Struggles

To struggle is to proceed with difficulty. That's what the dictionary says anyway. I am in a season of struggles. There are various things going on in my life and I pray about them as I should. Some I can do nothing about. Others I can do something about and this is where the sin lies. This is where I choose to obey or not. God gives us the power to obey. I have to want to give the problem to Him. Sometimes I just want to hold onto it and dream about it and think about it.

Lately there has been one particular problem that I'm feeling overwhelmed with. It's an area of weakness that the enemy enjoys making worse. Even now I'm struggling as I write this. I had a particularly rough time this week with it and it's amazing how daily devotionals can be used by God to zing us with the Truth at just the right time. I was reading one by Marilyn Meberg. The reference is Romans 7:18-25.

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Sounds confusing? It is...I am just as confused. But the Truth is this...Jesus, in His perfection, paid the price for our imperfection. As Marilyn says, "Behind this huge relief effort is God's love, a stubborn love that will not let me go, a love so tenacious, so gracious, so unfathomable that He willingly made a new covenant with me at the highest price. That covenant is designed to assure me that in spite of poor performance, I am His and He is mine."


It's just one of those things that I will daily turn over to the Lord or try to do so anyway. There will be days of defeat and "poor performance" and other days of relief and victory. The problem may go away for a time but then return when I am at my weakest or least expect it. He will still love me in spite of it all.