Pivot Point

As a student in a marketing course, we often talk about start up companies hitting a pivot point. A moment in time where they decide that in order to be profitable and continue with their idea, they are going to have to transform their way of thinking and their product into something slightly different from their original intentions. It almost always requires an uncomfortable shift, but a very necessary one.
I hit this point spiritually three years ago. I was in the military dealing with situations where I would see death everyday, everyone around me was partying all the time, and I was trying to live a conservative Christian life. These things combined drove me to frustration. I didn't fully understand what that meant (not that I do now either, but the journey has began). I did know that it meant I had very few friends or I made appearances at parties without getting involved and left fairly quickly, but it went farther than the outward appearances of a Christian life. My heart was confused. I felt numb. I had turned off my emotions in order to deal with the continual death and never really turned them back on, yet I knew that there was more to following Jesus than the life that I was living. When I read the Bible I saw men and women excited about serving Christ and giving up everything to follow, but I just felt condemnation over my imperfection. By the grace of God, I was put in contact with some people who became wonderful mentors to me, that assisted in creating the pivot point in my life.
One day I was sitting at their dinner table talking about chapter seven of Romans. I saw Paul's struggle, yet had grown up in a fairly legalistic church that preached that if you "sin" in any respect, you are no longer "a Christian". I couldn't reconcile Paul's writings and although I felt frustration over my inadequacies, I felt relief that I was not in this struggle alone. As I read:

  For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

My spirit completely understood what he was saying. I felt this turmoil within me. I had the desire to do what was right, but the weakness of the flesh held me back. (Sidenote: by all outward appearances, I was living the life that avoided "sin". I didn't sleep around, get drunk, or steal or lie, but I did have pride, am selfish, and don't show the fruit of the Spirit as strongly as I should, or give to the poor as often as I should. I followed some of what the Bible commanded, but not all.) I felt conviction to be closer to the Lord, yet I was in bondage to the law.
My mentors gave me two key points that encouraged the pivot in my life. They recommended I continue to read into chapter 8. Yes, we need to recognize this struggle, but there is hope! Chapter eight follows this description of the battle between the flesh and the spirit by saying:

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

I wasn't bound to legalism of the law! I was free by the blood of Jesus and there was no condemnation. Just acknowledging this made a impact on my entire way of thinking.
The second piece of advice they gave me was "Don't try to live perfect, try to live righteous."  The freedom I felt in this statement was unbelievable. No, I wasn't immediately perfect, but I wasn't required to perfect! This was not an excuse to engage in sin, but it was the freedom to enjoy the liberation from sin. Galatians 5 makes this very clear:

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery... For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

I had been so caught up in avoiding sin, that I had only felt the law, not the freedom from the law. My perspective shifted in that moment. My life-changing pivot occurred and the journey of love began.