Reformat My Soul, O Lord
I wrote this article back in 2003. I thought it went with my sermon last Sunday and what we've been looking at in Galatians.--Shawn

Recently I had to reformat the hard drive on my computer. It became infected with computer viruses from emails I received. It was a mess. Programs started locking up the computer so I couldn't use it. It became so bad that I couldn't even turn it on without it freezing up. Finally, I decided that I would have to buy a new operating system. I needed something that would work better than what I had. It cost me a lot of time for research and money. But I remember how exciting it was to type in the command format C:. I think it was exciting because I was getting something new and better than what I was giving up. It was a fresh start. And then I thought, "How do you reformat your soul?"

The obvious response to that question for Christians is to become a Christian. What does the Bible say about baptism? It is the point of transference, the moment at which God translates a repentant sinner from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1.13). It is the line between the "Before" and "After" pictures you see on television (Ephesians 5.8). It is when you become part of the third race (Jews, Gentiles, and Christians [Ephesians 2.15]). You become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5.17). But is there reformatting after you are baptized?

I know what the Bible says about walking in the light (living God's way) in 1 John 1.8-10 and how, if we confess our sins, the blood of Jesus continues to wash those sins away. And that's comforting to me.
Now hard drives usually waste a lot of space storing information that is no longer needed. Deleted programs often leave files behind just in case you reinstall them. Just because you delete files doesn't mean they are gone or why would they have a restore option in the garbage can program? When your computer locks up, that can also leave behind unnecessary stuff, all of which takes up space and can slow down your computer's operation. Worse, it can interfere with the proper running of programs you are still using.

It seems that way with sin and the "hard drive" of my soul. Our confession of sin and the asking for and receiving of forgiveness may "delete" the spiritual consequences of those sins from our souls, but it still seems that my soul is more and more cluttered. Forgiven sins still have a way of popping up in present behavior/thinking. Through the "disk drives and phone lines" of my soul, a.k.a. eyes and ears, I still receive "viruses" that lock up the correct and efficient operation of my life. They still clutter my soul with stuff. I long to be able to reformat my soul so that all those things with which I now struggle would be truly and completely deleted. Imagine what it would be like to not have to watch what you say, do, or think. Imagine what it would be like for your life in all of its dimensions to operate at 100 percent efficiency.

Can we reformat our souls here? I don't know for sure. At least not like I have described above and what I long for. That complete reformatting only happens when the trumpet sounds, the dead in Christ rise, and we go to meet him in the air.