Alive in Christ
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 7:17-25 (The Message)
Paul says so eloquently exactly how I feel at the moment. I confess...I was sitting and reflecting on the events of the past week and I can, with all honesty, say I have blown it. Just two Saturdays ago I lay at the foot of the cross a lot of junk I've been carrying around; I felt relieved to get rid of it and embarrassed that I had held on to it for so long. I came home truly desiring to continue the work God had begun. But then I allowed the circumstances surrounding me get in the way.
I confess...when the worship speaker was talking about a relationship with the Lord (since Super Summer is a leadership camp for Christian teens), I seriously wondered about the quality of my relationship with the Lord or if I even have one. Yes, I know the Lord. I acknowledge that I am a sinner. And yes, I accept what Jesus did for me. But if this past week is any reflection of the relationship that I have, I must conclude that I have none...or at least I have a very poor one.
Consider now what Paul says in Romans 8:5-11 (The Message).
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
I've been living a dead life this past week...by allowing worry, anger and a whole host of emotions to take up residence in my heart. Instead of focusing on God, I have focused on myself. My short-lived communion with God was not enough to sustain me through a difficult week.
So the question remains, why do I walk around like a dead-woman when I can be alive in Christ? A relationship with the Lord, or lack thereof, is the key.
"God, work in me. I submit to your Lordship and desire to be alive each day. Move me to cultivate the relationship with you that I know you desire for me. In Jesus Name, Amen."
It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 7:17-25 (The Message)
Paul says so eloquently exactly how I feel at the moment. I confess...I was sitting and reflecting on the events of the past week and I can, with all honesty, say I have blown it. Just two Saturdays ago I lay at the foot of the cross a lot of junk I've been carrying around; I felt relieved to get rid of it and embarrassed that I had held on to it for so long. I came home truly desiring to continue the work God had begun. But then I allowed the circumstances surrounding me get in the way.
I confess...when the worship speaker was talking about a relationship with the Lord (since Super Summer is a leadership camp for Christian teens), I seriously wondered about the quality of my relationship with the Lord or if I even have one. Yes, I know the Lord. I acknowledge that I am a sinner. And yes, I accept what Jesus did for me. But if this past week is any reflection of the relationship that I have, I must conclude that I have none...or at least I have a very poor one.
Consider now what Paul says in Romans 8:5-11 (The Message).
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
I've been living a dead life this past week...by allowing worry, anger and a whole host of emotions to take up residence in my heart. Instead of focusing on God, I have focused on myself. My short-lived communion with God was not enough to sustain me through a difficult week.
So the question remains, why do I walk around like a dead-woman when I can be alive in Christ? A relationship with the Lord, or lack thereof, is the key.
"God, work in me. I submit to your Lordship and desire to be alive each day. Move me to cultivate the relationship with you that I know you desire for me. In Jesus Name, Amen."
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