Tension.

I had dinner tonight with a friend from high school and it was fantastic.

We briefly joked about the silly things we did when we were younger like "ding-dong-ditching" or making a band.  But the majority of our conversation was about what God has been doing in our lives, our churches, our purposes, the beauty of the cross, and Jesus.  

One of the main parts of the conversation was focused on sin in our lives and how to defeat it.

To me, this is what it boils down to - there is a tension.

Everyday we face a tension between surrendering to the flesh, ourselves and our worldly desires, or surrendering to God.  Do we choose to worship the man-made gods that consume our lives, be it school, work, success, approval, etc.?  Or do we constantly worship the only One ever worthy of all praise?  Do we let our desires reign in our lives and find satisfaction in fleeting things?  Or do we find all that we need in God who will always satisfy?  

It is a daily battle to defeat sin in your life, to serve God and not man.  

It is a constant tension.

[For I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.  So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.  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.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to is what I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 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.  Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! -Romans 8:15-25]

I am constantly reminded of this passage; Paul is laying out the struggle of the flesh in us and power that sin can have in our lives.  I am struck by this - "For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out."  I feel that.  I, alone, am powerless to the desires of my flesh, to the things of this world.  We need something more, something greater than ourselves.  We need to surrender.  He continues in chapter 8 - "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.  But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. v. 9-10, 13"  

We cannot defeat sin; it is the Spirit in us that sets us free and gives us life.  Death is the inevitable outcome of the sin intertwined in all that we are - but, the beauty of Christ is the life that He gives.