Romans 7:22-23
...but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members...who will rescue me...?

Okay. This week's scripture has a lot of words, so let me just boil it down to 4. We are at war. Now I know that our country is currently engaged in a war and so I don't use that term lightly. In fact, the reality of war is the best illustration of the principle in this passage. Let me explain.

Many Christians will say that they are struggling with sin. And that's probably a good thing. In fact, I've had people ask me before if the teenagers in my youth group were struggling with sin and I'd reply, "I wish. They seem to just be enjoying it!" But the idea of struggling with something may be very different from actually engaging that same thing in war. Our country used to struggle with terrorism. We'd read about car bombs in the Middle East or about an attempted attack at a US Embassy on foreing soil. In fact, on 9/11 we struggled to watch the footage of the twin towers falling under the attack of terrorists. But that was the end of our struggle with terrorism. Now we are at war with it. And that has a completely different, offensive flavor to it. We are on the attack and will not stop until terrorism has in some form been wiped out (it isn't the purpose of this evotion to argue the effectiveness or even the possibility of completely destroying terrorism, but rather to draw an illustration for our spiritual lives).

I have come to a place where I don't want to just struggle with sin, with apathy, with fear. I want to declare war and fight with every ounce of power that God gives me to see these things eradicated from my life. I have struggled with sin. I have seen hours and days wasted because of small attacks in areas of my life, but I don't want to passively sit back and be the victim of what will be endless attacks on my soul by my enemy. The time has come for me- and for many of you- to draw the line in the sand. To dig my feet in and declare war- even war to the death.

I know that all this talk can seem wearisome. It can seem that we will never see the victory and often we can feel so defeated and so tired that we don't want to fight. We simply feel too tired to fight. But once you arrive at the place where you are ready to see the end of a spiritual world where our enemy's terrorist attacks come daily and without mercy, the question will not be are you tired. It will be...

...are you tired enough to fight?