Have you ever sat alone, but completely filled with multiple voices in your head fighting and arguing? Maybe it is the battle between between pizza and salad, that is to say, your cholesterol score and your stomach. Or maybe it is the decision to take the winding country road versus the well traveled highway. It may even be the battle within yourself to return money that you’ve found somewhere or call it a blessing from God and move on with your life. For me, my greatest struggle is the struggle, not to do right or what is just, but to simply do anything. Yes I battle within myself to go to the gym in the morning. I battle myself to take a shower. I even battle myself to write this quiet time. All those things are a battle because I’d rather do nothing. I’m sure you battle yourself to do some of those very same things. Regardless of what it is that is within you, you have a struggle within yourself and the older you get, the more you struggle because there are more decisions to struggle with in life.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Romans 7:21-23 ESV)
We know the problem, we see that it isn’t a new problem, but an old problem, even faced by the greatest of the Apostles. But here’s the solution: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v25) If you struggle with yourself, which you probably do, more often than you know, then you need to give thanks to God because Jesus gives you a reason to stop struggling with yourself. Jesus saved you from sin so that this struggle you face is not one of void emptiness, but of purposeful hope and victory. The struggle you wrestle with, it’s a sign that the hard decision to do what’s right will be the right decision because you were meant for more than just the struggle. You were meant to strive through it.
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