April 21
“I buffet my body and make it my slave…lest I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:27)
In the previous days we talked about having a godly life purpose and a plan to help us accomplish that purpose. Today’s principle, readying ourselves and preparing for temptation, is similar only on a much shorter time scale, the daily struggle with sin and temptation. Too often, we have noble goals of what we want to accomplish for the Lord, but we don’t do what is necessary on a day to day basis to get very far down that road. We end up failing time and again with things that we should be overcoming, things over which by now we should have gained the victory, but which cause us to fail day after day, time after time.
Sometimes we may find that we gain victory for a season, a week, a month, perhaps a year or more, only to find ourselves back to square one, struggling with sins we thought we had already overcome. This cycle of sin can be very discouraging, because we begin to lose hope that we will ever achieve victory over our sins. When we stumble again over that which we thought we had gained the victory, Satan wants us to feel defeated and hopeless. He wants us to feel shame, condemnation, and abandonment by God so much so that he is hoping we will give ourselves fully to the sin and not even try to overcome it anymore.
But don’t be fooled by his deceit and lies. Even though we stumble a thousand times, God’s grace is a million times greater, and His power to enable us to overcome is limitless and as available as ever. His love and compassion for us endures, and He is faithful, even though we aren’t. We can feel so unworthy of His love and grace that we don’t even want to bother or even (we might erroneously think) anger or disgust Him by asking for His forgiveness, yet again. We can’t see any way that He would forgive us and restore us after what we’ve done.
If you have ever felt like that, here is a key thing to keep in mind: it is not our strength or determination that enables us to avoid sin. It is not my resolve or my wisdom or my integrity. If it were up to our efforts, Satan would make us all into duck soup before we even knew our feathers were being plucked.
Our victory from start to finish rests on Jesus, His perfection, His holiness, His victory, His power, His integrity, His wisdom, His faith, His abilities. When we stumble, including areas that we thought at one time we had the victory, it is not that we became weaker or more careless (although those indeed might have been contributing factors) but that we lost sight of Christ and our commitment to follow and obey Him. We might have become proud or lazy, or we got to the point where we took our victorious walk for granted and felt invulnerable. But no matter how many times you stumble, never give up, and never lose hope. In Christ, we have all the victory we need. The ability ours there, the resources are ours, the victory is ours. The victory has already been won nearly two thousand years ago. Christ is not defeated no matter how many times we sin, and His Holy Spirit indwelling us is more powerful than the devil and the flesh and the world, no matter how many times we fail.
To be continued tomorrow.