“Falling prey to sin, however significant or insignificant it may seem on the surface, will eat away at your soul.” Jonathan Pokluda
Ever felt that before… something ‘eating away at your soul?’ I certainly have and it does not feel great. And 9.999999x out of ten, the cause of my soul being torn apart is because I did the very thing I did not want to do. Or as the Apostle Paul so eloquently said…
“I want to do what is right, but I can’t.”
Romans 7:18 (NLT)
I want to do the right thing… but I don’t.
I want to say the right thing the right way… but I mess that up.
I want to think thoughts that honor God… but far too often the narratives playing on repeat in my mind fall woefully short of that.
Not sure if that ‘struggle’ resonates with you but for the better part of a few decades, that’s been my reality. But here’s a fresh insight that was given to me this past week by a good friend. And for the sake of protecting my friend’s identity, I’ll just refer to this ‘friend’ as Jason Corbin, XP at GENESIS. Here’s the fresh insight my ‘friend, Jason’ helped me see through a super helpful question…
“WHERE IS JESUS?”
In other words, when the struggle to do what God wants you to do is at its height, where is Jesus in that moment? Or, if you did the very thing you didn’t want to do, where is Jesus in that moment?
Simple enough question but also a transformational question and here’s why. In Romans 7, Paul talks about the ‘battle of the flesh’, or the ‘sinful nature.’ Well, when the battle of the flesh is raging it’s easy to focus either on the battle itself or the very thing that the ‘flesh’ is desiring. Or after losing the battle to the ‘flesh’ it’s easy to focus on ‘feeling bad’ about how you did once again the very thing that you hate doing.
And here’s the thing… the moment our eyes turn away from Jesus towards other things (whatever those are), we’ll fall prey to what Paul described in Romans 7… doing what we hate.
What my ‘friend Jason’ reminded me of this past week was simply this… and yes, I did write this in my journal like this…
FOCUS ON JESUS AND THE FLESH & OUR FAILINGS WILL FALL AWAY
Will there still be a battle? Of course. But when the battle is raging, just ask yourself the question… ‘Where is Jesus?’ And the answer will always be… HE IS WITH YOU. Focus on Him and receive His Power and His Grace.
