MONDAY
If you’re like me, at various points in your life you’ve experienced a strong desire to change, to progress and better yourself or your circumstances. I spent my summers in High School working a job installing and finishing wood floors. After feeling the back pain and knee pain I experienced as a teen doing this work, I could only imagine the pain my body would experience as an adult. This led me to decide that I would rather work with my mind for a living and go to college, spend lots of money and spend countless hours studying content even tangentially related to my major.
In another instance, also in High School, I remember desperately wanting to dunk a basketball. I had played all my life, stood at almost 6’2” and couldn’t dunk! So I committed a summer workout program (while working in wood flooring…lest I wonder why my knees hurt so much now) to developing my jumping ability. I committed lots of hours to jumping and lifting weights. At the end of the summer I could dunk with ease.
You’ve likely experienced something like this in your life. Perhaps you desired to change your career, financial situation, relationship status, healthy habits, etc. This desire to change and progress is of course a good thing that we all share to varying degrees as humans. The popularity of self-help books reveals this desire to change is a common one in our human experience, as well as one that we struggle to actually do. This is an interesting dynamic. We want to change, we recognize the value and extreme importance of it, but we so often fail to carry it out. I used to work as a personal trainer and every year I’d witness the same routine. January the gym would be full, daily. By March most of those folks who had made New Year’s resolutions would have given up.
For many of us, this is how we feel in our Christian life. In the examples I gave above, I’m talking about progressing in other areas of life but the same holds true for growing in our faith. We all understand, generally, Paul’s experience with sin that he documents in Romans 7. This is because he is using himself as a representative of all humanity and our bondage to sin.
Romans 7:15–23 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 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. 19 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. 20 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. 21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 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.
The question we are driving at this week is how do we actually change? We buy self-help books looking for the magic pill (healthy living books for the literal magic pill) or the one habit that will stick and make me a better person. Later on in the week we will take a deeper look into the alternatives to the gospel for life change. Tomorrow, however, we will see the surprising good news in the gospel that makes it completely irresistible.
Reflection
How have you experienced life change in your past? Think of some stories of personal growth in your career, health, relationships, etc. What did you do to progress and better yourself in those instances?