<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil that I do not want to do \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this I keep on doing. 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 who does it.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> (Romans 7:15-24)<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Remember the movie \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Groundhog Day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>? Phil Connors (Bill Murray) goes to bed on the evening of February 2 (Groundhog Day) only to wake up the next morning on February 2 (Groundhog Day) \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 again. Everyone in town, except Phil, is unaware that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re repeating the same day. Phil goes to bed the night of his second Groundhog Day and wakes up the next morning only to find out that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s February 2 (Groundhog Day) \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 again!<\/p>\n In the movie, Phil knows he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s repeating the same day, so he varies his actions, pulls outrageous stunts, and changes his routine day after day \u00e2\u20ac\u201c anything to break out of this apparent time-warp. The townspeople, completely unaware that the day is repeating itself, act exactly the same, go through the same motions and give the same greetings day after day.<\/p>\n Sometimes I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m repeating Groundhog Day \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 except everyone else is outside the time-warp, conducting their lives, moving from one day to the next. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the one stuck; repeating the same motions, day after day, trapped in my old habits, unable to move forward. Every morning I know what I want to do, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it; instead, by habit, I do what I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to do, and Groundhog Day repeats itself \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 again.<\/p>\n Sound familiar?<\/p>\n Paul was in the middle of writing a letter to the believers in Rome when he started in on, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> Paul was talking about sin. I imagine that Rome wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a place very conducive to living a righteous lifestyle. It was the capital of the empire and everything<\/em> was available. Kind of like pushing together Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and adding public hot tubs.<\/p>\n Earlier in his letter to the Romans, Paul explained that, if they had been born again in Christ, they had died to sin \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they were no longer slaves to its power. Through his death, Christ covered man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sin, and no matter how much sin increased, God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grace through Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sacrifice increased even more to cover it. So man was free from sin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power and consequently free from sins death penalty!<\/p>\n Why then, if Christ beat sin and man was no longer in it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evil control, was Paul admitting that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>? If he was set free from sin why hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anyone told his body? Ahhh \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the problem, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n In my mind, Christ has set me free from sin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power, but my body lags behind, still following those same trails I cut when sin had me in its grip. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like there are two me\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/em> fighting for control; the re-born me, who delights in God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s law, and the old me, abiding inside the members of my body, still following those old habit patterns of sin and death. So that, even though I want to do the right thing, I find myself doing the wrong things.<\/p>\n Woe is me! How am I ever going to get out of this miserable existence?<\/p>\n At least Paul found himself in the same spot, and so, apparently, did the Romans. If we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been born again and set free from sin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power, how come we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still trapped in the middle of it? Paul gives a simple and profound answer; one that I had missed over and over again.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thanks be to God \u00e2\u20ac\u201c through Jesus Christ our Lord! So, then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> (Romans 7:25)<\/p>\n I knew Paul was trying to give me the answer, but I never could figure out just what he was saying the answer was. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thanks be to God \u00e2\u20ac\u201c through Jesus Christ our Lord!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em>Yup, great; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m all for that, Thank you Lord, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve set us free \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 now what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the answer. After the Thanks be to God<\/em> thing, Paul is right back where we started \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I myself in my mind am a slave to God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to be an answer in there somewhere!<\/p>\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when the Holy Spirit shined a little flashlight on the spot I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been missing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thanks be to God \u00e2\u20ac\u201c through Jesus Christ our Lord!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/strong><\/em> That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the answer! \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 through Jesus Christ our Lord!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/strong> I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d read that passage a hundred times and every time I read it: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ThanksbetoGodthroughJesusChristourLord!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> All one train going down the track, like ThankyouJesus!<\/em> I was looking for the answer after<\/em> the sentence, not in<\/em> the sentence!<\/p>\n Question:\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Who will rescue me from this body of death?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/strong><\/em>Answer: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jesus Christ our Lord!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Ding! The lights are now on!<\/p>\n When Jesus paid the penalty of sin by laying down his life as a sacrifice for all of us, he broke its power<\/em><\/strong> to control us. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like every person in the world was lying in a dark prison cell, shackled hand and foot with heavy chains. Jesus, in his act of redemption (buying us back from sin), entered the prison and went around to each inmate and turned a key that opened the lock that fastened our chains. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shake off the chains and walk us out of prison; he opened the locks that held our chains fast.<\/p>\n Before Christ rescued us by his death, we were powerless to break free of our chains no matter how hard we struggled because the lock that held the chains in place was still locked. But now that Christ has turned the key and opened the lock that gave sin its power, all we have to do is shake off the chains and walk out of prison! The chains are still there, still wrapped around the members of our bodies, but lock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been opened, the chains by themselves can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hold us! That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the answer!<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spent any time in church or listening to motivational speakers you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard the story of how circus trainers keep elephants fastened to a stake. Adult elephants, of course, are too powerful to be held by a rope fastened to their back leg, tied to a stake. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll simply pull with their fastened leg and jerk the stake from the ground. An adult elephant is too strong to be held in place by a single stake.<\/p>\n But the circus trainer knows this, so he starts when the elephant is just a baby, just learning to walk about. The trainer drives a stake into the ground and fastens one end of a rope to the stake and the other to the baby elephant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leg; when the animal realizes its back leg is tied it goes berserk! It jerks and pulls and runs around the stake and hollers, but the baby elephant doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the strength to free itself by pulling the stake from the ground.<\/p>\n Exhausted by the struggle and failed attempts to free itself, the baby elephant eases its fight against the stake and learns to live within the confines of the rope tied to its leg. In time the elephant gives up pulling against the stake entirely. It knows that as long as the rope is tied around its leg it will never be free from the stake, so it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother trying. The baby elephant grows into an adult and that rope is still there and the adult elephant never pulls against it to try the stake. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how you keep and adult elephant in check.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to talk about chains and locks and ropes and stakes for the next few weeks. If we are really only held in place by chains with no locks or a rope tied to a stake that we could easily pull from the ground, why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we free ourselves? Come back next week; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll work on that.<\/p>\n Until then, give that rope a little tug.<\/p>\n In Jesus,<\/p>\n Steve Spillman<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[759,760,252],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353,"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gotpotential.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}