Can I just express me? Can we have this conversation? I guess it is the high time we do. I couldn’t get an appropriate tittle for this essay and I had to call it raw because it is my thoughts; my raw thoughts.

Let us talk on the issue of sin. Does it not bother you like Paul that there is a constant pull and push between the spirit and the flesh? A daily battle that we have to constantly fight and overcome. It really baffles me that most often, I find myself doing all the bad things that I tell myself I should not be doing.

And the feeling of guilt when you really fell short of the right things? How it eats you from within and really brings that gap between you and God? I guess I can relate with Paul as he wrote Romans 7:15-20.

15.  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature^[d] a slave to the law of sin.

But here is the revelation to this, our bodies are corrupt by nature and as such it is only normal that we behave in a sinful way. When we receive Christ, we now put on a new self and is contrary to the corrupt default nature. This is what brings the conflict. This war we have to constantly engage in and win.

So really this is just a short encouragement to all of us who are constantly faced with evil and the temptations we have to daily overcome. We may have fallen short along the way but we are not defined by our mistakes. Sometimes we will be knocked out but we have to wake up brush up and keep walking.

Our bodies will always want the corrupt but we have to fight the sinful nature and walk in holiness and righteousness.

Have you fallen? Don’t stay in that pit. Wake up and wipe the dirt off, wash up and get going.

We will make it.

Refuse to be defined by sin. Desire a better definition of you.

I hope I made sense.

Shalom.