Spirit vs Flesh (Romans 7:14-25)

Alright, like I said, we're gonna be in Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

We're starting in verse 14 and we'll read through the end of the chapter through verse 25.

If you're able, would you please stand for the reading of God's word?

Romans 7, chapter Romans chapter 7, verse 14.

Romans 7:14

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin.

For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do.

I do what I hate.

Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with Allah that it is good.

So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me.

For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my flesh.

For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it.

For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.

Now, if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is sin that lives in me.

So I discover this law.

When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me.

For in my inner self I delight in God's law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body.

What a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then, with my mind, I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you for these verses.

I just pray that you would give us a deep understanding, that you would give us your eyes to see this scripture here in context, that we would have hearts and minds and eyes and ears that are open to the things that you have for us here this morning, and that you would be the one speaking.

Lord, I pray you'd help me to rightly divide your word here this morning in a way that's understandable, in a way that we can leave here, or change, to be more and more like you, we pray.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I want to make sure that we're all on the same page, because if you just read that through real quick, you can just kind of be, your mind could be spinning a little bit.

Wait, what did he just say?

But I want to make sure that we're all on the same page before we we jump into verse 14.

And I want to make sure that we have some good context before we dive into these verses, because if we isolate any one of these verses in this passage here this morning, we could leave here believing that we don't have to be accountable for our own sin.

And that's not at all what Paul's saying here.

You know, taking these verses out of context could lead to us giving up on the battle that takes place between the spirit and our flesh on a daily basis.

And so we're clear, as we'll be talking a lot about today, when I say the word spirit, I'm referring to the part of us that's eternal.

You know, it includes the soul, it includes our mind, it includes our heart.

Everything that we're gonna take with us into heaven.

And when I say our flesh, it's the part of us that is still a slave to fleshly desires.

It's the part of us that we get to leave here on earth when we go home to be with the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

And it's just the physical, and it's I should say it's not just the physical that we're gonna be leaving behind.

It's more than that.

We're gonna be leaving behind our fallen nature, or maybe you've heard it said, our human nature.

The part of us that knew how to lie when we were three years old, and nobody had to teach us how to do it.

That's what we're talking about when we're referring to the flesh, because we're gonna talk a lot about our spirit, and we're gonna be talking a lot about our flesh in this passage.

And the fact that our flesh and our spirit are in this constant war within us.

Now, if you're a follower of Christ, your spirit is saying, I love God's law and I want to please him with everything that I do.

While your flesh is still saying, Gimme, gimme, gimme, you know.

I want, I need, I deserve, I demand, you know, I have rights.

That's what our flesh sounds like.

Our flesh is always seeking pleasure, it's always seeking immediate gratification, it's always seeking affirmation for what it's doing wrong.

It's selfish and it always puts itself first.

And oftentimes our flesh is in a hurry for that instant gratification.

Do it now.

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

You know, our church motto is love God and love others.

The greatest commandment that Jesus gave us love God and love others.

But our flesh's motto is love yourself and use others.

It really is, right?

And both of those concepts are completely anti-biblical.

So there's this war that's going on inside of us, and as Paul puts it, between our flesh and our spirit, and it's this constant battle.

It's this war that's waged within us.

You know, so far in Romans, we've talked about what it looks like to live in sin.

We've talked about what it looks like to dabble in sin.

And then we look like we looked at what it looks like to have a life that's fully surrendered to God.

So living in sin, just as a little recap of what we've already gone over, it's it's saying, you know, I have this sin, I know it's not right, but I'm going to continue in this sin with no regret and no effort to stop doing it.

That's what it looks like to live in sin.

Then we talked about dabbling in sin, and that's saying, you know, I know this is wrong, and I try not to do this thing most of the time, you know, but every once in a while I allow I allow myself to get drunk, I allow myself to lick up porn, I cheat on my taxes, I steal from my work, I cheat on a test, you know, whatever it might be.

You know, it's when we say, you know, I mean, it's really not hurting anybody, and I don't do it that often.

I live under grace, not the law, everything's gonna be okay, nobody's really getting hurt, you know.

But then there's this life of living a life that's completely surrendered to God.

And that attitude looks like this.

It says, I hate that I sin.

I try not to sin, but sometimes the temptation's too great.

And sometimes I stumble, and sometimes I do the things that I so badly don't want to do.

And then afterward I feel bad about it, I repent, God forgives me, and he reminds me, as we just say, that his grace is enough.

His grace is sufficient for those shortcomings that we have.

And then God restores us, and then we get to go on rejoicing in the joy of our salvation that He's provided.

That's what it should look like for somebody that's fully surrendered to God when we find ourself falling into temptation.

You know, there's kind of this strange theology going around that I've heard in a couple different places that we can become perfect or fully sanctified before we die.

And they base it off of Matthew 5.48, where it says, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And the thought is, you know, if Jesus said this, then perfection must be attainable on this earth, right?

The thing is, God does demand perfection from us.

But God also knew that we could never attain it.

And that's why Jesus had to come and die for our sins.

If we could have attained perfection on this side of eternity, Jesus would never have had to die in our place.

But there was no other way.

And death was essential to the salvation that we needed in order to have that right standing before God.

For Him to see us perfect, even though we are not perfect.

And because we're stuck in this flesh, we're gonna sin until the day that we die.

Hopefully, the goal is as we become more mature, as this process of sanctification comes about, hopefully we sin less and less every day as we become more and more like Jesus every day.

But as we'll see Paul saying here, even he is constantly doing the things that he does not want to do.

John Wooden was the famed UCLA men's basketball coach that won 10 national championships with UCLA in the 60s and 70s.

He was a strong believer in Jesus Christ and someone that was very famous for his quotes, and I love his quotes.

I've studied his quotes, I have his quotes all over the place.

He said stuff like, Be quick but don't hurry to his players.

He said, If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?

You know, he had very wise things like that, but he has one that is so fitting for our topic here this morning that he used to tell his players, he would tell them, perfection is what you are striving for.

But perfection is an impossibility.

However, striving for perfection is not an impossibility.

Does that make sense?

And I think this side of eternity, that's what we're facing.

We'll never be perfect, but that is what we're striving for.

Every day to be a little more like Jesus than we were the day before.

To be walking by the Holy Spirit a little more today than we were the day before.

To be in a deeper place of surrender to God than we were the day before.

And that's really what chapter seven is talking about.

And just as a reminder, as we are about to jump into verse 14 here, chapter 7 is really Paul's testimony.

He's telling us a lot about himself.

Last week he was talking in the past tense, about what things were like before he came to Jesus.

And then you'll notice this week he's talking in the present tense.

He's talking about how things are now that he has come to Jesus Christ.

So look at verse 14 with me.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin.

So right off the bat, he jumps in with that battle of the spirit in the flesh.

Even though the flesh has been crucified through Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross, it's still here.

Our flesh is still here, and it still tries to have a say in our life.

And it is still a slave to sin.

You know, like they say, the problem with a living sacrifice is that it's always trying to crawl off the altar, right?

But now through Jesus, we have a choice.

We don't have to sin anymore.

The problem is, is we do.

We still choose to sin, even though we've been crucified with Jesus Christ.

And that's really what the rest of this chapter is going to focus on.

Look at verse 15.

For I do not understand what I'm doing because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.

The battle with sin is real.

And the battle with sin that we face on a daily basis is constant.

And Paul's saying right here that he doesn't even understand it.

He does what he hates.

You know, I've been thinking about this all week because I'd never really thought about it before, but can you think of anywhere in your life that is not sin related?

Where it's something you hate yet you still find yourself doing it.

That's not sin related.

That's the big caveat here.

You know, I thought about it all week.

I can't think of a single thing that I hate that I have trouble to stop doing.

For instance, I hate black licorice.

If you like it, no offense, man.

Enjoy black licorice.

There's nothing wrong with it.

It's just not for me.

But I've never had this conversation with myself or with anybody else.

You know, I hate black licorice, but sometimes I just find myself in the store buying all of it.

And then I go home and then I just binge on the black licorice.

And then afterwards I just feel so guilty, and I'm like, why am I doing the thing that I hate to do?

That just sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

Because you're sitting there like, just don't eat the black licorice, right?

Oh, here's another one.

And this isn't really my pet peeve, it's just an example.

But there's some people that hate eating sandwiches that are cut down the middle.

Like, it's gotta be cut at an angle, right?

It just tastes better when the sandwich is cut at an angle.

You know, and I just so badly want to cut all my sandwiches at an angle.

But I just find myself cutting them down the middle every single time.

And I just can't stop.

I can't stop doing the thing that I hate to do.

When we put it in those contexts where it's not sin related, it just seems ridiculous.

But then when we put it in a context that is sin related, it's like, oh yeah, I struggle with that too.

That happens all the time.

In every place in our life, if we hate it, we just don't do it.

Unless it's sin related.

And the question that's being posed here is, why is that?

And Paul's saying, I can't even understand it myself.

He says at verse 15, for I do not understand what I'm doing.

Because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.

Saying, I eat the black licorice and I cut the sandwich down the middle, and I just don't get it.

Verse 16.

Now, if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good.

You know, it's good to obey the law.

And the law is good and it's holy and it's perfect, just like we talked about last week extensively.

God gave it to us out of love, and anything that He does is perfect and holy.

But understanding that the law is good and holy does not mean that we stop sinning.

Because we are in this war with our flesh.

Verse 17.

So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me.

I can't stop eating black licorice, and I can't stop cutting my sandwiches down the middle.

He said, or I'm sorry, I no, he's saying I can stop eating black licorice easily.

I can stop cutting my sandwiches down the middle, no problem.

But as we saw last week, he can't stop coveting.

The law exposed that, and he's just saying, I can't stop doing it.

Therefore, Paul's saying it's not me that's causing this, it's the sin that lives within me.

It's my flesh that is sinning, not the part of me that knows that the law is good and holy and perfect.

It's not the part of me that's been saved through Christ Jesus through grace.

He's saying it's the part of me that is the flesh.

It's the old man.

And now do you see how taking this verse out of context could give us a license to sin?

You know, it's like, oh.

It wasn't me.

It was just the sin that lives within me.

I'm good to go.

Verse 18.

For I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh.

For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it.

This is the position that we talked about as followers of Christ that we should be in.

The attitude of I don't want to ever sin again.

Yet daily I'm falling into prideful thoughts.

I'm falling into fear and into worry.

I'm falling into coveting my neighbor's possessions, I'm falling into lustful thoughts or substance abuse or addiction or whatever it is.

And I want to stop.

Why can't I stop?

That should be the position we're in.

Never an area of acceptance of the sin, but always having regret that we can't shut the flesh up within our life.

And Paul goes on as far as saying in the end of verse 15 that there is no ability to do so.

The flesh is that bad tree that we talked about, because a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

It has no ability to do so, just like our flesh has no ability to do good within us.

Verse 19.

For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.

Paul is saying, I really want to do what's right, but I just keep finding myself failing and falling.

I don't know about you, but does anybody else find comfort that Paul had these struggles too?

That the guy that God called to be an apostle?

That the guy that God used to write, you know, probably about half of the New Testament that we hold in our hands right now, that he is struggling just like we do.

And that he doesn't fully understand this battle that's going on, just like we don't fully understand it ourselves.

He's desiring not to sin, and he's still finding himself in the middle of that temptation and giving into temptation.

And that leads me to want to talk a little bit about sin.

And Satan's strategies to make us sin, to tempt us with the hopes that we'll fall into that sin in order to make us useless.

Now, one of Satan's main strategies is to tempt us to sin, to see us fail, and then to bombard our mind with guilt and shame.

Saying things like, you worthless loser, how could you call yourself a Christian?

You'll never have victory in this area.

You've been trying for so long.

You are so pathetic.

And then he'll use those lies to move into his second strategy, which is usually isolation.

He'll tell you, you're the only one that struggles with these things.

And if anyone else within your church found out about what you struggle with, they would never look at you the same.

Because you're dirty and you're disgusting.

You can't go back to that church, you can't serve in that ministry anymore because of this putrid sin that has disqualified you from the whole church.

Just give up.

You can't go back there anymore.

That's what he wants us to believe.

So that we isolate and we never come back into community because of the guilt and the shame that we are experiencing.

And I want to encourage you, if you ever hear those lies, if you're ever tempted to believe those lies, to remind yourself of the verse that we're going to be covering next week, which is Romans 8:1.

Romans 8:1

There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

Those condemning thoughts are always coming from the enemy.

Those condemning thoughts are never coming from God.

They're never coming from Jesus or the Holy Spirit.

Those condemning thoughts are always coming from the enemy because there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

And if you're ever tempted to isolate because you think your sin is too icky, or that you're the only one that struggles with that sin, I want to remind you of 1 Corinthians 10.13.

It says, No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity.

No one has a sin that they're the only one that's dealing with it.

There's always more.

And what I've found through personal experience is that when you finally start confessing your sins to one another, you start to find out that there's a lot of people that struggle with the same exact thing that you do.

But it usually just takes speaking up about it and asking for help and asking for prayer or whatever it might be.

And then you realize, like, oh wow, I have this whole community around me of people that struggle with the same thing.

And now we can encourage each other, and now we can talk about this together, and now I know that I don't have to isolate.

I'm not the only one that's dealing with whatever the issue might be.

Look at verse 20.

Now, if I do what I do not want, I'm no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me.

I think it's important to point out in verse 20 here that this is not an excuse that Paul is giving for his own sin.

This is not a justification for his own sin.

Because doesn't it sound like a little kid's answer?

I didn't do it, sin made me do it.

Alright?

This isn't an excuse that Paul's giving.

I believe Paul's intent here is that it's not the slave to righteousness within him.

Him that's sinning, which is who he really is.

It's the old man, it's the flesh, it's the sin that lives in him because of the old man in the flesh that's causing the sin in his life.

The slave to righteousness loves the law, wants to obey the law at every moment, and plays no part in the sin.

You know, because there are two separate entities that have no crossover.

You can't say the flesh helped me with this good deed, and you can't say the spirit help me with this bad deed.

They're two separate entities and there's no crossover whatsoever.

You know, we talked a few weeks ago about how a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.

Metaphorically speaking, there are two trees inside each one of us.

One produces the bad fruit, that's the flesh, and the other produces the good fruit, that's the spirit.

And there's no crossover, like I was saying.

The tree that will produce the most fruit is the one that we cultivate and we care for the most.

The one that produces the least is the one that we starve.

We need to starve our flesh and cultivate the good fruit, the good tree, the spirit that lives within us, or the spirit that is us, that eternal part of us.

And we need to cultivate that good tree.

And we need to water that good tree and feed that good tree so that it will produce more good fruit within us.

I want to encourage all of us today to cultivate our spirit with God's word, with prayer, with worship, with fellowship, with loving one another.

And then I think that's when we'll find ourselves saying less and less, why am I doing the exact opposite of what I actually want to do?

Paul goes on in verse 21 and says, So I discovered this law, and then here's the law.

When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me.

I want to do what is good, but then as soon as I want to do something good, I sense this rebellious desire within me that wants to do the opposite of whatever that good is.

You know, it's going back to the sandwich.

You know, I really want to cut this sandwich at a diagonal, but right as the knife gets there, it just turns and cuts it right in half.

You know, in terms of sin though, this absolutely makes sense.

You know, we want to spend time in the Word, we want to pray, we want to go to bed at a reasonable hour and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

And we're sitting there like this, and all of a sudden it's like, bam, binge watch Netflix.

You know, it's like the complete opposite of what we needed ends up being the thing that we did.

You know, I want to get up early and I want to read my Bible, and it's like, bam, the sheets were too warm.

You know?

Anybody here ever go on a diet?

You know, I want to get healthy.

I really just need to do this for myself, and bam, Reese's peanut butter cups, you know, or something like that.

There's always the opposite thing that's pulling against the thing that we know is best for us.

Because our flesh has strong desires that often override us making the best decisions that we can.

Because oftentimes what the flesh wants is the most pleasurable thing in that moment.

It wants that instant gratification.

Verse 22.

For in my inner self I delight in God's law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body.

Paul delights in God's law.

He loves God's word.

He takes great pleasure in it.

And then he sins, one right after the other.

And Paul is asking, what is wrong with me?

He uses the term here, waging war.

Now that's serious business.

Those are some serious words that he's using.

These two entities are battling inside of us, and it's a cutthroat battle that's taking place within us.

You know, Paul mentions the different parts of the body that are waging war.

You know, the body is saying, give me pleasure, give me food, give me comfort, give me my way right now.

And it demands it.

And most of those things aren't bad, you know, in moderation.

But I think the whole idea here is we need to bring our flesh into obedience under our spirit.

Is anybody here a runner?

Anybody?

Not a lot of runners in our church.

Anybody know some of those crazy runners that do like the 30, 50, 100 milers?

I know a couple of those people.

And they're the most disciplined people that I know.

And not just with the exercise element, but also with the eating and the resting and all of those things.

They know how hard to train four months before the race, and two months before the race, and two weeks before the race, and they know what to be eating.

And then once the race starts, they know like how many calories they have to intake.

They need they know like I can't let my heart rate get above whatever you know it might be, and they just are so aware and they've brought their body into this amazing discipline.

1 Corinthians 9 24 says that it says, Paul, and this is the Paul, the same author as Romans, he says, Don't you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize?

Run in such a way to win the prize.

Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything.

They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown.

So I do not run like one who runs aimlessly, or box like one beating the air.

And here's the part I really want us to get.

It says, instead, I discipline my body, and I bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

And he's not talking about harming himself when he says disciplining his own body.

He's talking about denying his flesh, bringing it under strict control, as he says in that verse.

And I've mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again, and you'll probably hear it in not too long again, but a great way for us to practice this as believers in Christ is through fasting.

Great exercise to put yourself through.

Because at its core, it's your flesh saying, I'm hungry, feed me, feed me, over and over and over again throughout the day.

While your spirit says no, instead, we're gonna pray.

Instead, we're gonna feed and cultivate ourselves spiritually instead of eating today.

At its core, it's denying the flesh and feeding the spirit.

And it's just a wonderful practice for our spirit to gain that control over the flesh.

Verse 24.

What a wretched man I am.

Who, not what, notice that, it says, who will rescue me from this body of death?

Have you ever had that thought before?

You know, what a wretched, hypocritical fill-in the blank that I am.

Will I ever be free from this sin that has haunted me for so long?

Who will rescue me from this body of death?

You know, many scholars believe that Paul is referring to an old Roman practice of capital punishment right here.

Where the death penalty was carried out with a very gruesome practice.

They would strap the corpse or a body, you know, a corpse to the individual that was sentenced to death.

They would bind their arms and their legs back to back, their torso together, until the corpse, the rotting flesh, infected the sentenced person, and it eventually killed them because of the rotting flesh being on their body.

And nobody was allowed to help the sentenced person be freed from that rotting flesh that was strapped to their body.

So when Paul says, Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Many believe that that's what he's referring to.

And that would make sense that this is what he is alluding to in this.

But the answer to this question that Paul is saying, Who will rescue me from this body of death?

The answer is Jesus in eternity.

He's already rescued us now from sin, but he will rescue us from this body of death that we are bound to on this earth.

Either when he returns or when he calls us home into heaven.

And then we'll finally be able to have our perfect bodies that are no longer bound to this flesh that's screaming, gimme, gimme, gimme all the time.

And I cannot wait for that day where we get our new bodies and we can separate from this flesh that we have here.

But can you see how Paul has come to the end of his rope?

And he poses this question who will rescue me from this body of death?

You can really sense the frustration that Paul has in his own life with how much of a voice his flesh actually has over his spirit at this time.

Look at verse 25.

It says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

That's the answer.

Thank God for Jesus.

Paul's saying, I have no answers to these questions without him.

You know, but it's through Jesus that we can have victory in any of these areas that we've talked about this morning.

And it's through Jesus that when we fail, we can be forgiven and that we can maintain right standing with God.

It's all about Jesus living out his victory through us.

I want to say that again.

It's all about Jesus living out his victory through us.

We get to claim the victory of Christ over sin in our own life.

Because it's Christ that defines us now.

That's our identity.

We are the bride of Christ.

We are the sons and daughters of the Almighty God.

Our failures and our sins no longer define us.

You know, we're going to stumble and we're going to give in to sin, but that is not who we are.

We are sons and daughters of the Most High God.

Look at the second half of verse 25.

He says, So then, with my mind, I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Talking about those two entities once again.

I think a healthy way to look at what Paul is saying here throughout this whole chunk that we've gone through.

If you're walking in surrender to Jesus, if you're not living in sin, if you're not dabbling in sin, don't beat yourself up when you find yourself giving into temptation, but at the same time, don't give yourself concessions or allowances to sin either.

And I want to end with this.

You know, we can get to the end of a passage like this and think, I just need to try harder.

And I just need to beat my flesh into submission.

But chapter 8, remember, there's no chapter breaks in the original text.

Chapter 8, which we're going to be covering next week, is the answer to chapter 7.

And Paul's going to talk about the role of the Holy Spirit within all of this.

You know, we have our own spirit, as we've defined at the beginning, everything we get to take with us to heaven.

But God has given us the Holy Spirit, the third part of the Trinity, to live within us, to supply us with the power to resist temptation, to say no to sin, to counsel us and to give us wisdom and to place God's desires within our hearts.

And I don't want to get too far into next week's sermon, but I want to make sure that we know that victory over sin does not come through us just trying harder, through white knuckling it and trying to just get through.

It comes from a deeper surrender to the Holy Spirit living in and through us.

Victory comes from a greater dependence upon Him.

Our Spirit has a helper.

The Spirit.

We find ourselves just not doing those things.

But Lord, we thank you that we have a helper, that we have a counselor within us in the Holy Spirit, that you've given us.

To empower our spirit to do what's right, and to bring our flesh into submission, Lord, to bring it under strict control, like those long-distance runners that Paul was talking about.

But Lord, help us to not do it out of effort, but from a place of abiding tighter with Jesus, place of surrendering in a deeper way to the Holy Spirit that's living in and through us.

Help us to walk on a daily basis, moment by moment, Lord, listening and understanding and allowing the Holy Spirit to live through us.

We cannot do this on our own.

We don't even understand what's going on inside of us, Lord.

So we pray that it would be through your power, through your strength, that we would approach all of these things.

Lord, help us to know that there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

That all of those lies that run through our head are not from you.

They're the enemy trying to make us useless, trying to segregate us, trying to isolate us into thinking that we're the only ones, that nobody else would understand, and that all awaits us within the church's judgment.

Lord, all that awaits any of us within this church is grace because of you.

Lord, help us to be the greatest dispensers of grace.

Help us to have the courage to confess our sins to one another and to ask for help in whatever situation it might be.

Lord, I want to pray for anybody that's here that has not come to a place of surrender to Jesus, hasn't come to a place of giving their life completely over to you.

Lord, I pray that today would be the day.

If that is you, would you just pray that prayer with me?

Lord, I pray that you would become the king of my life to reign over all that I do.

I recognize the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

I thank you for the sacrifice that He made in my place because of my sin.

I thank you now that I am forgiven, that I am cleansed, and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that I have been made alive again in Christ Jesus.

I am now the bride of Christ.

I am now the son or daughter of the Most High God.

And I thank you so much for that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.