also need the Lord to put spiritual blinders on us so we will only focus on Him. A spiritual strait jacket used properly can be a good thing.
The Lord’s strait jacket is never too confining. We learn best when we make some mistakes, and the Lord is a Master at knowing when to allow us to trip up. For example, the best way to learn humility is to fall on your face. Pride is a natural state of humanity. All people are prideful, but everybody doesn’t know they are full of pride. Do you know how the Lord teaches them? He will allow certain circumstances that will expose them. Once you know you are full of pride then will come the process of overcoming it. Then you will cry out to the Lord and ask for a spiritual strait jacket on your pride. A good way to eliminate pride is a famine. A famine is that which cuts off everything that feeds it. A spiritual strait jacket makes a good famine. You won’t like your pride not being fed; you’ll probably moan and groan, but it will save your life. The same principle will work with every other activity of the flesh. Do you have a problem with some aspect of your flesh nature that is tormenting you? Talk to the Lord about a spiritual strait jacket in that area of your life.
Copyright © 2007 by Henry DuBose