Jen's Account: The War We Fight

“I had been extremely miserable in adolescence, miserable from its very onset, and as I prayed to You [God] for the gift of chastity I even pleaded, ‘Grant me chastity and self-control, but please not yet.’ I was afraid that You might hear me immediately and heal me forthwith of the morbid lust which I was more anxious to satisfy than to snuff out.”
(Augustine, The Confessions 1997, Book 8, paragraph 17)

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Friday night during Outreach, we met a man on the street named Andre. He was riding around on a bike with headphones on and flashing light type buttons all his shirt. I don't remember if he said he was homeless or not. When we asked him where he lived, he pointed to a random corner so I wasn't sure if he meant the houses near it, or the vacant lot.

Either way, we started talking to him and he was a very sweet man. He said he is on crack but that he only takes what he can get and then goes to bed (a night cap?) He started talking about Jesus and how he knows that God is real and that He can save us from anything, even drug addiction. He said he puts no blame on God whatsoever for his situation and knows that he is just following his flesh, instead of what the Spirit would lead him to do.

This hit me for a few reasons:

* He doesn't blame God. He takes full responsibility for his actions. How often have I shook my fist at the sky because of something I don't agree with that is happening? And all to realize later, if I had only followed Christ through the situation, perhaps things wouldn't have happened that way.

* He knows God could save him from his life and his addiction, but he still chooses that life anyway. This made me think of the quote from above where Augustine says, "Grant me chastity and self-control, but please not yet." That's exactly what Andre is praying as he preaches to himself about the life he lives, but won't let God change it! How often have I done THAT? Too many times to count! and for the same reason: "I was afraid that You might hear me immediately and heal me forthwith of the morbid lust which I was more anxious to satisfy than to snuff out." I was afraid... that God might answer my prayers and would heal me of whatever 'addiction' I had... when I was not yet ready to give up the temporary pleasures that these addictions brought.

I found myself in a place recently that I had purposely kept myself in for over a year. I had prayed at times "Oh Lord! Help me! Give me the strength to walk away from this so I can glorify You with my life!" But instead of following through with the prayer by faithfully confessing my sins, getting accountability, changing my life habits with God's strength, I instead kept turning back to that sin... and decided this was just too big for God to get me out of. But when it gets down to it, I knew deep down inside that God could bring me out of it... but I didn't want him to. And even when he finally did bring me out, I, at first, had remorse for finally letting God work through me.

How do we get there? How do Andre and I find ourselves at a place to where we actually don't WANT God to do what He does? Where closeness with our Lord, only possible with a repentant heart from habitual sin, is not our first desire? Where we choose our sin and pleasure that we KNOW is temporary OVER the peace and eternal rewards of walking with Jesus?

I know why. The Bible says it clearly...

"For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells within my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

-Romans 7:22-24