Raise your hands if you gave up chocolate for Lent on Wednesday, then realized the next day, yesterday, was Valentine’s. Are your really going to tuck away that red heart shaped box filled with mouthwatering choices? Can you withstand the temptation? Are you going to claim Sunday as a “king’s x” day and gobble down a few of them after church? Or will you chew now and confess later?
How easy is it to make resolutions and vow to make a change. How easy is it to be tempted at a drop of the hat to not keep that vow, or to find wiggle room in the rules to, well, have our chocolate in life and eat it, too. But what are we risking in return?
We all have good intentions when it comes to our Christian walk. We want to change, be more Christ-like, and bend to God’s will. Adam and Eve knew that push-me pull-you feeling. So did Paul.
For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15)
Human nature. We can’t do it on our own, can we? Paul goes on –
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. 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. (vs 18, 20)
But Christ shows us a higher road, a better way that He has not only paved, but traversed. We only will succeed when we let God’s will control our thoughts and actions.
…because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2)
That’s a vow God makes to us, and He, though tempted while on earth, never gave in.
It’s not about what’s inside that heart shaped box of chocolates–it is about what’s inside the heart itself.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
Good One!
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