The War

SCRIPTURE: I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. Romans 7:21-23 NLT

QUOTE: The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

THOUGHT: There are wars raging all around us today, if not public and visible, private and invisible. Under the radar until they erupt in actions. In fact, the war in the human heart and mind is more powerful than the war in Ukraine, because it is the former that has caused the latter – just as it is the former that causes any and all of us to do what is wrong when we know what is right. Ideologies are the war in many ways. When I look back at my own story, it was human ideas that began to pry me away from the ideas of God.

I think it does us good to remember this, even as we study the promises of God, because this war is promised. Simply being born on this planet ensures that we have entered the battleground, and the only way to win is to acknowledge, as did Paul and Solzhenitsyn, that relief cannot be found in us. We must go outside of us, and outside of this world, to the one who shaped and formed us, admitting we need help, and we need forgiveness, and we need grace.

PRAYER: Oh God, Paul acknowledged you as the one who frees us from the war raging in our hearts and minds. By grace, settle our wars inside today, so that what comes out of our mouths speaks peace to the war in others.