who am i fighting?

"So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
"So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." (Romans 7:21-25)

Lately I've been thinking about something. So often we talk about the battles we wage against injustice, hate, fear, evil, and the adversary that is in this world. However, we know that over all of these things God is sovereign. It is written that "the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

I have come to the conclusion that our greatest adversary is ourselves... the sinful nature. It cannot be subjugated by an outside force, it has to surrender. Free will is powerful, so powerful that it can build some of the greatest walls between us and the Liberator. They are walls that he cannot just strike at, he needs to hear our cry before interceding.

The self is formidable. The sin that is our inheritance predestines us for the bitter struggle.

We're in the way. We're in the way.... I'm in the way.


"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." (Romans 8:18-21)

It's time to move.