Hi Bonnie, Having struggled in this area for years after becoming a Christian and for decades before, I'll say that the questions would not have helped me because all they did was make me feel more like the failure I thought I was. It was both the previous verse and the next verse that helped lead to the deliverance. 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen. 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. We present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice...that is worship. We then renew our minds and are transformed. Repentance is not a change of behavior it is a change of mind; the deeds will then follow as a natural consequence. Trying to "keep doing" something that does not come from a renewed mind does not last. The most two most important things that I had to change my thinking about was the fact that I was really dead to sin and alive to God in Christ (Romans 6) and that I was also dead to the Law (Romans 7). It took a rather long time to get it into my heart that I really don't have to present my eyes to sin and lust after women that I had really died and was really set free from sin. Sin was not dead...I was, and alive to God in Christ. He is now the one I depend upon to be my goodness. We are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake that the life of Christ may be manifested in our mortal flesh...His power made perfect in our weaknesses. I have come to understand that if I look at "me" all I'll see is that there is nothing good that dwells in "me"...that is in my flesh; but, as Romans 8 says, I am no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit. It is not about me trying to become like Jesus, it is about me letting Jesus himself be my life...his love, his joy, him living through me for God...not me living, with his help, for God. These realities are not easily understood because they are not widely taught. We look at the sin that dwells in our members and think "my flesh still needs to be crucified!" We don't understand that we have already been crucified with Christ and have been immersed into His death and have been raised with Him. It is something that we come to believe in our heart, not because the flesh tells us it is true, but because the scriptures and the Spirit tells us it is true. When we come to believe it, not as a mental assent, but from our hearts we find: sure enough we are free and Christ really is our life...and He gets all the glory. All "I" am is the container of the glory; the branch through which the life of the vine flows. The fruit is His not mine; I merely bear it. :-) Blessings! Craig |