The Champion of Sin

I think when most of us read the story of David and Goliath we are tempted to put ourself in the place of David. Here we are the underdog with a daunting foe.  I think though that's not really accurate. Not if we are talking about the battle with sin. Its not just that we have slim odds or weak chances of prevailing. We have none. No contest, game over. We have lost.  I think as most of you have I have heard way too much preaching on the topic of dealing with sin in a way that makes me feel at the end like I've just had a motivational talk. I just need to go out and apply myself harder, or in a different way, or try a new strategy to prevail. But what if there is just no way? The harsh reality is that in and of myself am totally helpless. David was a prototype of Jesus. Not of us. He was the Old Testament foreshadowing of the good shepherd who was not daunted by a daunting foe. 

Jesus is that champion for us. He shows up at the battle; a battle at which we have been taunted and defeated for months, maybe even years and says, "I come in the name of the God of Israel that you may know there is a God in Israel." There is NO amount of energy or strategizing, or will power that will allow me to have victory over my sin, whatever it might be. In light of that, my prayer life is one of desperate surrender.  How does my prayer life look different when I know that its not by any amount of my might, or my power that overcomes the enemy in my life? 

If it is only by His Spirit, than victory comes but one way: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." We aren't just the sick, we are dead. And its when we really know it, as Jesus said, that He can heal us. Oh, that I could really really get this in my areas of weakness. They are His to fill, His to perfect, His for this purpose: my surrender and my dependence on Him--- for His glory. It is knowing that I as a cracked pot become a vessel of God's glory that allows me as Paul did to glory in his weaknesses.