Amazing Love

Ever feel like you're a total failure.

I know I do.

Every time I feel like I've got it figured out, I'm reminded once again as my face hits the floor that I don't have it all together.

If I were being completely honest, which is my intention in this blog, I fail... a lot. I've been struggling a lot with having positive thoughts this year - loving people and focusing on "whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure..." I feel like I'm constantly repenting and committing to not let it happen again.

And then it does.

This past week, I've been really discouraged. I know what the right thing is, but sometimes that little wire that connects your head to your heart shorts out.

Today it dawned on me. This whole time I've been trying to handle everything on my own. I didn't really asked for Christ's help unless I was asking for His forgiveness. Which is the complete WRONG way to go about fighting the devil. We should be praying for His help in the midst of temptation...

Then I started struggling with guilt. We've all been there. I was reading in Romans 6-8, though, and my view on guilt changed. Yes, we need to be repentant of our sins. But it is wrong to feel like Christ can't forgive our sins.

There is nothing special about us. 

We are saved sinners.

He died on that awful cross for all our sins...

Past
Present
and

Future


Even Paul said, "14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. ¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷ So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from 

this body of death?"

This seems discouraging, but the last verse gives hope!                       

^"25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

Chapter 8 goes on...

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.^[a] 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you^[b]free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,^[c]he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

Let that verse sink in. No condemnation in Christ. 

He is able to forgive and doesn't want us to live as slaves to sin. He paid a price so great for us to become slaves to righteousness. He loves us. Amazing Love.