The Battle is Real
Mat Dawson / Pastor of Student and College Ministries
My word for the year was (is) JOY which is hard for me in normal settings let alone the year that is 2020!! I am, by nature, more of a critic and coach and can often find the five things that I could do better than the one thing to find joy in. It annoys me that I get annoyed so easily and stay annoyed for so long, struggling to choose joy when I would rather explain why other attitudes would be more appropriate. If you are like me then you will find encouragement from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. He tells them:
These verses have left me encouraged and allowed me to have some grace for myself, that even though I fail at times to choose and maintain the attitude that God would desire me to have, I am still loved by Him and He still views me as His son and not a sinner. So, let’s keep “arresting our thoughts and presenting them to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), let’s keep leaning into our Savior, and let’s keep pressing forward with the knowledge that God’s love for us is much greater than our ability to always do the right thing.
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| Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash |
My word for the year was (is) JOY which is hard for me in normal settings let alone the year that is 2020!! I am, by nature, more of a critic and coach and can often find the five things that I could do better than the one thing to find joy in. It annoys me that I get annoyed so easily and stay annoyed for so long, struggling to choose joy when I would rather explain why other attitudes would be more appropriate. If you are like me then you will find encouragement from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. He tells them:
“For I know that good itself does not dwell 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 I do not do the good I want to do, but 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: Although 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 me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 7:18-8:1