Wrapping up UN CSW59 from NYC March, 2015.

Finishing up notes from the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in NYC.  March, 2015:

Issues that came up in the workshops (parallel events) that I attended during the course of the week I was there:

*Economic disasters such as crop failures and climate change are eradicating some of the industries in which women have traditionally participated in order to earn a living.  Climate changing is having a devastating impact on industries such as fishing.  In some places there are no longer enough fish to sustain communities, many people are having to migrate to new communities, which in turn has impacts on the host communities. 

These economic realities have a negative impact on women’s abilities to support themselves and their families.  Yet in disaster planning women’s voices are not sought out and included in this very thing that will have long term consequences in their lives.  Often the priority for resources after disasters is given to boys.

*Lack of access to reproductive health services.  There is an enormous need for comprehensive sex education. 

*There is a need for more women to be active in politics in order to advocate for women and women’s involvement in the world processes that impact women.

*Women 20-30 do not know their rights, including their reproductive rights.  There is a need to improve the lives of women living with HIV/AIDS.

*Wives of migrants, prisoners, etc., have HIV/AIDS.  There is stigma and yet educated religious leadership can become a part of the solution by educating the public.

*In Pakistan with religious fundamentalism, because of early marriage young girls are more unprotected (and having sex with much older, experienced husbands), have less economic ability and less rights of land inheritance.  The younger a girl is the less likely to know her sexual and reproductive rights, she is easier to control.

*The United Nations in now calling women’s rights “human rights.”  Everyone benefits when human beings are treated equally and have equal access to education and the decision making levels of government.  This brings us again to the addressing of the issue of having women in politics, especially women who desire to change the lives of other women.  This includes addressing the vital issue of how to prevent violence against women.

*I personally reflected on the mechanisms of power in the United States.  I used to naively believe that anyone born on United States soil could become President.  As I am increasingly exposed to new perspectives on power and life I realize that there are mechanisms in place for creating leaders in the United States and presumably all countries, all systems.

There are, for instance, Ivy League Universities where people are shaped and mentored and learn about power, developing important relationships.  I personally believe that this may be the (or at least a) level where a great deal of decision making and foreign and domestic policy takes place.

*Corruption is a huge factor worldwide.  Where does the money go that is meant to empower and enable women and bring change to the lives of millions, village by village?

*Issues that need to be/and continue to be addressed include:

early marriage

unregistered customary marriages that give no rights to the wife

economic justice structure

reproductive rights of women

breast cancer

violence against women – particularly in rural areas

the stigma of HIV/AIDS, the stigma faced by grandmothers raising the   children of their daughters who have died of HIV/AIDS, the       financial issues faced by these grandmothers

These things (listed above) are hidden and are not publicly discussed. 

*Men find ways to hold onto power – violence can take the form of the militarization of society.  When war ends there is trauma and HIV in women.

Results:

Challenging the status quo

Meeting as women to convene power

Building leadership around peace and security

Trying to rebuild women’s bodies

A beautiful truth that I heard:

Women may have no office, no CV, they can use themselves as a role model to give others hope.  They and their lives become their CV.  Women’s narratives become resources. 

HIV is better than Ebola.  HIV gives time, Ebola takes it.

Colonialization took power from women and gave it to men.  I think this is something that Americans, as a colonial power, need to really look at.  This is a legacy.  Not a good legacy, but it is one.

CEDAW, the people who are against it don’t like the portions dealing with women’s reproductive rights.  They don’t want women to have control of their own bodies.  Monitoring and accountability are the teeth that are missing from the CEDAW document.  This reminds me of the current issue with Iran and the nuclear power treaties that in progress.  Men really do not like being held accountable, or to trust others with power.

Finally:  The United States is not good about ratifying international treaties. 

My impressions today, April 11, 2015, as I wrap up this summary of what I heard and learned at the UN CSW in March, 2015:  Women are treading water.  We have a long way to go and just as with many issues in the world, change is very slow.  We can hold hope in knowing that slavery is now illegal, women in many countries have the right to vote and in many Christian denominations women are ordained as clergy and are in leadership positions as heads of church bodies.  We know that change can and will take place.  I grieve for the women that need the change right now, or needed it yesterday. 

At the moment the three issues that seem most urgent to me are:

1.  Women’s participation in the political arena of the world.  This is not merely a woman/women suddenly walking into a board room.  This is girl children being educated through primary and secondary school and going on to University.  This is girl children learning to think critically and understanding their worth as daughters of God.

2.  Addressing violence against women.  This is not merely women being hit or beaten.  This includes child marriage and other ways of violating women and girl children.

3.  Women’s access to knowledge of reproductive rights and services and the ability to obtain those services.

Amen?

AMEN!

A picture hanging on a wall.  A poem comes to life...
contemplation
unsung women
  fetching water
      washing clothes (by hand mind you)
hair, bodies, baby bottoms

making bread
laying table
water running -- or not, as the case may be....
dishes
being
washed.

time for thinking
passing wisdom --
weary feet, patting hands.

Rev. Debbie Blane

A musician in the bowels of the NYC subway system....I found myself thinking, "we all have our dreams, don't we?"

He played Bach's Canon 9 for me.

Framework.

CSW59:

Much of the CSW was framed around CEDAW.  CEDAW is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.  From a postcard addressed to U.S. Senate Leaders:  “CEDAW is a landmark international agreement that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world. 

Ratifying CEDAW will strengthen the United States as a global leader in standing up for women and girls.  The US. Senate leadership should continue our country’s proud bipartisan tradition of promoting and protecting human rights by making CEDAW a priority and ratifying it now.”

The three highlighted objectives of CEDAW essentially match two of the three critical global issues for World Mission as defined by our International Partners in conjunction with World Mission personnel.  The World Mission critical global issues are:  Education (particularly females), stopping violence against women and girl children (reconciliation) and Evangelism .  The CEDAW goals are:  Stopping violence against women, ensuring educational opportunities and increasing political participation. 

Increasing political participation involves a number of things.  One must be educated in order to access to halls of power.  There must be in a process of reconciliation in order to recognize that there are different ways of leading and that the contributions of 50% of humanity (female) are just as important as the contributions of the other 50% of humanity (male).  

On to the UN CSW59 itself....

CSW59  Preliminary:

Notes that I have from the three orientations that I participated in before the official start of the CSW59 include:

In terms of the slow progress of things like the eradication of violence against women, of educating equal amounts of girl children with boy children, etc., someone made the statement, “maybe we are working on changing the wrong things.” 

Someone else suggested that for me it is just normal to have 88% men and 12% women in parliament.  The world is affirmative action for men; men are competent until proven otherwise.  Women are incompetent until they prove otherwise.

Giving birth should not limit and define a woman’s life.   Patriarchy divides women and leaves some women behind. 

Trying to change within the existing patriarchal paradigm is not permanent change.  Instead we must change the paradigm.  The world must change, not the women.  Change begins at the bottom and transforms the top.

A statement that was very eye opening for me was:  There are thousands of women’s NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations).  What we lack is being in politics where economic power can be challenged and also accessed. 

I, Debbie, would personally also argue that interpretation of Holy Scripture has a huge influence on the lack of forward momentum for women.  Christian Scripture, the Muslim Quran, etc., can hold human beings in cultural prisons.  Women and men who see Holy Scriptures through a liberating lens need to become scholars that can help leadership and grassroots re-interpret and free the Holy Scriptures, whatever the religion.  Scriptures were written by men in specific cultural contexts and are treated as though they are written in stone.  I believe that the stone of culture needs to be shattered so that the life giving revelation of Scripture can be brought forth and renew humankind.  As a Christian I clearly focus on the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament.  I include the Muslim Quran and other literature considered holy by other religions because the United Nations is made up of the global community and this includes other faiths as well as Christianity.

The Louisville beginning of the UN CSW59 adventure....

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March 6, 2015

Friends,

For three days now I have been trying to get from Louisville, KY to NYC for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).  I am hoping and praying that the third try is the charm.  So here I am at the Louisville Airport at 4:45 a.m., having been picked up by a taxi at just after 3:30 a.m.  I’ve checked my bag, been through security, bought bottled water and Diet Coke, my cold caffeine.  Now I am sitting in front of a TV screen that is showing CNN and beginning my reflections on the experience I am beginning as I participate in the CSW in NYC.

Debbie Journey Continues.

My attempts began on Wednesday as my first flight was cancelled and I waited at the airport for a late afternoon flight that continued to be bumped back.  I admit that I gave up on that one after the third time change.  It turns out that it did fly, but it appeared to me at the time that it would be cancelled. 

Thursday I actually made it into the plane and we were almost ready to taxi out to the runway when the word came that a Delta flight had gone off the runway at LaGuardia, closing the airport in NYC to incoming traffic.  We were taken back to the gate and in due time the flight was cancelled.  The late afternoon flight was cancelled as well, LaGuardia was said to be closed until 7:00 p.m. at night and conditions were worsening there.

So today I am again at the airport hoping that this very early morning flight takes off.  If it does not I will have to try to catch a later flight today or even go tomorrow.  If this early morning one is not successful I will end up missing some or all of the Presbyterian Orientation that begins today.

Yesterday as I learned that I would not be able to get out of Louisville until the next day, today, I headed out to the cab/taxi coordination booth at the airport.  I was able to quickly get a cab and get home.  Before the cab came I found myself upset because of the condition of the teeth of the coordinator.  He was missing so many of his teeth, at least in the front, that there were only one or two on either side of his mouth.

I have noticed this over time with people who work in low paying service jobs in this country (USA).  I found it distressing that all people in this country are not cared for in the ways that all human beings should be.  The health of the mouth is basic and the mouth is the gateway to the body. 

The taxi driver last night was from Senegal, the one this morning was also from another country, although I did not find out where.  I have noticed that more and more the cab/taxi drivers in the states are men (mostly) from other countries.  What bothers me about this is wondering what occupation they had in their original country.  I have heard that often people who were doctors and teachers, etc., can only find work in the United States that is nothing like what they did before.

Taxi driving is an honorable profession and there are people who love that kind of work.  My bone to pick with it is when there are people who are gifted in other ways and are forced to make a living at something that has nothing to do with the gifts that they should be able to share with the world.  If I had to be a taxi driver somewhere I would be miserable. 

Okay, I am signing off for now and am going to drink my cold water.  Si an ar a. 

A New Song: I have discovered a sermon that can be adapted to different settings and situaitons. This has been joyful just as writing new sermons is.

PRAY

“Let My People Go”

Exodus 6:1-9

Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church

Louisville, KY

March 22, 2015

 Rev. Debbie Blane

You know, the thing of it is that we are all held in captivity.   We are captive to something.

Pharaoh goes by many, many names.  Pharaoh is addiction.  Pharaoh is a seeming inability to leave an abusive marriage.  Pharaoh is the belief that God intends men to act as if THEY are God in the lives of their wives and daughters.  Pharaoh is the belief between two men that they have the right to drag an entire country into their private power struggle, as is happening right now in South Sudan.

To be human is to be held captive to something.

Being God, which WE are not, is to desire to free the captives and heal the prisoners. 

In Exodus 6:6-9 God reveals the actions that would free the slaves in Egypt.  They are actions that also would free the slaves now, today and in the future.  Because Exodus speaks to us, you and me, just as much as it did to the Hebrews in Egypt.

God will:

1.  Take us out from under the yoke of captivity. 

2.  Free us from being slaves to the captors.

3.  Redeem us with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

4.  Take us as God’s own people.

5.  GOD will be our God.  GOD will be our God.  The abuser will not be our God.

6.  We will know that God is God, the One who freed us from captivity to the yoke of bondage.  The yoke of bondage to someone, something or someplace.

When God speaks of possessing the lands that were promised to our spiritual ancestors, we can know that this is a promise to us as well.  God will care for our physical and spiritual needs.  We will possess a home that is safe and we will know that we are cared for. 

This does NOT mean that the original land of Israel is the promise.  It is NOT the promise.  But it does mean that God promises to take us from captivity and bring us to a place of love and safety.

Verse 9 tells us that when Moses spoke to God’s people, to the people whose care was given into Moses’ hands, they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.

Imagine what captivity would have been like for the Israelites.  They were in a foreign land.  In the beginning in that land they had been treated with respect and love.  They had been welcomed as a part of the people who already lived in Egypt.

As Pharaohs were born, ruled and died and new ones were born and rose to power the royal memory of the first Israelites that had come to Egypt faded.   A fear developed and grew that the numerous Israelites would swell in number to be greater than that of the indigenous population. 

And so the Pharaoh who was Moses’ adopted grandfather made the Israelite’s slaves.  The Israelites did the heavy lifting.  They made bricks, they built the buildings.  They sweated and heaved and endured harsh labor.  And they cried out to the Lord. 

Do you do someone else’s heavy lifting?  Do you sweat and heave and endure harsh labor?  Are you a victim in your own home, or do you know someone else who is? 

Despite the thousands of years that separate us today, here in Louisville, in the United States, from the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Israelites, despite the differences in cultures and language:  God speaks to us today through this Scripture passage just as God spoke through Moses to the Israelites all of those many, many centuries ago. 

When we are in pain and when we are burdened.  When we are in prison, whether a real prison or a psychological or spiritual prison, when we are held captive to something in our lives that is not GOD, we can cry out to God.  And God will tell that Pharaoh, that slave driver who keeps us in prison to let us go.  God will tell that person to let God’s child go!

It may not happen automatically or quickly.  It may be a process of our healing and being transformed by God into new people, as it was for the Hebrew people of Exodus.   It may be that God will give us a new life and new people in our new life.

But we can know that just as God took the Israelites as God’s own people and brought them out of the yoke of slavery in Egypt, God will bring us out of our own particular slavery, our own particular prisons.

When we despair, when we are frightened and we feel alone, when our burdens are too heavy and threaten to crush us, we can call on God for help.  And God will answer.

God will say to the demons:  LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!  And God will transform us so that the demons will have nothing to hold onto.  They WILL let go. 

The God of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah and Rachel is our God too.  We know God through God’s child, Jesus.  Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Leah and Rachel knew God in a different way, but they did know God.  And so did Moses. 

And you know what?   SO DO WE!!!!!

We also need to remember that God is not the God only of individual people and families, God is the God of economic systems that display and practice systemic injustice, and of countries where the leadership seeks to possess the power and control over other people that should rightfully belong to God.

I was a Presbyterian Delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in NYC earlier this month.  For a week I had the privilege of sitting with women and men from around the globe, learning about the status of women in many countries. 

I learned that many people are now saying that women’s rights are human rights, because when women are treated with dignity, educated and empowered to be full global citizens, ALL people benefit from the wisdom and strength that women bring to the table.  This movement towards justice and equality, towards the eradication of the Pharoah of patriarchy, is slow and sometimes its pace is broken and then healed.    I heard that the next level that this fight for justice but be taken to is the political level, where the economic power of Pharoah can be challenged and also can be resourced.

I learned about something called CEDAW.  The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, a landmark international agreement that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world.  CEDAW is an agreement that Presbyterian Women supports and its hallmarks are:  1.  Stop violence against women; 2.  Ensure educational opportunities; 3.  Increase political participation.  This is not unlike the three global initiatives of World Mission of stopping violence against women and children, educating children and the task of reconciliation in the world that in many ways is what politics should and could be about.

I learned that the United States has not ratified this agreement.  Presbyterian Women suggested that our vote to ratify this agreement, as Americans, is important for the world.  As the global leader of the free world, we must stand up for human rights, we must stand up for women and girls.  Who is our Pharoah?  What false idol must we cry out to the living God to free us from in order to be a part of the global journey to justice?

This week I read on line that 50% of the population of the country of Syria is now on the move; internally displaced from their homes and refugees in other countries as a result of the Pharoah that is holding their country captive to unspeakable violence.   Their President is playing Pharoah, he is unable to let go of power and control and say, no more fighting, killing, raping, bloodletting, do what is right for the well being of my people.

About a year ago in Nigeria the Nigerian government responded ineptly and weakly to the kidnapping of almost 300 young women and girls by a terrorist group which was able to take these females at gunpoint from a boarding school in a remote area of the country.  It was only after the parents somehow made this issue known to the international community that the government began to ask for international help in finding the girls.  Power and control did not want to admit to weakness and was willing to sacrifice these girls and their families on the altar of their desire to play God.    What plan are they going to come up with to educate young women, AND young men, when it is not safe to send them to boarding schools for their education?  The school had guards and that wasn’t enough.

 The terrorist group is known as Boko Haram.  The name literally means, “Western education is forbidden.” 

What can protect human beings from the kind of demonic power that believes that it can do whatever it wants to achieve its own ends and force its beliefs on the world?    Boko Haram has continued to kidnap and destroy and disrupt and cause terror.  

In South Sudan the power mongering of two men has set the entire country on fire with war, displacing over two million people, killing at least 50,000 people, turning male children into child soldiers, and leaving the country on the brink of famine as a civil war has raged for over a year now.

There is Ukraine where the eyes of Russia’s lust for empire have split and divided the ethnic populations one from another, people who have lived together peaceably for generations and years of time. 

The newest incarnation of evil is invading American homes through the television set every day and every night.  It is named ISIS, this particular pharaoh.  This pharaoh burns people alive, beheads innocent journalists and humanitarian workers and appears to hold the global community hostage as it acts out its doctrine of self-righteous justice.

What should our response as Christians be to these atrocities that are being committed, sometimes in the name of Christianity itself?   Our response should be, LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!  Often because of our own Pharaohs, our own captivity to the status quo, our response is to turn a blind eye. 

When we ourselves are healed we can cry LET MY PEOPLE GO on behalf of the people who are still captive and are too weak to be heard by the Pharaohs of this world.  I think that as part of the worldwide Christian community we also need to be considering, besides trying to kill evil with guns, what is the response that Christ would have us make to evil? 

Remember that at the beginning of this sermon I said that in our own individual lives when we cry out to God to free us from our Pharaohs, God will respond.  We will be changed and evil will no longer have a place to grasp us.  And this may take time.

We cannot expect this global evil to be eradicated tomorrow.  At the same time we cannot be defeated by what is happening.  Pharaoh is running loose in the world.  How can we dig up the roots that are the underlying cause for this evil, this Pharaoh, to have a stronghold in God’s world?  How we can be a part of the world being transformed as we ourselves have been transformed?

What does it take for Christians to get at the roots of the poverty and ignorance, or the misplaced understanding that has developed in an educated mind, that cause such evil to multiply and wreak such havoc? 

As an alternative to war, to cleaning out or destroying that may produce more evil instead of eradication, we must be asking Christ, how do we show such love, your love, that this hate, this evil, this Pharaoh will be transformed?

Let my people go, let our people go and thanks be to God for being our, and their, liberator, redeemer and sustainer.

 God opens wide God’s arms of justice and mercy and welcomes us, bids us to enter an embrace that will free us and make us whole.

We just have to cry out and then accept the invitation.

May the God of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Leah and Rachel boldly be your God as well. 

May you find the freedom in your own lives from your own prisons, from your own Pharaohs.  May the God who promises redemption fulfil that promise in your own life and in the lives of those who you love, and in the lives of the neighbors who surround you and in the life of our global community.

May God bless you and be with you as you embark on, or continue, your own journey to wholeness.  You know the saying, walk don’t run?  Well in this case, out of prison into God’s arms….run, do not walk! 

And our God says:  LET MY PEOPLE GO!  And it is so.

Amen.

SERMON: You are Forgiven!

“You are Forgiven”

Genesis 17:1-7

Romans 4:13-25

Beechmont Presbyterian Church

Rev. Debbie Blane

My visa has come through and I am working on my airline tickets for beginning the journey back to South Sudan.  It is about a two to three days journey.  I will leave Louisville one day and the next day or the day after I will be in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

I will be returning to a war-torn country, still warring, not yet at peace.  No one knows when, or if, peace will come. 

I teach theology at the Nile Theological College in South Sudan.  The college used to be in a place called Malakal, near the border with northern Sudan.  Malakal was destroyed early on in this civil war.  So now the college will be in Juba. 

I teach theology.  I consider this is a miraculous thing.  I will again teach theology to a group of students who are traumatized, wounded physically and emotionally and spiritually, and who may hate each other depending on how deep their tribalism reaches. 

While I was not evacuated from South Sudan with the war, many of my colleagues were.  I left the country on December 13, 2013 to have Christmas in Ethiopia; the violence broke out first in Juba on the 15^th of December.  I missed it by a whisper.

When I left I expected to back in South Sudan in a month, and I was to begin teaching again soon after that.  I was to teach the Theology class of Sin and Salvation. 

I see the irony in this.  Sin and Salvation.  And the great great gift.

A people have been plunged into evil darkness and I was to teach the class on Sin and Salvation.

Sin sucks a person dry.  It eats a person from the inside out.  Sin is hate.  Sin is the desire for revenge.  Sin is seeing one’s parents, one’s wife or husband, one’s children, murdered in front of you.  Sin is somehow escaping being murdered just to spend the rest of your life figuring out how to find justice for those murders.  You want to murder the person who murdered your people. 

That is sin.

Salvation.  That one is not quite as obvious. 

There are the folks that believe that saving a soul is salvation.  This may well be a part of salvation, but it is not the whole story.  Not by a long shot.

Salvation is learning how to live again. 

Salvation is learning how to bare one’s soul to Christ and say,

This is it.

This is who I am

I sinned

I killed

I hated

I was not merciful

And I hurt so bad now because of the things I did, the things that I thought, and the things that I wanted – that sometimes I want to die. 

Or I hurt so bad now because of the things that were done to me, the things that I thought, and the things that I wanted – that sometimes I want to do.

Sometimes salvation is doing one of the hardest things of all.

Sometimes salvation is knowing that we are forgiven.

Once we accept that forgiveness, then salvation becomes forgiving ourselves.

The passages today from our Scriptures tell us about God’s great, great faithfulness.  The passages also reveal to us that the one thing that really matters in the end is our own FAITH. 

Abraham’s FAITH was reckoned to him as righteousness.  Abraham was far from perfect.  In other parts of Genesis we find that Abraham at one point even passed off his wife, Sarah, off as his sister to save his own skin in an uncomfortable situation.  He put her in danger because he was afraid.  And still God established a covenant with Abraham. 

Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands when God was slow to provide the heir known as Isaac.  That chapter in our faith history illustrates some very dysfunctional family dynamics and yet God still established a covenant with Abraham.

In Romans, the Apostle Paul reminds us about the story of Abraham and the covenant.  This story is clearly important as a part of our own faith story. 

In the Presbyterian Church membership is open to all who have been baptized in the name of the Triune God.  After baptism the only requirement for membership is faith.  Do you believe in Jesus Christ?  Do you have faith in Jesus Christ?

There is an understanding that everything, EVERYTHING, follows from that faith.

Confession of sins.

Realization of how that sin has defined one’s life and the lives of those around us.

A realization that without Jesus Christ we are hollow shells of humanity.

Healing.

The most important piece of the journey, what changes us and brings us to our knees is knowing that:

WE ARE FORGIVEN.

We sin and we are forgiven.  The thing of it is that eventually the forgiveness leads us to becoming new creations.  That is, when we have faith in Jesus Christ and we live our lives from that faith, eventually we will become different people.

If I am an artist I will probably still be an artist, the core of who we are is still there.  The difference is how I see the world and the people around me.  I will see them from the eyes of a person that has been forgiven and healed.

THIS is what I will teach my students in South Sudan when I return to teach them about Sin and Salvation. 

Yes, you have done some terrible things.  Yes, you have had some terrible things done to you.  But the whole time Jesus was with you.  Not preventing the things, but instead walking with you, holding you, loving you.  And in the midst of the very worst of what you were doing, forgiving you.  And in the midst of the very worst that were being done to you, forgiving the person doing it.

As hard as it is to let go of the desire for revenge, our journey with Christ will enable us to be able to do that eventually.

I thank God for the messed up people that are portrayed in the faith stories in our Bible.  Through their mistakes and the humanity that is portrayed in their stories we can know that indeed even when we are the worst that we can be, we are still loved and we are still FORGIVEN.

Do not sin so that forgiveness abounds.  Instead know that the forgiveness and the healing that comes with that forgiveness will lead to having less of a tendency to desire sin. 

We are forgiven.  We are new people.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.