The Battle Within
The Battle Within
The flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. (Gal. 5:17)
Cage Fighting
The Bible tells us a war rages within us like a cage fight in our soul. The moment you put your faith in Jesus, He breathed His own nature into you. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). That’s the reality. You really are a new man, re-created in Christ Jesus for good works (see Eph. 2:10). That’s who you are at your core. Yet the battle against sin is not over. Something “old” remains in us.
Why Is This So Hard?
You have a habit of trying to satisfy your deepest wants in ways that are destructive toward yourself and others and are an affront to God. And that history—that “old man”—is kicking and screaming and lying to you. So you hate sin, but you love it, fighting it and then going back to it. The key question is this: Who will you trust to fulfill the desires God gave you?
We need to get two big ideas into our thick skulls: (1) God really wants to fulfill our deepest yearnings; we can trust Him not to rip us off. (2) Only God can win this battle in our heart, so we need to keep asking Him to empower us.
Bottom Line
The fight against sin is a fight about who you’re going to trust. Will you trust your old ways (the old man), or the God who gave you Jesus?