Craig T. Owens

Can you relate to this?

     I know the right things I’m supposed to do, and I also know the wrong things I’m not supposed to do. I try my very best to do the right and avoid the wrong, but far too many times I find myself not doing the right things, and (even worse) discover I’m doing the wrong thing.

     I say, “Enough of this!” and I vow (again!) to stop doing the wrong things, and I redouble my efforts (again!) to begin doing the right things. It seems like this is working, but only for a little while. Then I’m right back into the same old habit of doing those wrong things again.

     It shouldn’t be this hard! After all, it’s so easy to tell right from wrong. So why do I keep on doing the wrong things?! Why can’t I keep on doing the right things?!

     Is there any hope for me? (my paraphrase of Romans 8:17-24) 

If you’ve ever felt like that, you’re in good company because that’s just how the Apostle Paul said he struggled with right and wrong. But keep on reading, because he also shared how he overcame this struggle. He said, “Those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.”

The Holy Spirit can help you do right, and avoid wrong. But you have to yield to Him.

I love what A.J. Gordon wrote—

“It costs much to obtain the power of the Spirit: It costs self-surrender and humiliation and a yielding up of our most precious things to God; it costs the perseverance of long waiting, and the faith of strong trust. But when we are really in that power, we shall find this difference, that whereas before, it was hard for us to do the easiest things, now it is easy for us to do the hard things.”

How would you rather live: finding it hard to do the easiest things … or finding it easy to do the hardest things?