I once listened to a sermon in which the preacher stated:
“There is no shame in the struggle.”
Do you struggle with a certain temptation? Do you wrestle a sin that seems to hook deeply into your flesh?
Satan wants you to believe you are alone, that you struggle with something so shameful no one else will understand. Satan wants you to wonder about your relationship with God.
“Am I really saved? Does God really love me since I’m still so messed up? Is the Holy Spirit really with me?”
Have you ever wondered such things? If you have,
1. It means you are a member of an exclusive club called “the human race.” Brother, Sister, I am right beside you in these feelings. I’ve wandered the same paths and wondered the same things.
2. It means you need to listen more to God. Satan is feeding you lies! Satan WANTS you to be unsure about your standing with God. He wants to suck away your joy, peace, and assurance of God’s power and plan.
What has GOD said?
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8.1)
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8.31-39)
Believe God. Believe what He said!
You struggle, and that is good. Many don’t struggle, you know. The majority do what they will and feel no shame. They’re not really in the fight at all because they either don’t realize they should fight or they just don’t care to engage the forces of darkness. Of course, all those without Christ cannot hope to win against sin because only Christ gives us both the will and the power to battle temptation. Your struggle against temptation and sin is actually a sign, a confirmation, of your right standing with God.
If you have stopped fighting because you feel it’s too difficult or because you think God will save you despite your despondency, that should serve as a severe spiritual warning! Cry out to God to help re-sensitize you to sin, to help you struggle again.
There is no shame in the struggle, Friend. Embrace it. In the struggle we learn to trust more deeply in God and not in ourselves.