I suck at this whole do not sin thing. I really suck. I wish I did not. But I do. I really really do. Sin is fun and anyone who says different is lying. Some weeks it is easy because I am so sick of sinning that I have no want. You can only lick up your own barf so many times before it stops tasting good. But after taking a break, eating good stuff the barf starts looking appealing again because I forget how sick it makes me and then it's back to eating it.
It starts with just a glance back. Then a sniff. Maybe a lick. "Oh this is good, kinda like pizza with Chinese in it." All the way until I am full on devouring it. And this continues until I am sick again. A vicious circle to say the least.
So what happens that causes me to turn back, to forget? I think a lack of strength. I am always trying to change, to turn away from sin on my own accord. Never asking help from the One that bought my freedom. Why? I do not know. No, literally I do not know how. I have spent most of my life half-assking for help, but once sin starts looking good again I drop Jesus like a gay guy drops the soap. Sin is fun. I hate it, but it feels really good (for a moment) and is really fun. Paul's anguish at the end of Romans 7 echos that of the wrestling of my own heart.
"18 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. 20 But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. 21 I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me."
So how am I going to get out of this? I still am unsure how, but I know it has to start with Jesus. He is the only way out. Paul says in the next chapter as much
"3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that."
I want to remember this. To own it. To believe wholeheartedly that I no longer need to fight against something that has already died. I want to figure out how to apply this. How to ask for help and trust that that will be enough.
Lord, thank you for your grace. Teach me it. I pray that I am constrained by it to a life wholly and deeply Yours. Here's to the good fight. May you grant my the ability to trust your strength. Set me right. Again help me, for even while I write this I want nothing more to run off and do that which I hate.
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