June 26, 2020
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” Romans 7:21
I grew up in a small town outside of Savannah, GA. The house I grew up in was on Olmstead Place in Garden City, GA. We had a modest house in a subdivision called Chatham Villa. Now we had a small, but for a young boy large back yard. It was fenced in and we played there often. In the summer Dad would have a dump truck load of fill dirt delivered and placed in the front yard. Our backyard held water pretty bad when it rained. It was our job to transfer the dirt from the front yard to fill in the holes in the back yard. I can remember we did this every summer for several years.
Now if you were to just look at our back yard you couldn’t see the low places. It looked like a perfectly good back yard covered in grass. Yet if you walked into the yard you could see the low places especially if it rained. The water would stand for days. Yet one load of dirt never took care of the problem. We would scatter the dirt in the low places and after a few rains the water would settle the dirt down and we would have the same problem. So the next year we would get another load and start scattering the dirt in the low places. We kept trying but the dirt kept settling.
Filling up the low places in the yard have got me to Just Thinking! In our spiritual lives we have low places. If you look at my life you might think I have it all together, but all of us have low places. We have those areas of our life that allow sin to creep in and cause us to stumble. We try to fill those areas in and keep them from hindering us, but as soon as we feel successful something happens and we are right back in the low place.
Paul understood this problem and explained it in Romans 7. His words were, “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” (Romans 7:21b.) We could get stuck in this rut forever, but I don’t want us to miss how Paul ends this explanation. Here is what he says, “Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 7:25,)
When we are unable to fill the holes in our life, we must remember that Jesus not only fills them, but He wipes them out. Let’s remember that what we can’t do alone, Jesus does for us.
Dear Lord, thank you for filling the holes in our life that drag us down. Help us to call on you to fill those holes and give us freedom from the sin that so easily besets us. Help us to be delivered from the evil in our life by replacing that evil with your Holy Spirit. Praise Be to God for His Indiscernible Gift! In Jesus name, Amen.
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