Like you, I believe the Bible to be the infallible truth of God, and so when it says that I am a new creature in Christ, that I have been redeemed and renewed and that I now have the righteousness of Christ in me, I believe it.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), life happens.  As it happens, I am repeatedly confronted with the fact that I still miss the mark so often.  Those I love I still manage to hurt and fail, often repeatedly.  It would appear, from the surface that the Bible is wrong, that I have not been changed at all.  The temptation is to seriously question the work of Christ in me and with that comes a questioning of all that the Scriptures say.  My reasoning then goes on to convince me that God (if there even is a God) will never change me. I must change me.

It’s a lie, straight from the pit of Hell.  The idea that the work of Christ is not sufficient for my life has taken me down far too many dark paths and it is time for it to stop.  Jesus warned us that this life would be opposed.  What did we think he meant by that?  Is it really just our government or our society that is the opponent to our faith?  Pogo was right: ‘We have found the enemy, and he are us.’  Not the redeemed us, but the lies that we choose to believe, that our enemy is so skilled at making believable.

Those are the places that Paul tells us that our love should be like that of Christ, laying down our lives.  What looks like hopelessness is actually the very places that we find our Calvarys  and our Gethsemanes, where we once again fall to our knees, forgive our enemies (which unfortunately might also be those we want most to save), and seek the Father’s strength that lives in us.  This is where real battle happens, as we choose to believe in something much bigger that ourselves, remembering and trusting the journey that He has set out before us, what it is that He created us to be.

Hopefully someday these battles will subside (though I’m not sure that they will), but until then they are opportunities … to trust, to grow, and to learn to walk in the finished work of Christ. 

To the King,

David