Thursday Reading: Romans 7:18-25
Key Verse: Romans 7:25
25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
Devotion:
Just when we think it is safe to go out and show people how good we can do we find that we have just gone and broken another law without thinking about it! How many times have you been in that boat? I know that I have been there many a time and I still find times when I seemingly leap out of the frying pan into the fire without thinking about it. Just as the apostle says, it seems to be something inside that we don’t want to find in ourselves...
It’s not that we go out of our way to do bad things, things just happen and we find that we have made yet another bad choice. It takes a long time to climb out of that sort of hole because the harder we try to dig ourselves out, the deeper we seem to sink into the hole. It’s not our will that is doing this, but it is our choice. We don’t want to, but we do. That is the sin within us... so when someone says that they don’t have any sin left inside of them, remind them of the fact that they chose to do the wrong stuff when they woke up this morning.
We read our bibles and we are encouraged by what we read. We know that what we are reading is the truth and it makes us happy that we can depend on it as the truth. We find strength in following God’s word. We delight in having His word... and yet within us there is still something tripping us up. No matter how much reading we do and how much learning we do, we still do have that sin nature deep inside of us. That is where we have an escape route because Jesus Christ came to lay down His life so that our sins could be forgiven. It did not mean we would stop sinning, but it does mean we can be forgiven; He will give us a ladder to climb out of the hole we have dug! Whether we jump right back into that hole afterwards is our choice!
Points to Ponder:
Do you think you are essentially a good person?
Are you asking God to forgive you for what you always seem to be doing?
