Be

SCRIPTURE: Prov. 1-3; Rom. 7

Romans 7:14-25
I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

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 [do something for me] 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.

OBSERVATIONS: I can will my arm to move and it does. But I can’t will my will to move. However, God can empower me to change my root causes, to overwhelm my broken culture of pseudo-power and replace it with a culture of real power through powerlessness. When God is the core, then I can operate out of who he wants me to be rather than to operate out of who I am toward who he wants me to be.

APPLICATION: Joey, you are already a new man. Be that man. Don’t live like you are trying to be that man. Don’t live in such a way as to become that man. BE that man.

PRAYER: God, you have changed me already. Keep at it, so I can keep at it. By the power of the Name, Amen.