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Why is it so difficult to live life, if we are Christians, in the way that we know down deep that we should be living?

Even when we desire with all our heart to live as Christ desires us to, the more we desire and strive to live as He would have us to strive, the more we struggle, the more we seem to go backward. Some give up and "go with the flow", and coast in the direction along with unbelievers around us who are following the world's way. It seems they are having it much easier then we are. And, it they are, its not as easy for them as we would like to think they are.

But the Christian experience seems to confirm the expression "the faster I go the behinder I get".

If we look at and ponder the past (and present) of our lives, from a distance from where we are in life now, it can be defined by the priorities that we have lived by.

Sometimes we want to pray "Lord please save me from myself". We are not alone in our experience::

"So I find it to be the law [of my inner self], that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully delight in the law of God in my inner self [with my new nature], but I see a different law and rule of action in the members of my body [in its appetites and desires], waging war against the law of my mind and subduing me and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is within my members Wretched and miserable man that I am! Who will [rescue me and] set me free from this body of death [this corrupt, mortal existence]?" - Romans 7:21-24

Nothing happens to us that is not happening to all, in some way or another.

All have been born with a human nature as the result of what happened in the Garden of Eden. What happened has been passed on to all of humanity because when one sins, it is passed on to all. The perfect man and woman that God created corrupted their innocent nature by disobedience. That nature has passed on to all since that time. The differences in the sin in all are there because the human spirit is almost limitless in capacity for evil. But it also has a certain capacity for good. Therefore, we all struggle with the ultimate conflict.

But the believer in Jesus Christ enables us with the help of the Holy Spirit to recognize and resist the sin principle. As we do so, we slowly push the sin tendency deeper and deeper away from the sin inclinations.

Because of these hereditary factors, along with environmental influences, when someone begins to believe in Jesus Christ to save them, the inherited factors tend to dictate the degree of struggle one has with sin. Even with the loving influence of the Holy Spirit, as He guides us, some are harder to turn from sin and the environment influences of their lives.

Some of us are simply harder to turn. Because of inherited proclivities, environmental and other influences of the society, there is a constant struggle with our inherited nature.

Someone once said to a large group in prayer: "Lord please turn us...for we are hard to turn".

And so it has been. And so it is.

But there is hope again expressed by the Apostle Paul. I have often thought if it were not for this scripture, life would very difficult indeed...

"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors and gain an overwhelming victory through Him who loved us [so much that He died for us]. For I am convinced [and continue to be convinced—beyond any doubt] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present and threatening, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the [unlimited] love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:37-39.

"Today's Little Lift" from Jim Bullington

Mercy and not Sacrifice (Sept. 29, 2010)