"How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." Romans 10:15b

Praise for Our God and Prayer Requests

• Praise God for the healthy, joyful birth of Dennis and pray for the Lord’s blessing on the family of Rodica, Loti, Denisa and Dennis.
• Praise God for the evidence of His work in Simona’s life and the ways He is helping her grow.
• Praise God for His mighty provision for this home and for the handicapped that are being helped through Bob’s efforts and Lifeline Romania.
• Praise God for the work He is doing in the lives of these women and pray that they will continue to grow closer to Him, their children and each other.
• Please pray for God’s guidance and direction for us as we continue to seek new ways to minister to the women in the home, the people in the village and the teams that visit us.
• Please pray for wisdom and discernment in our relationships with the women and with each other so that God will be glorified.
  

Please let us know your prayer needs that we may keep you in our prayers as well.

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A Moment of Your Time

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 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!
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.  Romans 7:14-25

This was Paul the apostle speaking; the same man who went to several different countries and cultures preaching the Gospel to all who would listen. Here was a man chosen by Christ himself while on the road to Damascus to carry the great news of salvation to Jew and gentile alike. Paul was stoned, whipped, tortured and imprisoned for spreading the news of Christ and yet we read in these verses that Paul says he struggles with his own sin. Some scholars believe that Paul was writing about his life prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus. But careful reading of the text shows instead that he was talking about himself after he became a follower of Christ. So what does this mean to us? It means that if Paul, one of the greatest and most devout Christians of all time, was subject to sin after he met the Lord Jesus then we also, even though we may have accepted Christ, will continue to struggle with sin even though we are saved from the death that sin would bring.

Some religions would have you believe that once you accept Christ as your personal savior and believe in Him and confess Him with your mouth you will no longer sin. But Paul tells us here that that is not true. He met Christ face to face and was blinded during the encounter, he had a personal conversion take place in the presence of Christ and yet he admits that he still did things he did not want to do, he sinned.

Let’s look at another example.

We watched a movie the other night entitled Madagascar. In it four pampered animals, a lion named Alex, a zebra named Marty (Alex’s best friend), a hippopotamus, and a giraffe, escape from the New York Central Park Zoo and find themselves stranded on the island of Madagascar. Initially the island looks like a paradise but soon nature begins to take over and things change, especially for Alex. Without his daily meals of steak Alex’s instincts begin to take over and he finds himself seeing his friends not as friends, but as food. His growl becomes fearsome and his claws, which hadn’t appeared before, come out with a sharp vengeance and he finds himself attacking his friends. As in the preceding passage from Romans Alex found himself doing what he did not want to do rather than being the friend to his fellow creatures that he wanted to be. He becomes a slave to his instincts and the sins they drive him to. He even thinks of himself as a monster, doing things that he never would have considered doing before. Alex had a desire to do good and to be a friend to the other animals but his inner nature prevented him from doing that.

This is the same thing Paul is talking about in the passage. Rather than doing the things he knew were right he struggled with things that he hated and knew were wrong. Paul said that he knew that the law was good and he wanted to abide by God’s commands but he found himself doing things, because of his sin nature, that were opposed to God’s will for him. I am sure that if we had known Paul personally we would have thought that he was beyond reproach and could do no wrong, that he was probably the most righteous man on the earth since Jesus. I do not know what sin Paul was struggling with but any sin, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, is still a sin and Paul knew that.

So how about us? Do we do things we know are wrong? Does our sin nature sometimes win the battle over the spirit within us that tells us it is wrong? Do you sometimes hear a little voice inside you that says “this is not what God would have you do”? I know I have heard that voice, and I praise God for it because I know it is the Holy Spirit working in me to keep me on the right path. But I also have to admit that sometimes I do not listen to it and find myself, as Paul did, doing what I do not want to do. For example, I get very frustrated if I do a job or a project and then have to go back and redo it for some reason. And if I let that frustration build in me I find my mind flooded with thoughts that are not honoring to God or the people I am working with. Is frustration a sin? It is if we allow it to take control of us and change our attitudes. God wants us to serve one another with a cheerful and encouraging heart and if we let our frustrations control us we lose that joy and love that comes in serving God and others. If we let our sins go without correction they will overcome us. There is a rabbinic saying that goes: “Sin begins as a guest and ends up as master of the house.” (translation by Jim Edwards) Our body and soul is the house referred to here and what it means is if we do not acknowledge or sin, whatever it may be, and repent of it immediately through prayer, it can grow and become our master. If we get angry for some reason and don’t stop it immediately it will grow in us like a cancer and be more difficult to stop later on.

So how can we win this battle that is going on within us between our sin nature and our desire to do what is right in God’s eyes? In verse 14 Paul said “the law (meaning the commands of God) is spiritual.” Does that mean that the law can help us win this battle? That is what many of the Jews believed in Jesus’ time and that is probably what Paul believed before he met Christ. No, the law cannot save us. It is there to show us that we are sinning, not to save us from our sins. For example, you may not be feeling well; you are throwing up and have a headache but you do not know what is wrong so you go to the doctor. The doctor examines you and tells you that you have the flu. So are you well now that the doctor has told you that? No, the doctor has to give you the right medications to kill the flu virus and make you well. The Old Testament law is like the doctor telling you that you have the flu; it tells you what is wrong but does not fix the problem. So what can we do?

What did Alex the Lion do?

In an effort to save his friends, he ran away to another part of the island and built a cage in which to hide. He was not trying to protect himself from others, after all, he is the king of beasts, but he was trying to protect others from his own sinful acts. Did it work?

Knowing he was in trouble, his friends braved the dangers of the jungle to come after him just as Jesus braved the dangers and trials of this world to come after us. The other animals, particularly Marty, would not let Alex hide and suffer in his sin alone; they knew he needed rescue.  And whenever we are overcome with sin there is no place to hide and we cannot fight it on our own, we need the help of the Holy Spirit and other Christians as well to give us strength. Our sin nature is a powerful enemy that lives within us and takes every opportunity to turn us from the path of truth. God does not want us to hide in our sin or keep it to ourselves. Sin requires acknowledgement and repentance. If we do not acknowledge our sins they become a festering cancer within us and will devour us, keeping us separated from God and His blessings.

In Galatians (another letter written by Paul) verses 5:16 - 18 it says:

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

But how do we live by the Spirit as Paul tells us to do? There is another writer in the New Testament that can help us there. But this writer is very direct and tells us exactly what needs to be done and that is James. Some people may not like James because he tells us what we are and that is hard for us to hear. But he speaks the truth and this is what he says about winning the battle against our sinful nature.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.  James 4:1 – 10

This is an ongoing battle because even though we may have received Christ as our Savior we still are human and have that sinful nature in us trying to overcome the good that comes through the Holy Spirit. We are not strong enough in ourselves to defeat this sinful nature that has been around since the fall of Adam but the strength we need comes through Christ and the Holy Spirit working in us. This does not mean we will not sin, Paul admitted he struggled with sin. And it is not an excuse to sin, sinning is always an offence to God and willful sinning is rebellion against God. But it means that when we fall into the trap of sin set by our own sinful nature we can come back to Christ on our knees, humbled before him, with true repentance in our hearts, and be forgiven.

So what happened to Alex the lion? In the end he was changed. He actually gave up his desire for stake and instead ate fish. And that is what we need to do too. We need to change, as it tells us in Romans 12:1 and 2, giving up our desires for the things of this world in favor of the things of God. Then we will have strength to overcome our sinful desires and become the people God wants us to be through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Another word of encouragement comes from Romans 8:1 – 3.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

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