Ugh. I feel stuck again. There is this incredible inertia that is like a magnet holding me down in bed in the morning, or drawing me to food or fiction ...
I can function in this mode -- I am getting to work on time (sometimes barely), and I have managed so far to keep the family's clothes clean... but I have this nagging feeling that God wants more from me than a life in which I am just "functioning."
What has given me hope is a reminder from a new friend that "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against
the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph 6:12). My struggle isn't even against my own flesh, though it would seem so. The struggle is against the Enemy, and there is no way I can fight that battle on my own. In an ironic turn of truth, self-control is not possible without surrender.
In my word study on self-control, and the old fashioned-sounding synonym "temperance," I found that it was only used 4 times in three verses in the New Testament, and one of those times was in reference to Pauls' behavior. The other references are Galations 5:22 (the Fruit of the Spirit), and 1 Peter 1:6. What struck me is a verse later on in 1 Peter - "He that lacketh these things (knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness) is blind and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins" (1:9).
Boy doesn't that hit the nail on the head. We HAVE been cleansed, but we so easily forget it! "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly" (Prov. 26:11). That is such a vivid word picture -- maybe if that comes to mind when the alarm goes off, I can run from it like the stinking smelly regurgitated sin it is.
And perhaps that is how inertia is turned into momentum.
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