The Chase Chapter Six: The Battle for Holiness

"The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up."
-Romans 7:21

All the first verses to each chapter to "The Chase" were really good, but this one basically talks about our struggle with sin, and how it trips us up. You see I tried for awhile to live a holy life and I was on a spiritual high from it, but as soon as I fell back into my sinful life I had before I was easily trapped by the enemy. Don't worry I'm still pursuing a holy life, but for awhile, I didn't want anything to do with it, because I had tried and failed, and I kept telling myself what was the point in trying something that I'm going to end up messing up anyways?

But then I heard from God, that we don't have to be perfect for him to love us, he loves us just the way we are. I needed to hear it too.

Let's dig further into this chapter shall we.

The fact that we will face sin all of our days on earth is brought up here, and it is a tough struggle to face. A struggle that lasts a life time, not a kind of battle to fight in. But we know the outcome due to our salvation, so we should press against the enemy no matter how tough the battle may seem, we know that thanks to God and his son Christ Jesus the battle of sin controlling our lives is over, we need to now not let it tell us what to do, instead listen and obey to what God says and commands.

I like how this chapter sums up what battle they are talking about. The battle in our heart between 'the nature we have to sin' and 'the desire to live a holy life'.

Even though sin doesn't control us, it is still attacks us, and will control us if we let it.

'We've got to be on watch constantly, because sin is ready to make sure we don't come out ahead. It wants us to fail.'

I like how the book meantions a battle plan of how to win the war against sin.

It first begins with are heart. Our heart to me is basically our focus, but the book talks about your whole being and motives behind your actions as your heart. It says we can't understand our own heart, and agree to a point, but in my opinion we can put motives in our heart, for example the desire to live a holy life is a motive in my heart, even though I can't search it, I want to pursue holiness as a choice.

But anyway, the book talks about how sin can lay dormant in our hearts, and the only way we can know about it (usually it is hiding there without us knowing, b/c we don't classify it as a sin, or we don't think its a problem) is to allow the holy spirit to search our hearts and reveal our hidden sins to us. I know personally the holy spirit has revealed a bunch of sins that I really didn't classify as 'sins'. I have really hard times overcoming some of them, and others are easy to stop.

What the book meations next is allowing God to give you, your desires (his desires, your purpose, your focus.. etc.) and allow him to remove the desires that will result in you lead into sin. We still need to allow him to do so.

The book brings up the fact that we choose to sin, it's from our own desires that we are lead into sinning by our own actions. Not Gods, not Satan's. It's US who sin.

Sin is a crafty enemy and we need to be ready to take it down at any time. That's why memorizing scripture and praying continually is so important, it keeps us in constant connection to God. Like having him on the other line on the telephone whilst talking to someone, and when a desire to sin happens to come along into that conversation, we switch lines and ask God what to do.

I learnt another vital thing from this, don't get caught up into spritual highs and think you can never fall from them, what I mean is, don't think that just b/c your not doing a certain sin that you are invulnerable to sin. We can fall victim to sin anytime, and being cocky will take us off our guard to be tripped up by the enemy.

There was a man who lived in spain in the 17th century, he was the greatest fencer in the whole world, no man could beat him, but he was defeated when he let his ego get in the way of his fight.
He decided he was beating his opponet left, right, and center, but his opponet was using his right hand the whole course of the match, and stopped and said, that if he was so good he could beat him using his other hand, and he would use his other hand as well. Well the man let his ego get the best of him and agreed, not having any practice with his left hand was easily beaten by his left handed opponet.

I sometimes let my ego get in the way of a direct fellowship with God. Without that friendship we won't get some of the nessasary trade resources from our alley God and be beaten by our enemy when we are starved.

Hopefully you get that.

-Brent