The struggle
While the question is about what I do, the reality is about who I am…
Paul writes about the struggle we all face – we do what we don’t want to do; we all grapple with temptation and sin. Some days we win, and some days we lose.
The lie is that we are that sin; the lie is that we will never overcome.
The truth is that the sin is a totally separate thing from who we are, and that makes all the difference. Neil says it this way: I am not sin and I am not a sinner. I am a saint struggling with sin which causes me to do what I don’t want to do.
When I finally get a hold of that truth, I no longer feel unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness. Those feelings become a cycle of failure. I think I need to be done with them.
It’s as much my responsibility to maintain right thinking as it is to maintain right behavior.
My prayer for today is this: Lord, may I have both the discipline to keep my thinking in line with your word, and my actions as well.
Neil says it, the sin we commit, is like a splinter in our skin. The splinter is bad but it does not make every part of us bad. Satan tries to make us believe once we have that splinter we are entirely bad.
ReplyDeletePaul is crying out in Romans why do I do these things, I don’t want to do. You can hear his internal struggle and his desire to do the right thing. The temptation has quite a grip on him and you can feel it in the words he chooses to tell us he is doing the wrong thing, he sees himself doing the wrong thing and he hates it.
I pray this day for my eyes to be on Jesus and just keep praying and thanking God that sin does not make the entirety of me bad, once removed and forgiven the sin is gone.