New year, new you. As we step into the new year many of us aspire to take certain steps in order to change a part of ourselves that we are not pleased with. Sometimes it is weight, knowledge, career, or even just relational. Some of us may even look to God to see how it is that we can grow and change in this new year. How is it that we can get closer to God and how is it that we can become better Christians? We work with God on this, but like any new year’s resolution we start to become tired of the lack of progress we see. We start to wonder why it is that we keep doing the things that we know are wrong, everything that we want to change. We grow tired of ourselves, wondering if we will ever be able to stop doing the things that we so long to no longer do. Sound familiar?
Paul talks about this in Romans 7:14-25. Paul talks about how there are two sides of us, the spiritual and the flesh and how these two sides of us are constantly at odds with each other. It makes it so that we don’t do what we want to and do that which we do not want to do. Why it is that when we take to time to try and grow with God it can become hard? It is because we have started to become aware of the battle that is with in us. The war that wages between the spirit and the flesh. Good and bad. Yet this is a battle that we most continue to fight with grace and understanding, that though we may fumble along the way and experience hardship God is there with us, helping us along the way.
As we go further into this new year, let us not forget to give ourselves grace to grow, to fall and to mess up along the way. Let us not forget to give ourselves grace to understand that taking time to grow in our walk with God means messing up along the way. It is what we do when we mess up that matter. We must stand up again and keep trying. We must not give up on ourselves as we grow. Growing takes time and it takes mistakes, but with God’s grace we can make it through in order to become the Christian God is calling us to be.
~ Pastor Jillian