DAY 12

12-15-09

God has been teaching me and showing me His Holiness and His love INCREDIBLY!
Last night is when I received this message through our youth leader..but I will post today because I feel like this is what my mind and soul will be meditating on.

God took me back to the day I spiritually fell (see previous blog entries), not only to explain that He understands...but to assure me that He keeps His promises, and has Always Understood...

my question, frustration and disappointment at the fall was especially because it was exactly in the time I deeply long to become closer to God, to know Him more and more!! How can this happen! I was upset I failed myself and God.

The leader asked us to open and think on Romans chapter 7: 13-25.

An analogy to the "law" Paul 'discovers' can be the law of gravity, for instance. On earth, it doesn't matter what area you are in, or what country, you are living with laws of gravity.

The Law that every human being is a sinful nature is a law one cannot ignore or get rid of. If one claims to have no sinful nature because he/she is forgiven, more than likely, that person is actually under the CONTROL of his/her sinful nature. His state of spirituality is one like the Pharisees, where by works, one thinks of himself as holy, and may as well appear to be.

However, it is in the process of yearning and longing to grow in His Holiness, when our sinful nature is reflected and exposed by His light, and that is when we become aware of the sinful nature that SINS, that FALLS, because it is law. so therefore; "we do what we dont want to...and don't do that what we want to do!!"

The difference is in the fact that, when we become aware, we now understand our dependence on God, and that without Him, we cannot conquer the sinful nature. Although it will always be a part of who we are (even when we are Born-Again), we are now continuously acknowledging and battling the sinful nature within us.

God WANTS us to be aware of the fact that we are sinful! if we were able to live perfectly Holy, we would find no need for God and His forgiveness! We are Broken by Sin, God put us back together, but the crack remains and is always threatened to break again. It is impossible to live without God holding us. It is impossible to conquer sin until we acknowledge the law of our sinful nature and our Dependence on God.

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13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For 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. 20Now 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.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but 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. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.