If there really is a God, and He has revealed enough of His character and plans in scripture that we can truly understand what His priorities are for His creation, then why do we not look into God’s Word with more fervor and consistency? And why, after discovering His ways and weighing them against our own, are we so apt to disregard them and do what we want anyway? Most of us really don’t have room for God on the throne of our lives. It seems that we instinctively want everything, especially control. Truly, we are an incurably proud race. As the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer.17:9)
Thankfully, God’s understanding of us, His mercy & grace for us, and His plans to redeem us go way beyond our hearts! Today, this sinner is thankful for God’s grace in Jesus!
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I 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 I do not want to do—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 that does it. So 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’s 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? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:14-25)
