The spirit is willing, but….

Doesn’t this animation say it all?

This is about as far as we get in trying to please God in the strength of the flesh.

I don’t think I ever worked so hard at something with fewer results.

Jesus Himself said, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  Matthew 26:41  Isn’t that precisely the story of Romans 7:18?  It is also the description of the quandary I found myself in trying to overcome sin in my life.  So much effort…so little results.  If willingness was what worked…well, the apostle Paul and I (and maybe you, too) would have walked in holiness with complete success.

Thankfully, I had at least narrowed down where the problem lay.  It wasn’t that I still had a sin nature…or that I had been made righteous only “positionally”.  It wasn’t that my old man hadn’t died, it was that when he died he left behind a body…an unredeemed, unchanged, weak one at that.  And although recreated in the likeness of God, a new creation in my spirit, that body was still causing me untold trouble.

However, I was about to discover something glorious.  Because of what Jesus had accomplished on my behalf, now my spirit was not only willing….it was willing and able !!!!

Please read or re-read the posts A Question Remains and Why Do I Still Sin? that correspond with today’s comments and image.

My story continues here