31 Days: Day 11.

Not feeling too original today, but here are the verses that sum up my life right after a small stanza that sums up the verses..... :)

Discipline

by Deb Nelson

I don't want to live my life in sin,
But, I'm having a hard time with discipline.
I do the things I don't want to do,
And don't do the things I want to...................

FROM THE MESSAGE:

Romans 7 ^17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

^21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

²⁴I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

²⁵The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

FROM THE NIV:

Romans 7: ¹⁸ I know there is nothing good in my sinful nature. I want to do what is good, but I can't. ¹⁹ I don't do the good things I want to do. I keep on doing the evil things I don't want to do. ²⁰ I do what I don't want to do. But I am not really the one who is doing it. It is sin living in me.

²¹ Here is the law I find working in me. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² Deep inside me I find joy in God's law. ²³ But I see another law working in the parts of my body. It fights against the law of my mind. It makes me a prisoner of the law of sin. That law controls the parts of my body.

²⁴ What a terrible failure I am! Who will save me from this sin that brings death to my body? ²⁵ I give thanks to God. He will do it through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So in my mind I am a slave to God's law. But in my sinful nature I am a slave to the law of sin.