Day 17: Drawing Closer to God (Battle of the Mind)

The book of Romans is one of my favorite books of the bible. It has a wealth of information about who we are as believers and where we came from. I see this a lot in my counseling of clients, the idea of our mind doing battle. Our sinful nature is a power within us that we have to battle to over come. It is the wrong in us that does everything it can to get the right in us to follow along and do the wrong. Because we as human beings have the power to choose, when presented with the wrong path as the snake did to Eve in the Garden of Eden, we, with the sinful nature within us have no means on our own to over come the sinful nature so we will choose the wrong path as Eve did. But our loving God, gave us a warrior who does the battle for us. I think of God looking down on his only son on the cross dying not because he was a criminal and did anything wrong like the other two beside him on their crosses but because he was doing the ultimate battle right than and there with sin. He died on that cross taking all our sins with us and went to Hell. He won the battle the day he rose from the dead and walked out of Hell. As a believer in Jesus, we are connected to him like a tea bag that needs water to produce any tea.  When we accept Jesus into our hearts his living water is poured into us. We now have the means to do battle with sin in our own minds. We just have to pick up the sword to do the battle each day. With Jesus, we are like a cup or glass of tea and the power of the Holy Spirit can heat up the tea to bring us comfort and peace and it can ice up our tea to give us inspiration and conviction. The sinful nature is still there within us but we have the connection to Jesus and the Holy Spirit within us to do the battle and help us choose the way of the righteous.
Romans 7:23 But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 64

Peace is one of those things that have duo connotations. There is the inner peace within our mind, soul and body and there is the outer peace among us and the world. Jesus made it clear he didn’t come to bring peace, this is the outer peace. He said their will be wars and strife in the days to come. This outer peace will only come when Jesus returns. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for the outer peace but we must know that it won’t come without Jesus. The inner peace is something that we already have within us if we are believers in the one and only son of God and savior of the world. The Holy Spirit is in us waiting for us to call upon him to bring us the inner peace we so desire. We can’t change what is happening in the world but we can change our hearts and have peace regardless of the circumstances of the world. Our inner peace will help others turn from evil and find the truth. Our inner peace is our sword to fight the evil of this world.

Matthew 10:34 Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.