the right thing is rarely easy to do

"And because sin is the belittling of all self-satisfying glory of God, the suffering that breaks its power is a severe mercy."  John Piper is so right about this it's so not funny.  Sin is one of the hardest things to break.  It really is.  Once sin has become a habit it is more likely than not going to be around for a while.  I have had my fair share of sins and I know that it has taken months if not years to break some of them.  I mean, I have had a love affair with dvd's for 10 years.  That is a long time to put God on the back burner.  I am still trying to conquer this but I can say I definitely have made the best steps for myself than I ever had.  Listening to God.  I can tell you, when there is a temptation to sin with something in your life.  Whether it be a relationship with dvds (ha), or pornography, or food, or even something has hard to shake as pride.  I know I have had that problem.  I am slowly letting that go as time slowly ticks by.  But, when have you ever, and I mean, EVER known the right thing to do to ever be easy.  It rarely ever is.  That is why it is tempting to do what our sinful flesh wants to do instead of what we KNOW we should not do.  But, sometimes we take that route, don't we?  We take the route of sin and walk that road for a while until the scenery no longer appeals to us.  Then, we move on to another change of scenery until that one bores us once again.  It is a revolving door that I have been stuck in what seems like forever! 

However, when you look at the quote that John lays out for us to see.  It is when we decide to say no to that sin and break the power that is has over us, is when we find mercy and peace in God's loving arms.  It will be difficult to break that sin.  Like I said, it is NEVER easy to say no.  We will suffer while we make those decisions to learn to walk away from what is keeping us from the Almighty relationship that we have been longing for.  But in suffering comes peace.  Once the suffering is over and we have found our way back to God, there is this overwhelming peace that consumes us.  Once we have that peace, we will never want for anything else.  Now, this is not to say that you and I won't fall back into patterns from before, but we now know that there is something worth fighting against the world for.  We have had that feeling and we never want to lose that.  This is the eternal spiritual high.  And it's going to be an amazing ride.  So, hold on because God has something in store for us.  And I cannot wait to see what it is.