6If our minds are ruled by our desires, we will die. But if our minds are ruled by the Spirit, we will have life and peace. 7Our desires fight against God, because they do not and cannot obey God’s laws. 8If we follow our desires, we cannot please God.
9You are no longer ruled by your desires, but by God’s Spirit, who lives in you. People who don’t have the Spirit of Christ in them don’t belong to him. 10But Christ lives in you. So you are alive because God has accepted you, even though your bodies must die because of your sins. 11Yet God raised Jesus to life! God’s Spirit now lives in you, and he will raise you to life by his Spirit.
In the struggles going on across the Middle East recently, the fundamental issue seems to be whose rule is going to win. Will it be that of the dictator, or the people?
It would be very simplistic to see that as the rule of good, or the rule of bad; but we can hope that in the ruling of countries it does come down to good rule or bad rule.
This is the kind of struggle that Paul refers to in this part of the letter to the Romans. In our lives there is always the struggle between good and bad; between getting it right and being way off mark; between doing what we want and doing what we should; between following God’s way or preferring our own. Not always easy when we are in control, but God gives us his Spirit – his strength, his power, his very life.
God lives in us – what an amazing thought. That is what makes us alive to him, and what gives us the possibility to make right choices. We are not left with what we might do by ourselves, but can lean on him, use his mind, make his choices, and in that receive his peace.
Whose rule will win in your life and in mine?
Lord
may my thought be your thoughts,
may your life
live in me,
that I may be able to do what you want
not what I want.
Lord may the struggle in me
be always won by you,
that I may know your life
and your peace
