“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
We all wage the war against the flesh or sinful nature as in the verses above. On one hand, we have the Spirit of God inside us, and on the other hand, we have our flesh waging war against the Spirit of God inside us. Before you accepted Christ, your sinful nature was ruling the throne in your life. After you accepted Christ, God’s Spirit rests inside you and begins a great clean-up. This clean-up job is one that may take a while. Let the battle begin.
We read in Romans where Paul is defining this battle, and even Paul noticed that at times he would be subject to the sinful side, resisting the clean-up job by the Holy Spirit. When he notices this, he calls himself a wretched man and asks the question, “Who will rescue me from the body that is subject to death?” It is at this time I think we all have the embarrassing prayer moment. If you have been in a small group where the leader asks for prayer requests and you have one, but are reluctant to even ask for prayer about it because it is, well, embarrassing to even talk about. You feel like the battle over the Spirit of God inside you just took an epic beating, and you are sitting there noticing the mess it made in your life. This mess is the very thing you need prayer over, but you are hesitant to even say anything. Why? Well, you don’t want others to notice the massive mess created by your moment of weakness.
Today, understand that God already knows your issue, and He sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross so that we will no longer live in condemnation over sin (Romans 8:1), but rather we can repent, silently or to another trusted friend, and be under the peace of God that passes all understanding. Dejected and worn out you may feel, and we all need to recognize how we feel, but we don’t need to stay there. We are called to live victoriously under the power of Christ and His blood over us. The battle will never go away until you go to be with the Father in Heaven.
While you are here on the earth, you can become stronger in walking by faith and ruling your tongue, which has the power of life and death (Proverbs 18:21). The embarrassing prayer is a sign of the Spirit of God calling you out on those sinful whims that may or may not have caused damage to others, and pointing to the way of the Lord, which begins the repair job. We have all been there. Country music is full of those embarrassing moments put into songs. We are not short on those moments; the difference is how are you handling them? Today, start to build those moments that you can look back on and know that God’s hand was working.
Prayer: Father, I thank You for boldness to pray those embarrassing prayers. I pray that You will surround us with strong Christian-minded friends who can walk alongside us in those times. I thank You that Satan is uprooted and cast out of my life in Jesus’ name. No longer am I a slave to sin, but I am victorious and walk under the covering of God’s mighty hand today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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