God's Dynamite: The Battle Within

"It was on fire when I lay down on it."  Robert Fulghum wrote about reading this statement in a small town newspaper.  

Smoke was billowing from a second story window.  The Fire Department arrived, broke down the front door, ran up a set of stairs, and pulled a man off a burning bed.  Later, when they asked him how he got in that predicament, he said, "It was on fire when I lay down on it."

Why on earth did he do that?  We don't know, but his story reveals a human truth.  We often do self-destructive things.  We testify, "People told me not to do it, but I did it anyway."  "I knew it was wrong, but I did it."

The apostle Paul wrote about our human propensity to sin and self-destructive behavior in Romans 7:14-25.  Verse 15 sums up his point, "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do and what I hate I do."  

He describes an intense inner battle.  On one side is the "flesh," his sinful nature, that pulls him to sin like gravity.  On the other is the "Spirit," the Holy Spirt, which pulls him to obedience to God.  He desires to do good, but evil is always there with him, like a smelly dog who just won't go away!

After describing this battle in anguishing terms, Paul exclaimed, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?"  His quick answer, "Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord."  God rescues us from this battle through Christ.  Through his grace and mercy demonstrated in Christ.  

We can all recognize this battle within ourselves.  We can be tempted to give up.  But we rest in the facts that God has already forgiven us in Christ and that his Spirit lives in us.  We rest in God's grace but at the same time, we continue to strive to follow the Spirit.  As the poet Robert Browning once said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp."

Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!