August 27, 2004

Of the struggles that beset Christians in this day and age, the inward battle raging within our hearts and minds is the most insidious.  We may very well be experiencing strife between ourselves and others, feeling oppression from those who simply don’t yet understand the higher life to which we’ve been called, and even sensing animosity towards the fact of our walking with Him, but the greatest conflict of all is fought within ourselves, the result of the clash of His newly established presence within us and the habits and attitudes of what we were before we came to know Him.

“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.  For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.  But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.  So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.  For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.  For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want” (Romans 7:15-19 NAS).

Sound familiar?  The World so often rants and raves at the antics of Christians (some who are perhaps so in name only), Christians who refer to the holy standard of the Righteous God, yet so often exemplify imperfection, failure and exhibit the very things that they condemn.

Does that mean that we Christians are hypocrites as we admonish the world to repent from sin and seek God’s face?  Do our failures in living perfectly coupled with our crying out for a return to holiness simply demonstrate that we Christians are simply being self-righteous and like tossing around commandments just to make other folks miserable?

No, not at all.  Just think for a moment on what it is that God is actually doing in you.  First, He receives you as you come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ, allowing His perfect sacrifice to pay for your sin.  “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2 NAS).

Secondly, He marks you invisibly with His own Holy Spirit so that His claim on you is secured and your confidence in His saving grace for you is anchored adamantly in Him.  “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the Gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14 NAS).

When you come to faith in Jesus, you are sealed with His presence in the person of His Spirit.  Take a look at yourself when you stand before Him thusly clad:  you are not a weak and defeated slave to sin, with the tattered and filthy rags of all your failures, overt rebellions and the junk of a fallen heart.  When you’ve really placed your faith in Him, you have been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus and the mantle of His presence has been laid upon your shoulders.

“…and [the Father] will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;  that is the Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you….  The Helper, the Holy Spirit, Who the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:16-17, 26 NAS).

The Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God at work in the world and in the hearts of God’s children.  Through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives today, the might of God is made available to us and we may count on His strength and resolve to deliver us from the chains of our old fleshly nature with all its baggage.

As we read His Word, the Bible, we can rest assured that He will indeed “teach us all things and bring to our remembrance His will for our lives” (from John 14:17).  Furthermore, as we pray, we may also count upon His help, struggle as we might to find just the right words.  “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He Who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27 NAS).

All of this is to simply say, that our Father has not intended for us to fight our war with sin on only our feeble strength of will.  He invites us… no, He implores us to turn to Him and invite His “wonder-working power” in the arena of our hearts.

When we read Romans 12:1-2, we find that if we seek every day to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices” to Him, He moves through our trust and obedience and does the work of transformation of our hearts and our minds.  A saturation of His presence trains our minds to think in different channels than has been our habit and allows us to “swim up the stream” of the conventional wisdom of the world.  It slowly but surely has the effect of loosening our flesh’s “vice grip” on our minds and habits as He starts cutting the chains of our old nature away and sets us free to live the liberated life that Jesus has promised us.

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make Our abode with him’” (John 14:23 NAS).

(Thom Mollohan has ministered in southern Ohio the past nine years and is the pastor of Pathway Community Church.   He and his wife are the parents of three children with another on the way!   He may be reached by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).