You can do it!

Some days I wake up thinking, “can I do this another day?” I think most of us do. We tire of the constant struggle to make life work, to overcome sin, to get relationships right, to do our job well, to steer our kids away from delinquency, to …. Well, I think you’re getting my drift. We live against the flow, resisting the tendency to decay that is part of this world. It’s everywhere! Our houses don’t clean themselves. Our cars require constant maintenance. Keeping our marriage healthy demands our daily attention. Even our spiritual life goes cold as a cup of coffee left on the countertop without continual refreshing in worship and wonder!

Sound like a lot of work? It is!

A life of peace, beauty, and holiness does not just happen. We must do spiritual disciplines, resist the Devil’s work, and return often to God. And we know this: we are not in the struggle all by ourselves. The Spirit of God is our Ally, our Source, our Strength! At the end of Romans 11 and into chapter 12, the Word exults about God’s work. Take a look at the passage from The Message –

"Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over our heads. We’ll never figure it out. Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice?


Everything comes from him;
Everything happens through him;
Everything ends up in him.
Always glory! Always praise! Yes. Yes. Yes.


So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (Romans 11:33-12:2)

There is no reason for sin to run rampant in our lives any longer. The depravity that once held us captive has been replaced with a new nature, one alive to the will of God, one that rejoices in truth and love. Feed that nature today with worship, with the Word, with cultivated awareness of the Spirit's Presence. And may the beauty of Jesus been seen in you!
Dear Father, please "let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me, all His wonderful passion and purity; O, Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine, 'til the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.
In the name of my Savior I pray. Amen. (from the song by Albert W.T. Orsbom)