The Battlefield of the Mind

I know I shouldn't say that....

I know I shouldn't go there...

I know I shouldn't do this...

But...

I can't tell you how many times I've had that conversation within my head.  I find myself in a situation that I have intentionally tried to avoid.  I find myself on the verge of a fight with my wife.  I'm on the edge of snapping with my children.  I enter into a discussion that should have never been started and now I'm on the precipice of screaming as I grow more and more exasperated.  

In each case, I know the godly thing to do.  I realize what I should do.  I know that I should walk away, shut up, write the check, count to ten.

But too often I don't.

Then in the aftermath of tears, slammed doors, bad decisions and hurt feelings the guilt creeps in.  The conviction of once again falling short.  Once again making a massive mistake.  Once again disappointing God by failing those around me and by failing myself.

It's frustrating isn't it.  To know the right things but somehow avoid them anyway?  In times like those it makes me thankful for Paul:

Romans 8:15-25

For I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.  So now it is no  longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.  For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.  For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

If Paul is a wretched man because of this war that is waging within him, then I doubt there is much hope for you or me.  The war of sanctification (becoming like Christ) is a conflict that rages inside of every believer.  A struggle that begins upon conversion and continues through until your time on this earth is over.  There are days in which your progress is measurable, times in which is merely creeps forward, and times where you experience setbacks.

But we do not fight and struggle alone.

The war that is fought on the battlefield of the mind is won not through our own efforts but through Christ's work on our behalf.

Thanks be to God for the cross.  Thanks be to God that he fights for me.  Thanks be to God, that though we struggle now... the battle isn't over... and the war has already been won.