Obedience is painful. The split second a moment of wrong vs. right emerges in the area that we're most weak, there's this burning pain inside, like the stretching of a rope in a tug-of-war match.

This week, the Lord has pressed two things on me about this pain.

First, I have become grateful for it. It is proof that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. This pain is the pain of warfare and to have spiritual warfare, you've got to have the Spirit and the flesh. Well, I know without a doubt that I have the flesh, and with this pain comes assurance that the Spirit is in there also.

Second, when, through Jesus, I have had a victory in a battle and have not succumbed to the pain, I have been pressed with the truth that: "Though sorrow may last through the night, joy comes in the morning."

At the time, the pain seems insurmountable and the only escape is to say the thing I shouldn't or do what I ought not do. It can feel like lots of pressure with one little pin hole in the kettle for the steam to escape and it's all tension to get through that pin hole. But when I've outlasted it (surely you understand I say "I" loosely with the full understanding that it is not me but Christ in me), I'm so pleasantly shocked to find that the pain actually leaves. I don't spend the entire afternoon in pain. Just that moment. And once that moment is done, if there's victory, it's like someone took the lid off the kettle that was so full of pressure. There's a relief and a peace followed by a smile of joy that sin was actually conquered. It feels like victory! It's sweet.

Ironically, when the pain of obedience comes again, we can get amnesia about the sweetness of past victories and we have to fight that pin-hole pressure all over again.

This has been great to explain to my children and it's been exciting to hear them say: "I've got that joy now!" as I've watched them walk through the tug-of-war and come out victors. To let them know that obedience can hurt, I feel, gives them forewarning of the tactics our flesh can use to defeat us. For a long time, I thought the pain was defeat already, and would just give in saddened that I had even had a battle going on inside me.  Now that it's been pegged, there's been more hope of victory.

Lord, may I model victory more often in my home! Right now there's a lot of quenching the Spirit and repenting going on over here. I'd like my children to see the truth lived out: that You really are the victory and that through  You we are not slaves to our sin any longer. May You increase Your way in me and, as David prayed,
"Cast me not away from Your presence, O' Lord, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me".