The Missing Ingredient in Your Battle Against Sin

The Missing Ingredient in Your Battle Against Sin

BY RICK WARREN — OCTOBER 22, 2014

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“So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.” (Galatians 5:16 NLT)

You can do everything right and still not defeat a sin. You can read the Bible every day. You can pray. You can have a group of friends around you who’ll speak the truth in love to you on a regular basis.

And you can still be trapped in habitual sin. 

At the end of the day, you can’t depend upon yourself and what you can do to defeat sin. You need the Holy Spirit’s power. The Holy Spirit enables believers to do what they can’t do and fulfill God’s desire for our lives.

Galatians 5:16 says, “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves” (NLT).

You can have all the right equipment to defeat habitual sin in your life, but it won’t matter without the Holy Spirit. Imagine you were walking on the beach and saw a dead seagull that had died less than a minute earlier. If you pick it up, it won’t be much different than its live counterparts. It’ll still be warm. It’ll have the same muscles, bones, feathers, and wings. But if you toss it up in the sky, it’ll drop right back down to the ground.

Why? The seagull has no life left. The life isn’t in the feathers, wings, or bones. It’s in the life God puts in it. Without a spirit, the bird won’t fly, even if it has all the right equipment.

You can have all the right equipment to live a successful, victorious life, but without the Spirit’s empowering, you can’t live that kind of life.

It’s like throwing a dead bird into the air.

You can’t live the victorious life of Christ on your own. It’s impossible. Your best intentions and your too-easily-broken promises won’t enable you to live the Christian life. The Holy Spirit has to live through you.

Talk It Over

• How does the Holy Spirit live through you?
• Why do you think people are sometimes afraid of the Holy Spirit’s power in their lives?

Sharpen Your Skills TODAY’S SCRIPTURE “Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings...” (Proverbs 22:29, NIV) TODAY’S WORD from Joel and Victoria Too often, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut, doing the same thing the same way over and over every day. But if we are going to live at our absolute best, we should constantly be growing and sharpening our skills. We should strive to learn and grow every single day because when we stop learning, we stop growing. When we stop growing, we stop living. What are you doing to stretch yourself? What are you doing to improve your skills? Don’t get trapped into thinking that “good enough” is good enough. You were created for more than just average. Today is a new day, and there are new heights for you to climb. Pursue what you love and keep developing that area of your life. Take a class or find a mentor that will help you live skillfully. As scripture promises, you’ll go before leaders and rulers and excel in every area of life! A PRAYER FOR TODAY Father, today I resist mediocrity. I choose to give my very best to everything I do. Teach me to live skillfully so that my life is a continual praise to You in Jesus’ name. Amen. PS...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M-zwE33zHA